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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.

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Lean DM – Focus On Error Reduction and Increased Revenues

By |2016-12-28T14:26:33+00:00September 6th, 2016|

We can all recount those horrible moments when we realise a mailing has gone wrong. If you are lucky the job hasn’t left the building, but invariably the first you know about it is when you receive that dreaded, irate call from the client. Then comes that sickening feeling while you retrace the steps of the job only to find the error occurred in data preparation. During a particularly high pressure week, one of the data processing team accidentally sorted the surname column of a data file independently of the other columns and every mailer was sent with an incorrect surname. With many mail producers these high impact errors can have huge financial consequences and cripple the reputation of the [...]

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Lean DM – Focus on Name and Address Quality

By |2017-01-11T21:55:58+00:00August 25th, 2016|

Have you ever received a piece of mail, taken a glance at the address block and had to double take? Something doesn’t look quite right. A company asking you to spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds has just written to you as Mrs Ian Wilson rather than Mr Ian Wilson. Although deep down you know this is most likely an administration error, you can’t help but feel a little slighted. It also begs the question ‘if they can’t even get my name right, what is the experience going to be like dealing with them if I became a customer?’. 70% of consumers expect their data to be right every time. DataIQ – GDPR Identifying its impact on marketers and [...]

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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 [...]

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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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Making Money From Data Processing

By |2017-01-12T14:13:23+00:00March 29th, 2016|

You might consider data processing to be a necessary evil. An unfortunate and expensive activity you have to undertake to sell direct mail. However as clients continue to search for increased response rates and look to limit the potential for bad press, it is time to start bringing data processing to the front line of your business. Forward thinking mail producers like Pepper Communications have made Lean DM a key differentiator. Jude Whitford, Managing Director of Pepper was quick to see the potential of Lean DM and it’s having a real impact on his bottom line. ‘We have won 2 sizable new clients recently by focusing on Lean DM and the data services we can offer with Cygnus. Once we [...]

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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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Introducing Lean DM

By |2017-01-12T14:22:54+00:00January 21st, 2016|

In a study by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) it was found approximately 20 million mail pieces are incorrectly sent each month in the UK. The direct cost of this is said to be between £200 million and £300 million annually. However this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the full cost of poorly executed direct mail campaigns. Incorrectly spelling a valued customer's name, sending the same mailing multiple times and missing recipients altogether when they move house is doing untold damage to brands and the perception of the direct mail industry. That is why The Software Bureau has launched Lean DM, an initiative to help mail producers adopt best practice and deliver superior campaign [...]

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Lean DM for Fundraisers

By |2017-01-12T14:36:12+00:00November 11th, 2015|

It is certainly not an exaggeration to say that over the last few months charity fundraising has gone through the wringer. Sparked by the tragic suicide of Britain’s oldest poppy seller, Olive Cooke, who was reportedly extremely distressed by the amount of charity direct mail she received, the national media and in particular, The Daily Mail, called for a review of the way the third sector promotes itself. And it has succeeded with both the ICO and government launching investigations into the issue. Already, recommendations and changes are coming into effect, such as the proposed closure of the self-regulatory Fundraising Standards Board. However, with Christmas just around the corner, traditionally the most lucrative time of year for charity fundraisers, what impact [...]

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