Welcome to More Than Words Marketing
The sales-focused experienced marketing professionals
Finding your target customers
With our direct marketing database lists, we provide you with your key decision makers’ contact details to market by email, phone, and post to power your outbound campaigns.
It’s not just senior contacts we hold either – our data allows you to promote your products and services to a range of budget holders with responsibility for procurement in:
- engineering,
- facilities,
- finance,
- fleet,
- health and safety,
- HR,
- marketing,
- operations,
- and telecoms.
within UK businesses, schools, and the public sector.
Results-driven email and telephone direct marketing services
Once we have identified your target businesses and decision makers, choose from managed email broadcast services or telemarketing services.
With our managed direct marketing services, we’ll create a compelling, engaging, and response-provoking email marketing and/or telemarketing campaign and carry it out on your behalf.
Call our team on 0330 010 8300 to find out more.
Direct marketing database lists
UK Business database
Market directly to over 3,000,000 business decision makers by email, phone, and post with our comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date UK business database.
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UK Public Sector database
Accurate contact details for decision makers within the public sector segmented by areas of purchasing responsibility and annual expenditure.
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UK Schools database
Approach over 50,000 British educational establishments with your sales message by email, phone, and post with our UK schools database.
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Managed direct marketing services
Email marketing broadcasts

On average, £42 worth of sales are generated from every £1 invested in it.
Our team has decades of experience in running successful targeted email marketing campaigns – in fact, our team has driven sales for over 17,000 companies across 400 different business sectors.
With our managed service, we’re responsible for every aspect of your email marketing campaign management. This includes identifying the targets from our email marketing lists to design and dispatch.
We design and write a sequence of 12 emails then send it off to the specific audience you have chosen from our extensive databases.
Our email marketing services also include a detailed performance report following each broadcast. This provides customers with email marketing statistics showing audience engagement.
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Telemarketing services

Why should you use More Than Words’ outbound telemarketing services on your campaign?
From appointment making to market research calls, your telemarketing lead generation is fully managed from the start.
It’s a team effort involving a telesales script writer whose words convert, an experienced telemarketing manager, and a persuasive, friendly, persistent telesales rep.
Let us identify the key decision makers within businesses, schools, and the public sector most likely to need your products and services. We can then contact them on your behalf through outbound telemarketing.
Use telemarketing phone calls for appointment making, lead generation, market research on target clients and sectors, data validation, and promotion of the events you’re hosting or attending.
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Our direct marketing expertise
We were founded in 2016 by owners who have combined marketing and advertising experience of more than 30 years. Our team was then built with dedicated marketers and sales professionals who wanted to provide businesses with a flexible, outsourced marketing service.
Clients benefit from a joined up advertising and direct marketing approach, where marketing data lists, telemarketing and email marketing services are delivered from one company.
We are experienced as email campaign providers, B2B marketing list suppliers and a telemarketing outsourcing service.
To find out about our story and approach click here, or to meet the team click here.
Get in touch with our direct marketing team
Would you like to increase the response rate from your direct marketing activities?
Ask us how we can help improve your direct marketing communications.
Let us know more about your company, what you sell, and who your prospective customers are.
Our team will then identify the appropriate audience and discuss the best marketing approach to achieve results.
We’re available on 0330 010 8300 or you can click here to email us.
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Direct response marketing FAQ
When we’re asked by clients “what is the definition of direct marketing”, our answer is clear.
In fact, it’s also the answer to the question “What is the difference between direct and indirect marketing?”
We define direct marketing as marketing where you control exactly who receives it, how they receive it, and when they receive it.
In recent years, companies have diverted much of the expenditure they traditionally put aside for direct marketing into inbound marketing and content marketing.
This makes sense because the way in which companies and decision makers interact has changed greatly in the last 20 years.
We now look on the Internet first for answers rather than contact an expert.
For example, you may decide to research “salary dividend split” online before you call an accountant – even if you’re already with an accountant and paying them by direct debit every month.
By investing in inbound marketing and content marketing, you create a pipeline of future strong leads for our companies as future clients find you and your content online.
For many professionals though, this approach is profitable but a little passive.
The customer is a little bit too much in control.
