Glossary

Direct-to-Consumer

Direct-to-Consumer is the business model of selling products directly to customers bypassing any third-party retailers or other middlemen.

read more

Infomercial

Infomercials are a type of specialized television programming that is designed to sell or promote products, services, and ideas.

read more

Fulfillment 3PL

3PL (fulfillment center) is a term generally used to describe the entity that is responsible for overseeing the journey of warehousing, packaging, labeling, shipping and tracking functions of an infomercial product. 3PL stands for Third Party Logistics. These...

read more

Media Ad Allowable

Media Ad Allowable is a dollar amount determined to be the maximum media expense that can be spent to sell a unit and exactly breakeven. In other words, the gross profit per unit, less direct selling/fulfillment costs is equal to the media cost. If a company was to...

read more

Media Efficiency Ratio

The Media Efficiency Ratio, or MER, is the number that is a snapshot of an infomercial's overall success or failure during a media buy period. The higher a MER is achieved, the more successful the media buy performance was. This ratio is derived by dividing total...

read more

Semi-Dedicated Call Center

A semi-dedicated call center is a telemarketing company whose inbound call center employees generally take calls for fewer campaigns and tend to be better salespeople as contrasted to a staff of "order takers" (I.e. non-dedicated call center). It is more specialized...

read more

Two-Step Offer

A two-step offer is a marketing tactic also called a lead generator. It is a tool that can be used to get a potential customer’s information for a sales pitch later. A two-step offer in an infomercial requests that the viewer call a toll-free phone number (i.e....

read more

Upsell

The upsell is one of the core components of sales in general. It is the offer of another compatible product in addition to the original product, frequently with the promise of a discount if both are purchased. Upsells increase the average order value of a sale and can...

read more