Direct Mail Associations

Direct Marketing Associations are national trade organizations that seek to advance all forms of direct marketing.

23 direct marketing trade associations from five continents established an International Federation of Direct Marketing Associations. Founded in 1989, the IFDMA was established to develop firm lines of communications between direct marketers around the world, and is dedicated to improving the practice and communicating the value of direct marketing; and to promoting the highest standards for ethical conduct and effective self-regulation of the direct marketing community.

The purposes of Direct Marketing Associations are generally:

* Promoting direct marketing techniques and companies to consumers.
* Fighting negative images of the direct marketing industry.
* Providing training and professional development opportunities to marketers.
* Conducting industry research.
* Hosting networking conferences for marketers.
* Promoting direct marketing, informing consumers of the safeguards that exist, and promoting the DMA as their protector, contact point and regulator.
* Trying to ensure that their members create consumer confidence.
* Advising how companies should use information by operating within the terms of Data Protection Acts.
* Lobbying against Data Protection Acts which protect data against redistribution.
* Lobbying against laws forbidding e-mail address harvesting.

Direct Marketing Associations have attracted controversy, as they purport to defend and promote spam, junk mail, and telemarketing, which many consumers find irritating and intrusive. The DMA has a political action committee that makes political contributions in order to further its causes. The DMA asserts that the mass-mailings done by its members are both economically and environmentally beneficial (the latter because they supposedly reduce the number of car trips taken by shoppers who would otherwise shop at conventional stores).