Direct marketing is a sometimes controversial sales method through which advertisers approach potential customers directly with products or services. The most common forms of direct marketing are telephone sales, solicited or unsolicited emails, and mailed catalogs, leaflets, brochures and coupons.

Direct marketing is marketing/advertising that goes straight to the customer. A good example is junk mail.

Email Marketing

Online Tools

Mobile

Telemarketing

Voicemail Marketing

Direct Mail

Direct Selling

Please see my source for more forms and the idea behind diret marketing.

In this procedure , first companies get email ids or postal addresses by different ways. Then those emails and addresses are used to promote their products by sending letters/emails.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_ma...

My friend works for a direct mail / direct mailing company however I have no idea what that is? Could you please give a full and simple description of them? I literally have no idea what it means.