With direct marketing, you choose:
- which decision makers you get in touch with based upon their likely interest in or need for the products and services you offer,
- how you get in touch with these decision makers (email, phone, and/or post),
- when you get in touch with them, and
- what you offer them as an incentive to get in touch with you as quickly as possible.
Rather than waiting for decision makers to enquire, you approach them directly.
By doing this, you not only create awareness of your company and its products and services – the very best direct marketing emails, calls, and mail-outs can actually bring a decision forward and persuade potential customers to switch from their current supplier to your company.
B2B direct marketing is the use of email marketing, telemarketing, and/or postal marketing to contact decision makers within the companies you want to sell your products and services to.
You can also run direct successful marketing campaigns to decision makers within schools and within the wider public sector.
The two main goals of direct marketing are:
- customer identification/contact and
- through that contact, generating a sale or a strong enquiry
The purpose of direct marketing is to generate the types of enquiries and sales you want.
How do you do that?
First, for a direct marketing campaign to be the most successful, you need to be as sure as possible that the recipients of your marketing have a genuine need for or interest in the products and services you sell.
Your More Than Words accounts manager can find the decision makers within the businesses, schools, or public sector organisations most likely to buy from you.
Second, with your direct marketing piece (whether delivered by phone, email, or post), you need to stimulate enough interest in the recipient to provoke a positive reaction.
With our managed email marketing and managed telemarketing services, we create approaches designed to stimulate positive response by appealing to the potential client’s need for your products and services.
When we’re asked “what are the advantages of direct marketing?”, the main benefits are that it’s a controllable form of marketing which delivers a predictable and dependable stream of high-quality and closeable leads and new sales for your business.
The returns on your investment are measurable too – just divide the size of your invoice by the number of sales and leads generated as a result of our campaigns.
You then use this information to help plan future campaigns and to tweak the offers you make in direct marketing to further lower the cost per lead and cost per sale generated.
More Than Words’ direct marketing team (including planners, designers, copywriters, and more) have over 100 years’ collective experience between them working for nearly 20,000 customers across 400 different business sectors.
There are three standard direct marketing channels – telephone, email, and postal marketing.
Direct email marketing is the sending of a promotional offer to recipients you want to get in touch with by email.
Across our three databases, we have over 500,000 decision makers’ direct inbox details from which you can select the targets you want to market to.
Direct mail marketing, sometimes called direct letterbox marketing, is the sending of a promotional offer to receipients you choose by post.
Across our three databases, we have over 3,300,000 decision makers’ postal addresses from which you can select the targets you want to market to.
Direct mail marketing is highly effective and response-generating but, along with telemarketing, upfront costs are higher than with email marketing.
If you use third party companies to organise your direct mail marketing campaign (including copywriting, designing, printing, packing, and dispatch), you should budget around £4,000 for every 10,000 mailers.
You can mail in any quantity you wish however it’s more cost-effective to run campaigns with at least 1,000 or preferably 4,000 pieces because you benefit from significant price cuts in the per-envelope postal rate.
To speak with one of our account managers about direct mail marketing and selecting the decision makers you need for your campaign, please call us on 0330 010 8300.
For More Than Words, a successful direct marketing campaign is the promotional activity you undertake over a 12 month period.
Why direct marketing is effective is that, over the course of a year, you communicate multiple times with the decision makers on the database you buy from us or on your managed direct marketing campaign.
The most important factor in direct marketing is to consider the buying journey which we explain in the next FAQ question.
The buying cycle journey describes a potential customer’s readiness to buy
- the products and services you’re offering and
- from your company.
There are four stages your 12 month marketing campaign will go through:
- Early Adopters – months one and two will be the quietest – you should benefit from a few leads and sales.
- Growth Phase – months three, four and five will see your phone ringing a lot more. Your target audience are becoming familiar with you and what you offer. You’ve become a known company and that makes a big difference.
- Plateau – you’ve gone from a company they knew nothing of a few months ago to an established presence in the marketplace to them. You should see more enquiries and new orders coming in. Traditionally, months five, six, seven and eight will be the most profitable of your time with us.
- Decline – from month nine onwards, responses generally will drop and level off. You’re still in a lot better position than you were in month 1 however this is the time to refresh your message to the market.
