Post Office reviews £15m direct brief
The Royal Mail Group has called a pitch for the £15m direct marketing account for the Post Office.
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US Postal Service in review
The US Postal Service (USPS) issued an RFP on October 2 for a contractor to provide strategic messaging services to the media, the general public, and postal employees. The deadline for proposals is November 5.
One important aspect will be crisis communications, noted USPS senior PR specialist Joanne Veto.
“The solicitation would be in keeping with that: To have an agency standing by or on call in case of an emergency to assist where needed or [provide] expertise beyond what we have internally,” Veto said, via e-mail.
For crisis communications, work might include training spokespeople; identifying experts and credible third parties to support USPS messaging; and facilitating interaction with the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies.
More generally, work by the selected firm could include tasks like providing advice on communicating corporate policy and positions, as well as assisting with business, employee, and community, and media relations.
In addition, the firm might assist the USPS in its efforts to expand its licensing program, which aims to boost employee awareness and overall “excitement and momentum” for the program, according to the “statement of work” issued in connection with the RFP.
Read MoreAustrian Post Acquires Hungarian Company: Cont Media
Austrian Post acquired a 100 pct shareholding in the Hungarian company Cont Media Hungary kft. The closing took place on September 1, 2008. In 2005, Austrian Post had already acquired feibra Hungary, the leader on the Hungarian market for unaddressed direct mail. The Austrian Post Group has now also taken over Cont Media, the second largest company in this market segment. As a result of the acquisition of Cont Media, Austrian Post now has a nationwide logistics network for distributing advertising brochures on the important Hungarian market. On balance, feibra and Cont Media jointly have a market share of slightly 60 pct.
Read MoreMarketing Impact buys messaging business
New Zealand Post and Marketing Impact Limited announced they have reached agreement for Marketing Impact to buy New Zealand Post’s email and text marketing business, MessageMedia. The transaction, valued at less than USD 250,000.
It will be business as usual for MessageMedia’s customers and three staff as they transfer to Marketing Impact, a creative direct marketing agency with over 80 staff in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
Read MoreMarketers must invest in multichannel approach
Generating high levels of response, conversion or brand engagement is never easy in direct marketing. Unquestionably, it is vital to pick the right mix of channels. However, as channels have proliferated — mail, email, SMS, telemarketing— settling on the appropriate ones and giving them the optimum weighting is becoming more problematic.
“Consumers have preferences for different channels at different times of the day,” says Direct Marketing Association (DMA) director of media channel development, Robert Keitch. “No one channel is going to do it for you — end of story. The days of having a simplistic mix are gone.
It comes down to understanding who the customer is.”Consumer habits are evolving; for example, people now spend more time interacting with the web or their mobiles than sitting passively in front of the TV. Richard Higginbotham , head of marketing at marketing services provider CDMS, believes many marketers have as yet failed to exploit this shift.
“Once the customer has been identified, successful multi-channel implementation allows the marketer to actually contact the customer through the channel they prefer,” he says. “Ensuring customers are receiving communications through a medium to which they are responsive is key to producing customer satisfaction and improving ROI.”
There is plenty of evidence that a multichannel approach to direct marketing tends to deliver far better results than concentration on a single touchpoint. Research from Royal Mail, for instance, has found that integrating digital advertising with direct mail campaigns can increase customer spend by almost 25%, while 55% of ‘confident web users’ prefer to be contacted by a combination of direct mail and online .Anthony Miller, head of media development at Royal Mail, says this shows that consumers recognise the benefits of online, email and direct mail for different types of communications — and how well they work together.
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