Partially Addressed Mail: The Secret Source of Responsive Acquisition Data

By |2019-01-15T09:58:03+00:00January 15th, 2019|

As we all know, last year GDPR made it illegal for marketers to contact cold prospects where legitimate consent could not be proven. Brands who previously relied upon sending mail to bought-in lists in order to acquire customers were forced to dramatically rethink their marketing strategy. Some reverted to untargeted, less responsive door drops, others redirected their marketing spend to other communication channels entirely for fear of prosecution by the ICO. However on October 5th 2018 Royal Mail sent a letter to customers titled Trial of a new advertising mail service: Royal Mail Partially Addressed Mail™. The letter introduces Partially Addressed Mail as a new way to identify and communicate with prospects. The product promises 165x greater targeting than door [...]

Introducing SwiftCore – Cloud Data Processing

By |2018-11-06T10:39:44+00:00December 1st, 2017|

“What if we could take everything our Cygnus clients love about Embedded Suppression. All the files in one place, control over the sequence of matches, no negotiations with individual file owners. And make it all available to developers in the cloud?” It’s November 2016 and the product team at The Software Bureau are meeting to discuss the roadmap for Swift and Cygnus. An unprecedented silence falls upon the room while everyone reflects on Andy Benson’s challenge. Seconds later and the room has erupted into a frenzy of noise and excitement. Developers are frantically drawing system diagrams on the white board and talking about Azure Cloud, Serverless tech, Planet Scale processing, data chunking and NoSQL databases. The commercial team are contemplating [...]

Lean DM in the Press – The Print Business

By |2016-12-28T13:36:31+00:00October 25th, 2016|

Gareth Ward, Editor of Print Business magazine visited The Software Bureau last month. The conversation quickly turned to Lean DM and the mission to eradicate waste from direct mail campaigns. Gareth was keen to learn how print businesses and mail producers are profiting from bringing their data services front of house. Click here to read the article from Print Business magazine. Download your copy here Free Introduction to Lean DM To learn more about Lean DM why not download your free 30-page guide. Should you wish to arrange a demonstration of Cygnus or undertake a free trial, please contact us.

Lean DM – Focus on Intelligent Deduplication

By |2017-01-11T22:08:27+00:00August 17th, 2016|

On occasion we have all received the same piece of mail multiple times. Maybe we signed up to a service twice or made two frequent purchases from a website or donated to a charity over the phone and also by post. Regardless of the reason, it feels like a waste and as a consumer you know somewhere down the line you are paying for that waste. Failure to effectively remove duplicates from a mailing file can also have greater consequences. One high profile charity donor received more than 10 duplicate appeal packs and immediately and publicly withdrew their support for the charity. His viewpoint ‘you obviously don’t need my support if you can afford to waste money sending me all [...]

Lean DM – Focus on Goneaway and Deceased Suppression

By |2017-01-11T22:10:53+00:00August 10th, 2016|

Around 1.5 million people move house each year and over 500,000 people unfortunately pass away. This level of constant change can lead to data decaying at rates of over 30% per year for some organisations. The Office of National Statistics estimate up to 110 items of mail can be sent to the deceased in the 12 months after their death. Sending mail to people who have died or moved house is more than just a waste of printing and postage costs. When a business chooses to send mail without removing these recipients the only message being communicated is ‘the brand does not care about its customers’. Relatives of the deceased or new occupants are of course highly likely to see [...]

Lean DM – Focus on Home Mover Tracking

By |2020-03-05T15:48:54+00:00July 29th, 2016|

Introducing Home Mover Tracking In the first in a series of 5 in-focus articles we take a closer look at home mover tracking as a component of Lean DM. Home mover tracking is about ensuring mail reaches its intended recipient when they move house. According to the Direct Marketing Association 1.5 million people move house every year in the UK and most of us don’t inform everyone that sends us mail that we have moved. The challenge for marketers is to stop the hundreds or sometimes thousands of pounds they spent capturing that prospect or customer from disappearing when they move. A Marketing No-Brainer Data decay from home movers can strike body blows to marketing return on investment figures. The [...]

Five reasons why an in-house data processing tool is a must for fulfilment houses

By |2017-01-12T13:04:15+00:00June 18th, 2016|

Direct Mail’s star is in ascendance. Stats and recent research show that volumes are on the increase. End users are becoming increasingly aware of the power of DM as a legitimate marketing tool as new initiatives from organisations such as Royal Mail are widely publicised. Moreover, as criticisms continue to be levied against telemarketing, lead generation and internet display advertising budget is being shifted across to DM from new and existing mail clients. This is obviously great news for those of us in the industry. But with it comes responsibility – and that responsibility is in the form of exemplary data hygiene. Get it wrong and we risk damaging the reputation of an already fragile (but recovering) medium. All of [...]

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