The buying journey
The most important factor determining successful marketing other than the quality and relevance of the data you’re using is to write content for people in the right part of the buying journey.
An example of this if you sell public liability insurance. Nearly every company has to have one and most policies last for one year.
For the first 11 months after a business has signed up for public liability insurance, they are firmly out of the buying cycle – all their needs are covered.
They’re signed up for a year and, even if they wanted to get out of it, they couldn’t anyway.
Every time you send an email or letter or make a phone call, only between 1 and 4% will be in the right part of the buying journey to consider making a purchase.
The most successful direct marketing campaigns appeal to that 1-4% and no-one else.
Few people want to risk buying from an unknown
The three reasons we like to have the opportunity to work on you over the course of a year is to:
- get you over the early adopter phase of the buying cycle,
- show you how successful sustained direct marketing can be,
- why direct marketing should be something you do every month, and
- hopefully, cover the cost of your purchase from us in the first two months so you can spend the next 10 months making profit.
Everyone likes to look around to see if there are better deals and better service out there but decision makers within business, schools, and the public sector get nervous about ordering from a company they don’t know.
Most decision makers get especially nervous about switching away from a company they already know or a company that’s very well-known in a sector.
What if the order goes wrong / or the quality is not good enough?
What if it arrives late / or if it never arrives at all?
If it’s a high-ticket purchase or the products and services purchased affect the profitability or the efficiency of a business or organisation, this adds an extra element of risk.
There’s all sorts of reasons why people can be reluctant to move.
There’s a term for people who do switch though. They’re called “early adopters”.
They’re naturally less cautious and generally more responsive to offers.
Our aim is that you can pay for your entire campaign with your first two contacts – again, this is why we like to look after it for you.
Familiarity comes from the third campaign onwards
They recognise your brand, they recognise your colours, they recognise your range of products.
You’ve now moved past the early adopter phase and have become a name to them.
All or most of those doubts and fears they may have had about switching suppliers will mainly have disappeared because:
- they know you’re here for the long haul,
- you’ve demonstrated your company’s credibility and the efficacy of your products and services, and
- they know you want their business because you’ve told them often enough that you do.
We’d really appreciate the opportunity to work with you on your campaigns throughout the full year however it’s particularly important we’re involved in the first two contacts you make.
Companies move in and out of the right part of the buying journey all the time for different products and services.
If a company has a need for a service or a product which has been satisfied, it has no need to buy in that service or product again for now.
There’s nothing you can say to them or offer to them to make them buy from you.
For every 100 companies you contact with our data, the chances are that a maximum of 4 of them will be in the right part of the buying cycle in that particular month.
In the following month, it’ll be a maximum of 4 different companies.
What are the stages of the buying journey?
There are three stages to the buying journey:
- the awareness stage where a potential client has just realised that they have a problem that they need to be solved or that they have a desire that they wish to have satisfied.
- the consideration stage at which point a potential customer requires detailed information about the products or service they are considering purchasing.
- the decision stage when a purchasing decision is imminent.
Successful direct marketing will:
- cause a potential client to consider your proposition at the decision stage and
- persuade a potential client in the later part of the consideration stage to bring their decision forward.
What has to happen for a company to come into the right part of the buying cycle?
With businesses, the important thing is either “actual need” or “perceived need”.
They need to have it to a) make money, b) save money or c) stay compliant with the law.
If it’s insurance, mobile phones, utility contracts or leased vehicles, it’s within a few weeks of the end of a contract or already at an end.
If it’s something a company buys constantly ad hoc (i.e. not on a contract) like stationery, cartridge ink, computer parts and so on, it’s simply when they need to have it.
For more transformational projects or projects which affect how a company operates or their profit margins, the people involved in investigating the project will have:
- been through a lengthy process of fact-finding in the consideration stage and
- resolved themselves to shortlist potential suppliers and their products and services as they get ready to make a choice.
If a company is at the right part of a buying cycle but they’ve never bought this product before, how do they decide which supplier to use?
Generally, a company will take greater care over the choice of a supplier for a product or service they’ve never bought before.
This is especially so if the purchase will cost a lot of money and/or the purchase will affect the operational and financial efficiency of a company.
The role direct marketing plays in these complex sales is to make sure that your company is invited to bid for the project or the order.
