Tag: direct mail

Experian acquires French email marketing services company

Posted by | May 4, 2007 | |

Experian has acquired French email marketing services company Emailing Solution for an undisclosed sum.

Emailing Solution provides email development, delivery and management services, as well as hosting and managing email address databases. The company employs 50 people, of which six are based in Barcelona, and has more than 300 clients including Axa, Orange, Staples and HP.

The acquisition expands Experian Marketing Solutions’ range of services in France beyond address management.

Experian will integrate the company into its own email marketing services business Cheetahmail, which already operates in the UK, US, Ireland and the Netherlands.

Chris Savage, managing director of Experian’s data integrity and digital services business, said: “Emailing Solutions complements CheetahMail’s European presence and will help drive our development in permission-based email marketing in the French market.”

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George Smith reviews charity mailers

Posted by | May 1, 2007 | |

Why do fundraisers insist on formulaic letters? Four of the five letters here run to two pages, start with a head and run second-colour sub-heads through the text. It is a strange communications device, used only by charities.

World Emergency Relief (WER) (1) is the least-known of these five charities. Perhaps that’s why it has to shout more. ‘What about the disasters you don’t hear about?’ bellows the outer envelope. The rest of the piece is old-fashioned to a fault with a punchy flier aimed at distinguishing it from its flashier competitors. ‘WER does not have large overheads or fancy offices’, it says. ‘Only seven per cent of our income goes on administration and raising funds’. I’m happy to believe the first statement but raise an eyebrow at the second.

Cancer Research UK (2) has been dissecting its brand value for a few years now and it shows. This cold mailing uses the given colours, the given typefaces and the slogan ‘together we will beat cancer’ throughout. The nifty little free pen is also brand-consistent and an eight-page leaflet offers a smart good news/bad news format. But it’s a lot of paper when the ask is as humble as GBP 2 a month.

UNICEF (3) goes the extra mile. A bright chocolate-type wrapper contains the story of Plumpy Nut, a vitamin-rich sachet for malnourished children. We’re in full colour here and there’s a little 14-page concertina-fold leaflet. And the ask? You knew it already. Yes, GBP 2 a month.

Save The Children (4) flies higher. This is a part thank-you, part-Christmas appeal mailing – clearly mailed to the top end of its supporter file. And the tick box suggests donations of GBP 120 and upwards. This is a bright and intelligent piece which will have done well. Its coup de theatre is a DVD of projects in the field – irresistible and presented here with integrity so that few recipients will not watch it. And it costs just 30p to make, says the letter.

No such production values with VSO (5). Black and white throughout and an ask of GBP 15.75 to pay for three days upkeep for a volunteer overseas. This charity and its agency have brought a new intelligence to fund-raising creativity. Their work in sending volunteers to the world’s poorest countries is not the easiest cause to sell, but they bravely use short, powerful words to describe it and dispense with fancy graphics. ‘Men and women wanted’, this piece says, ‘Small wages, basic accommodation, hard work, long absence from home, contribution to ending poverty in case of success’. Terse and highly evocative. Nothing less than a copywriting classic.

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Postal union of Israel Post ends strike, but resumes work sanctions

Posted by | Apr 15, 2007 | |

The union of Israel Postal Company employees decided Sunday night to resume sanctions they applied last week instead of the full strike that shut down postal services on Sunday.

The 7,000 workers are protesting the government’s failure to lower bulk-mail rates so that the company can compete with private entrepreneurs in distributing hundreds of thousands of letters at a time. The workers claim that by not allowing the new state company to be competitive when it loses its monopoly in delivering bulk mail, many of them will be fired.

Diplomatic mail will not be distributed; mobile post offices will not operate; regular post office branches will close early (3:30 p.m. at large branches and 1:30 p.m. at smaller ones); and postal banks will not accept payments into government accounts.

However, postal agencies, which are owned by contractors rather than postal employees, continue to function normally in areas where they exist.
The National Insurance Institute said that NII allocations could be collected at these agencies Although the sending of letters by individuals is falling into disuse due to e-mail and faxes, the use of postal branches continues.

The Internet has significantly increased the ordering of products mailed directly to consumers. In addition, postal banks are widely used because they do not charge the fees demanded by commercial banks; thus many self-employed people go to the post offices on the 15th of the month to make their Value Added Tax payments and recipients of NII payments to get their money.

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Libey says rate increases, declining prospecting monster DM trends

Posted by | Apr 13, 2007 | |

Rate increases, declining prospecting, talent absorption, the failure of net neutrality, online intensity and new systems.

These were just a few of the monster trends that are about to shake the world of direct marketers, according to direct mail guru Don Libey, who spoke at the Direct Marketing Club of New York’s April luncheon at the Yale Club.
“We have endless silent partner increases ahead,” said Mr. Libey, discussing the first of several monster trends. “If you sell something, print something, publish something, or send something through the mail, you are faced with endless, unsustainable silent partners.”

The silent partners, he said, are the U.S Postal Service, UPS, FedEx and Google.

“Massive postal increases, 13 percent increases for international delivery by UPS, increases by FedEx, fuel surcharges,” he said. “What we have done is abducted our control of our business in direct marketing because we are remote.”

Rate increases are also causing a decline in prospecting, another monster trend, Mr. Libey said.

Another monster tend is talent absorption in the direct marketing industry.

A monster trend Mr. Libey is particularly concerned about is net neutrality. He suggested that special interests, lobbyists and politicians are choosing money over equality for the Internet, and that speed and access will cost direct marketers more than postage does today.

Smaller catalog size is a monster trend too, Mr. Libey said and added that he thought the move to smaller catalogs was concerning.

Mr. Libey said another monster trend is online intensity, and it is only going to get more intense.

“We’ve only seen about 10 percent of the ultimate online share of the market basket,” Mr. Libey said. “Expect a near-doubling of online influence and sales over the next three years. “

He said this trend is dangerous because it is moving people away from the basics, such as offers, lists, and response.

“We are embracing technology at a dangerous rate, and we cannot turn away from it, so we must begin to harness it and understand it,” he said.

Another trend Mr. Libey discussed was that the United States is exporting teaching about how to do direct marketing in China, India, and elsewhere. He suggested that these countries may beat the United States in the future, as their economies grow faster than the United States.

The last monster trend Mr. Libey spoke about was the fact that there is enough knowledge and experience now to create the first fully integrated, fully analytic and working enterprise-wide, multichannel, operating system.

Finally, Mr. Libey said that this is the most exciting time he has even seen in the direct marketing industry.

“It is fraught with challenges,” he said. “It is also separating the players and the also-rans. It embraces new worlds and new channels. It is global. It is expensive. And it is going to be two or three times its size in twenty years. Welcome to the dawning of the new direct marketing.”

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