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Sixty Percent of Marketers Shun Reverse Marketing Costing £145 Million Per Year

By |2017-01-11T22:07:51+00:00August 11th, 2016|

A new study by The Software Bureau reveals that 60 per cent of marketers do not practice reverse marketing; the management of direct mail returns, which costs firms £4.02 per returned piece of mail. Approximately 90 million pieces of direct mail (2.5 per cent) are returned to sender each year. Forty percent of these or 36 million are returned due to the recipient’s wish to be removed from the marketing database equating to a loss of potential revenue of £116 million and £29 million in wasted production costs. Reverse marketing enables organisations to compile in-house do not mail lists that can be screened against future campaigns reducing the volume of mistargeted mailings, saving money and improving the reputation of the [...]

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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 [...]

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Growing Your Direct Mail Business

By |2022-03-10T10:02:24+00:00July 22nd, 2016|

What’s Going on in Direct Mail? Direct Mail has had somewhat of a bounce-back over the last 6 months. . Royal Mail’s Mailmen campaign has been doing a sterling job providing statistics & research.  There has even financial incentives to lure organisations to add direct mail to their marketing mix. However, the underlying decline in absolute volumes continues. PWC suggest by 2023 direct mail will be just over 4bn items, down from over 10.5bn items in 2005. So if the future of the direct mail is not to be driven by volume, what trends can ambitious direct mail business owners capitalise on?  Trend 1 – Permission Late last year RNLI announced its intentions to move to an opt-in-only policy for [...]

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Protecting Our Industry Reputation

By |2017-01-12T14:15:11+00:00February 26th, 2016|

The government’s Fundraising Review should have served as a stark warning to the direct marketing community that the fundamental targeting issues that have been swept under the carpet for years needed to be addressed. Now that the recommended Fundraising Preference Service is almost here, it's worse than many of us could ever have imagined. The proposed ‘all or nothing’ approach will effectively put the kibosh on relationship marketing, the very thing that direct marketing excels at. Not to mention the potential mandatory FPS promotion in all charity direct mail. Whatever the eventual outcome, it is clear that it is going to limit consumer choice and cause mass confusion amongst charity supporters who are happy to hear from their favourite causes, [...]

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A Blueprint for Direct Mail Quality – Lean DM

By |2017-01-12T14:18:41+00:00February 1st, 2016|

We have all heard the story of Henry Ford. He modeled the first assembly lines and pioneered mass production in the early part of the 20th century. Many of the concepts introduced by Ford were to become the precursors to lean manufacturing, one such concept was his focus on quality. Ford is famously quoted saying ‘Quality means doing it right when no one is looking’. Applying this mantra of ‘doing it right’ to direct mail raises a number of questions. For instance do you know of any mail producers or printers who claim to offer anything other than exceptional quality products and service? Can you genuinely articulate how the quality of your direct mail service is distinctively different to a [...]

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