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The goal of this dissertation is" to empirically study the effectiveness of retailer's direct marketing communications, by zooming in on customer, content and incentive characteristics". In Essay 1 (Calling Customers to Take Action: The Impact of Incentive and Customer Characteristics on Direct Mailing Effectiveness), I look into how customer and incentive characteristics affect the effectiveness of CTA direct mailings at the disaggregate level (consumer response) for a group optical retailers. In Essay 2 (Do store flyers trigger cross-category sales? The moderating role of categories' relatedness), I examine how the content of store flyers influences its effectiveness at the aggregate level (category sales), for a retailer active in a durable goods sector. More specifically, I look into the influence of the share of space allocated to each category on own and cross-category sales. In Essay 3 (Decomposition of VAT-free promotion effects: The role of loyalty program membership and category characteristics), I study the impact of a new type of incentive, communicated via print direct marketing, on retailer's sales performance, and how this effect varies across customers (LP members vs. non-LP members) and across categories, again at the aggregate level (store and category sales) and in the durable goods sector.