Addressing the Royal Mail

I note that Royal Mail has recently sent out an innovative, expensive
and large-scale mailing, extolling the virtues of address management
software.

While I applaud the intention, it does seem to me that on viewing the
CD enclosed, readers are being misled.

They are being steered only towards direct Royal Mail resellers for
many other types of direct marketing software, such as profiling, list
cleaning and deduplication (not “reduplication” as it says on the CD).

Naturally, some of the organisations involved do supply many of the
other kinds of software mentioned. However, many of the leading
suppliers of these other types of software are not directly Royal Mail
resellers – my own company licenses the Royal Mail Postal Address File
via a direct reseller, because we have plugged their module into our
package rather than reinvent the wheel.

In view of Royal Mail’s monopoly, I think it should be much more
careful to be even-handed.

Steve Tootill, Managing director, HelpIT Systems, London

Copyright: Centaur Communications Ltd. and licensors

Page : 15
PRECISION MARKETING, 09th March 2001