Tag: direct mail

Direct Mail spending surges 7.5% in 2006, more growth ahead

Posted by | Dec 20, 2006 | |

Despite rising postal rates, higher raw materials costs and the advent of numerous alternative channels, marketers continue to seek out the return on investment benefits of direct mail. spending USD60.6 billion on the channel in 2006 – according to a white paper released today by Winterberry Group, a leading strategic consulting firm serving the marketing industry.

The white paper, entitled Vertical Market Trends in Direct Mail and the Impact on Production Service Providers 2006, is the New York-based consulting firm’s third annual study of the direct mail production sector.
Winterberry Group forecasts continued growth in direct mail through the 2009 timeframe.

The white paper further outlines three macro trends and five vertical market trends which should play significant roles in shaping the direction of direct mail use in 2007. The macro trends include:

– Complex, high-volume multichannel campaigns become the industry standard, driven by enhanced marketing database segmentation tools and widespread CRM adoption

– Forthcoming postal rate increase, combined with new delivery point validation
regulations, drive the need for advanced data hygiene and postal optimization services

– Strategy and creative service providers move to integrate analytics and consumer
targeting services with their existing portfolios, in order to counteract the threat of service commoditization in the agency space.

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Less than 10% of direct mail is relevant to recipients

Posted by | Dec 11, 2006 | |

Fewer than one in 10 pieces of direct mail are relevant to the people who receive them, new research has found.

The survey reveals that 47% of direct mail that is sent to post boxes is addressed incorrectly.

Data firm Informatica has undertaken the study to highlight the attention of inaccurate data being used in UK direct marketing campaigns.

It blames poorly-used data for contributing to the 78,000 tonnes of landfill waste each year caused by unaddressed junk mail.

Other findings were that 40% of respondents received more than five pieces of direct mail a week and a quarter of people said that less than 1% of all the direct marketing they received was relevant to them.

Tom Golden, vice-president of marketing for Informatica’s data quality division, said: “Dirty data is a huge problem for the UK’s direct marketing industry and data quality has to be paramount.

“Companies, at the very least, need to get name and address details correct or potentially alienate consumers, flying in the face of their objective to attract people to their brand.

“What’s worse for companies is that inaccurate data produces irrelevant mail that winds up straight in the bin, and equates to an immediate loss of a much-needed marketing budget.”

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Direct marketers angry at loss of Postwatch voice

Posted by | Dec 7, 2006 | |

The consumer champion’s success in defending postal users’ interests against Royal Mail’s market dominance has made it popular with direct mailers. One of the direct marketing industry’s leading voices, Edward Mutton, director-general of the Institute of Sales Promotion, has accused the Government of plotting to gag the watchdog.

He points out that promotional marketers are “very big spenders on mail”.
In October, consumer minister Ian McCartney announced plans to provide consumers with a single point of contact for a range of consumer issues. Consumer Voice, he said, would pull together the National Consumer Council, Energywatch and Postwatch into a single body which would be a “powerful and effective advocate” for consumers. It will also save money, the DTI argues – around GBP10.5m a year.

However, the direct marketing industry believes that Postwatch has done an excellent job for businesses, the biggest mail users in the UK. Royal Mail’s top 100 customers produce approximately one-third of its GBP6bn annual revenue.
Alex Walsh, head of postal affairs at the Direct Marketing Association (UK), says that the future of Postwatch will be on the agenda for this week’s meeting of Postwatch’s trade association forum. He accepts that the UK’s big business-mail users could form their own lobby group, but says any such body would be unlikely to have the same weight and visibility that Postwatch has.

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Key steps to DM/postal services: Time to deliver

Posted by | Dec 7, 2006 | |

Although Royal Mail still dominates the UK’s postal services market, deregulation has triggered strong growth in competition. Private operators have signed access agreements to allow mail they have collected and sorted to be fed into Royal Mail’s network for delivery.
Royal Mail made 1.2 billion access deliveries in the past year, compared to just 87 million the year before. In the five months to August 2006, access volumes continued to swell, and the latest figures from regulator Postcomm show that access deliveries now account for 10.5 per cent of Royal Mail’s total letters volume.
Royal Mail’s launch on 21 August of its Pricing in Proportion charging structure, reflecting that size and not just weight will determine a mailing’s delivery costs, has given companies further food for thought. For those considering a switch from Royal Mail to a rival access operator, there are now many more issues to consider. And there is certainly some confusion.
“In my experience, the big mailers aren’t confused because they have experts in their business who understand it, and can look at a new player when it comes along,” says Triangle Management Services’ associate director of mail Geoff Lambert. “But once you come down below the top 100 or 200 mailers, it’s true that people haven’t quite been able to understand what’s going on because they don’t have the expertise in-house.”

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