Charities are being urged to turn to CRM to harness the army of volunteers that has formed as a result of the pandemic. People want to help, but harnessing this will be key for charities moving forwards, believes Reach Volunteering, an organisation that connects volunteers with good causes. In the UK, within seven days of the first lockdown being announced, 300,000 people had volunteered with a charity and more than 750,000 had signed up as NHS volunteers. An article in The Guardian revealed that of the 12 million adults in the UK who offered their services during the last year, a third did so for the first time, indicating that a new and sizable cohort had the opportunity to experience [...]

Last week Royal Mail trialed the use of drones to deliver health and safety equipment, COVID-19 testing kits and general mail items, including direct mail, to the Isles of Scilly. It was the first time an out-of-sight autonomous scheduled drone flight has been used between the UK mainland and an island to deliver mail. The drone left Cornwall at 6 am and arrived back at 8 am having dropped its 100 kg load, which is roughly the same size as a typical delivery round. The test flight dramatically reduced the amount of time delivery to The Scilly Isles usually takes and also significantly reduced the carbon foot print. It is hoped that the initiative, which is part of a month-long [...]

A new report by the Fundraising Regulator shows that more charities are taking data hygiene seriously than previously. This year, only 14 charities were found to be flouting the Fundraising Code of Practice by failing to access requests to stop communication made through the Fundraising Preference Service, which was set up in July 2017 in response to the fall out of the tragic death of poppy seller, Olive Cooke. It enables people to ask specific charities to stop contacting them by phone, email, SMS or post. In the last review 20 charities were found to be uncompliant. By removing people that have registered on the FPS charities adhere to Section 3.2.5 of the Code of Fundraising Practice, however in Section [...]

The Software Bureau are delighted to have been invited to introduce Clean Contacts to the Dynamics 365 Birmingham User Group. It's a fantastic opportunity to engage with a community of Dynamics 365 experts and inform them of our unique solution. This meeting is free to attend for all Dynamics CRM users and being a virtual event EVERYONE will be very welcome!! It will be taking place on Wednesday 19th May 2021 at 5:30pm, and we would love to have you along! The full agenda for the event is as follows: Session : A new & unique approach to data cleansing in D365 Speaker : Ben Warren, The Software Bureau Every business has to clean their data, but the current methods can [...]

It was recently announced that the UK government has signed a new three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Microsoft to enable public sector organisations to continue to unlock the benefits of cloud computing and business applications. The new MOU, entitled the Digital Transformation Arrangement 2021 (DTA21) will run until April 2024 and allows all public sector organisations to benefit from discounts and beneficial terms for Microsoft 365, Azure as well as associated Support and Consulting services, including for the first time – Dynamics 365. The addition of Dynamics 365 builds on the Government’s One Government Cloud Strategy and the principles of the Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) strategy, which focuses on modernising technology, stronger data strategy, improving digital skills, enhancing relationships with [...]

As many of you will know a few weeks ago we launched Clean Contacts, an innovative data hygiene product for customers of Microsoft Dynamics 365. We were therefore excited to read about the new deal between Microsoft and Nuance Communications, which will spearhead next generation customer engagement driven by voice search. The $19.7 billion purchase is the second largest in Microsoft’s history, after its acquisition of networking site LinkedIn in 2016, indicating just how important speech recognition will be. Nuance provides AI expertise and customer engagement solutions across Interactive Voice Response (IVR), virtual assistants, and digital and biometric solutions to companies around the world across all industries. Microsoft believes that this expertise will come together with the breadth and depth [...]

Over the years, our industry has regularly been hauled over the coals for an offensive or profane word slipping through the net and ending up replacing the name of the intended addressee, and then being printed and mailed. This has recently happened with a Tesco Clubcard campaign, as you may have heard in the news, where a rather ‘descriptive’ phrase was used in replacement of the genuine recipient’s name. Click the link if you dare, or you can Google it of course (Other search engines are available) to satisfy your curiosity. Unsurprisingly, the press took great glee in publicising it and the social media posts drew the usual negative ‘junk mail’ comments from those with an agenda about our industry.  As those of us who have been in the industry for a number of years are aware, this type of incident has unfortunately occurred numerous times over the years. [...]

Lockdown was a difficult time for all of us, and we hope all our clients managed to get through the period without too much difficulty or disruption. We know that mail volumes were significantly down on the same period the previous year, and especially with advertising mail. Business mail however held up reasonably well in comparison, with a relatively small reduction in volume. Despite these falling volumes though, interaction with mail received through the door rose to record levels. What was both interesting and encouraging, was that this growth was particularly strong with advertising mail and door drops. This means that physical mail maintains a very important position in the marketing mix. JICMAIL has undertaken some exhaustive research in this [...]

We instinctively know that good quality, clean data is likely to lead to better marketing results. What has always been difficult to pin down is exactly what impact data quality has on the bottom line. However, in recent research conducted by Jim Conning’s Data Services team at Royal Mail and DataIQ it has been revealed poor quality contact data is costing organisations a staggering 5.9% of turnover on average. To put this into context, the average large business in the UK turns over £291m so the cost of poor quality contact data for a large business is running at £17.2m annually. The same survey of 272 marketers also found quality of contact data to have the highest impact on campaign [...]