This week it was announced that industry legend, Judith Donovan, is stepping down from chairing the Strategic Mail Partnership (SMP), after 14 years at the helm. We wanted to take this opportunity to say thanks! Judith has been a massively influential figure in the industry and has been responsible for promoting and protecting the direct mail industry in many guises including running her own DM agency, to chairing the DMA. The SMP is the UK body which represents mailing and printing houses which now over 150 members. She has been credited for bringing unity to the industry by encouraging collaboration amongst mail operators. It has been announced that Lucy Swanston, Nutshell Creative and Topic Heroes managing director will be taking [...]

New research from GDMA (Global Data and Marketing Alliance) reveals that consumers are much more comfortable with, and even see a value in, sharing data than they ever have been previously. This is especially true if they see a clear benefit of doing so. More than half of the people surveyed (53%), across 16 countries, agree that the exchange of personal information is essential for the smooth running of modern society. The vast majority of global consumers (82%) are prepared to engage with the data economy in 2022. Trust in an organisation remains the most important factor driving consumers’ willingness to share personal information with a company. Over a third (38%) of consumers rank ‘trust in an organisation’ in the top [...]

Last week Royal Mail announced that it was extending its Mailmark Economy Incentive deal until 25th June 2022. This means that businesses can take advantage of more cost-effective campaigns for longer. The discounts that apply are up to 25 per cent for up to three million incremental volume or up to 30 per cent for over three million incremental volume. Mailmark Economy is Royal Mail’s cheapest direct mail tariff. It was introduced at the beginning of last year to help the mail operator become more efficient. It basically enables Royal Mail to delay the handling of all non-urgent mail. Under the Mailmark offering, as soon as Royal Mail receives a campaign it will deliver the items the next day, however, [...]

According to a new report by Validity which surveyed over 1,200 CRM specialists, 76 per cent of businesses rate their customer relationship management (CRM) data quality as either “good” or “very good. Yet, according to the study 44 per cent estimated their company loses over 10 per cent of annual revenue due to poor data quality. Which seems something of a paradox. Close to 20 years ago a programme called How Clean is Your House? regularly attracted 5.1 million viewers, over 1.5 million more than Love Island – clearly this was before the time of Netflix and Amazon; there was very little else on! The format was simple; hapless homeowners were visited by professional cleaning duo Kim Woodburn and Aggie Mackensie [...]

New research reveals that organisations are suffering from what is being coined the ‘data gap’. This has been found to be the major contributor to inaccurate data which has a negative impact on the bottom line. The study by Quantexa which surveyed nearly 350 technology and data decision-makers across key sectors including financial services, insurance and the public sector in the UK, France, Netherlands and Spain, found that data and datatech is being let down by the managers in charge of it. 2022 has already been named the year of data transformation; hot off the coat tails of the pandemic induced digital transformation seen over the past 24 months. The pandemic has accelerated every organisation’s digitisation plans irrespective of whether [...]

For direct mailers it looks like 2022 is starting off on a positive note as Royal Mail confirms that it is extending all of its existing mail incentives until the end of the year. This includes the Mailmark Economy incentive which was launched last July and gives mail users the opportunity to sell more to their target audience by sending incremental advertising mail, responsible mail and partially address mail with a discount of up to 30 per cent on economy rates. Additionally, the operator has announced that from this week it is implementing an improved 14.5 per cent Mailmark Economy incentive rate for partially addressed mail, increasing from 9.3 per cent offered last year. In more good news, Royal Mail is also [...]

The latest stats from JICMAIL reveal that there has been record levels of digital activity driven by direct mail. The Q3 Report shows that the effectiveness of mail at driving consumers to use their tablets or smartphones has increased by 11 per cent over the last 12 months, while the two-year growth trend revealed an increase of 41 per cent. For the first time the amount of mobile device usage prompted by mail exposure has outstripped the amount used to call advertisers directly. Direct Mail with distinct customer oriented creative content is the most effective at driving mobile usage (of which online banking is a large part). Eleven per cent of DM containing appointment related information drives mobile usage, and [...]

Three and half years ago data legislation in Europe changed with the introduction of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The Data Protection Act 2018 became the UK’s implementation of GDPR and despite our subsequent exit from the EU, GDPR and what it stands for is not going anywhere. In fact, the government recently published a paper: Data: a new direction (click here); outlining potential reforms to ensure that the principles outlined in GDPR are clearer. As the report rightly says ‘data is now one of the most important resources in the world’ and therefore understanding and complying with the legislation is critical, yet despite this research shows that organisations of all sizes and sectors still haven’t quite got to grips [...]

Even before Covid and the accelerated period of digital transformation, parts of the private sector had undergone a data revolution. Data analytics now sit firmly at the heart of many organisations influencing what communications we receive, what product recommendations we are offered, the news we are served and even the creation of TV shows based on what an algorithm believes will be successful. But what does this mean for councils and local public services. Local authorities has a wealth of information  - everything from social care for vulnerable children, refuse collection, procurement, council tax and planning applications. This information can be used to make services more targeted and effective, to allocate resources where they have the biggest impact and to [...]

A recent article published by SelectHub analysed the ten critical CRM trends to monitor for 2021 and one of the key takeaways was that analytics will play a much larger role in decision making by 2022 according to 85 per cent of marketing executives asked. In the world of CRM pretty much everything is growing. Predictions show that CRM will reach a market size of $113.5 billion by 2027 and that is driven by the evidence that companies giving a good customer experience will outperform any company competing solely (or primarily) on product and price. Customers want an experience that is convenient but there is also a trend towards an experience that is personalised. This is nothing new but having [...]