Direct Mail 'can grow'

There is room for expansion in the direct mail market despite small and medium-sized businesses using the post less, according to the Royal Mail.

Speaking at a marketing and sales event in Bristol sponsored by the Royal Mail’s parent company Consignia, spokesman Richard Smith said people who dismissed the post as “snail mail” were out of touch.

Mr Smith, Consignia’s head of external relations for the south and west, said: “The Royal Mail is hugely successful, thanks largely to the directing marketing sector which is growing at between two and three per cent a year. That growth is being driven by the financial services and advertising industries in particular – and there’s room for expansion. Households in Britain still don’t receive as much direct mail as those in America, Germany, Holland and France.”

Mr Smith, who said accurate database management was key to a winning strategy, admitted small and mediumsized businesses were using the post less, turning instead to fax and e-mail.

E-mail reached a milestone last week with the announcement that 550 million e-mails were swapped by UK households in January, more than double the number of domestic items delivered by the Royal Mail.

But Mr Smith, who said the postal service handled more than 80m items a day, said: “E-mail is fine for chit-chat. But when you’re preparing something like a business plan you draft it on paper.”

Consignia had sponsored a day of seminars at the Marriott City Centre hotel, arranged by the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

CIM’s regional director, Michael Warne, agreed direct marketing had a bright future, especially when broadcast media were suffering falling advertising revenue.

He said: “Direct mail is attractive because one can measure the responses from customers very accurately.”

Mr Warne said the focus of the sales seminars, which were more popular than those on marketing, had been on intelligent ways of promoting products.