It’s then the job of your sales team to work with the prospective client to convince them that your company offers the best solution.
In general, when selling products or services to a company, school, or public sector institution which has never invested in those products and services before, your marketing needs to demonstrate the value that they and your company will add in your marketing materials.
If a company is at the right part of a buying cycle, why would they change supplier?
Most companies will already have existing suppliers for everything they need to purchase.
The good news for our customers is that, in most cases, you’re not trying to create a demand for something the company doesn’t need.
You’re trying to win business at the expense of the existing supplier.
So, why would someone change supplier?
- Their current one could let them down in some way. There is an old saying that companies are only a wrong or late order away from going somewhere else and it is very true.
- Pressure from the top. A company may be trying to increase profits or stem losses by reducing their sales/variable costs. Alternatively, a company may be about to go through a financial stress point.
- Mixing and matching. More than before, companies use one supplier for one thing and another supplier for another – there is a lot less loyalty. Suppliers may be chosen for a variety of different reasons – price, delivery times, payment periods and so on.
- Service levels. Some suppliers might offer a 24hr turnaround when the customer wants a 4hr turnaround. The first company to present this option to them may win the business.
- Something completely unpredictable. The buyer may have had an argument at home, they may enjoy speaking with the new supplier more than their existing one. There may be a million different unpredictable reasons.
What might stop someone choosing my company as their supplier?
Simply, the fear of making a mistake.
The fear of getting it wrong in front of other decision-makers.
No-one likes to make a mistake.
Everyone likes to feel good at what they do and competent at their job.
When buying for a business, particularly with some of the sums involved, it’s completely natural to want to take the safest option.
From the third campaign onwards, you’ll be much more recognisable to the companies they want to sell to.
Never underestimate this – it’s significantly important. There is one reason why campaign responses jump in month 3 or 4 – and that is the reason.
They are:
- There’s no list of companies available on a database ready to buy your products or services now. But, 1-4% on any given month will be.
- If a decision maker is not in the market to buy now there’s nothing you can do to change that.
- Therefore, design and write your adverts in a way that appeals to that 1-4% – always go for the low-hanging fruit.
- No-one likes to make a mistake in business so the chances of them buying on sight of your first or second advert is small. For people who do become your early adopters try to make sure they pay for your entire campaign.
- From third exposure onwards, your company and its offerings are becoming familiar. Resistance to purchase or enquire will subside month by month.
- Make sure you carry out your direct marketing for 12 months to get the maximum advantage.
Outsourced direct marketing is when you hand over some or all of the responsibilities for carrying out campaigns to a direct marketing agency.
Direct marketing companies, like More Than Words, either offer:
- database-only services where your company is responsible for carrying out marketing campaigns to your target audiences or
- managed marketing services where your direct marketing agency’s staff design emails, send campaigns, make telephone calls on your behalf, and more.
Database-only services
Are more suitable for companies which have the staff and infrastructure required to carry out a campaign.
For example, if you have your own telesales team or email servers, it may make more sense for you to expedite and measure the campaigns yourself because you’re in full control of the process and you have the infrastructure available to do it yourself.
Managed services
If you use managed services, there are additional charges on top of the data for the work your direct marketing agency carries out for you. However, these additional costs are likely to be substantially less than setting up your own infrastructure and employing new staff in the short term.
You may decide that, after investing in outsourced direct marketing, there is financial justification for building your own in-house telesales team or investing in an email marketing team.
Please note that we don’t offer outsourced mailing house services for postal mail campaigns however we will be happy to recommend you to suppliers we trust in the sector.
Interesting links and more information
We’ve compiled a series of links to high-quality, current, and relevant articles on direct marketing below:
- Get to the point: What is direct marketing? – by Steve Harley at Fabrik
- What is Direct Marketing: Strategies and Tips – from SendPulse
- A guide to direct marketing – by Romax
- Direct marketing: defunct approach or powerful, strategic tool? – by the UK Data and Marketing Association
- Direct marketing – a guide – by the Marketing Donut
- Why use direct marketing? – by NIBusinessInfo
- What is direct marketing? – by Elizabeth Williams at Entrepreneur Handbook
- A Definition of Direct Marketing – from Baker Goodchild
- The History of Direct Mail – by Central Mailing Services
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