Tag: UK

Royal Mail – Massive restructuring in North West (UK)

Posted by | Aug 6, 2008 | |

Royal Mail blames falling mail volumes for a massive restructuring of sorting operations in the north-west of England that are likely to see the closure of mail centres in Liverpool, Stockport, Oldham and Bolton.

However, Hellmail has learned that plans had been in the pipeline for some ten years with a proposal to combine sorting operations on a new site at former air-base Burtonwood, close to both Manchester and Liverpool and the cessation of its use of the rail network by 2004, key to plans to make better use of the road network. A planning application for development on the Omega South site at Burtonwood had already been submitted.

Preliminary plans included transferring processing from three mail centres, five outward vouching offices and three centres for bulk mail handling to new mail centres and a new regional distribution centre. A new sorting and distribution centre at Warrington to replace Crewe and Liverpool mail centres, a new Chester mail centre replacing the current Chester mail centre were already penned. It also, at that time, included five outward vouching offices in the Wirral and north Wales, and a new Crewe regional distribution centre replacing Brunswick Dock, Westhoughton and Lostock bulk handling centres.

Putting more mail on to Britain’s roads rather with less reliance on the rail network has clearly altered the network structure as well as access and selecting logical sites for distribution, the subject of much controversy, are rapidly reaching the final decision stage.

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NFSP campaign to save PO card account (UK)

Posted by | Aug 6, 2008 | |

The National Federation of Subpostmasters continues its campaign to highlight the threat to remaining post offices beyond those currently being closed, if the contract for the Post Office card account is lost.

The NFSP points out that the post office network will go into further decline with as many as 3,000 post offices going out of business. The NFSP says that if Post Office Ltd does not need to pay out GBP 27 billion in cash each year through POCA, it will not need to raise large amounts of cash through other services, and the entire business model will unravel.

Post Office Ltd is currently on a mission to reduce massive losses in the post office network by closing 2,500 post offices across the UK. Rural areas have been particularly badly hit where smaller post offices were also the only village shop. Many have already been closed and replaced by outreach services which consist of mobile or limited hours services. The long-term funding of outreach services is the subject of some controversy after the Commons business and enterprise committee raised concerns over the level of funds afforded to the Post Office by Royal Mail.

Business has been lost to post offices in more recent years as many bill payments were transferred to online facilities or contracts put out to tender. Many post offices depend on the POCA and see it as a building block towards a sustainable future for the entire post office network.

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Royal Mail to run obesity campaign (UK)

Posted by | Aug 5, 2008 | |

Further to Royal Mail’s own direct mail marketing campaign, the postal provider is to deliver a direct marketing campaign for the government.

The campaign will be aimed at tackling child obesity and is thought to be worth GBP£75 million, according to Brand Republic.

Department of health figures have shown that almost one in four children of school-starting-age are overweight.

Royal Mail head of government marketing James McGruer says direct mailing will make more people aware of the problem.

A recent survey showed that direct mail was the most effective way of communicating with the public as far as the health sector goes.

Over half (52 per cent) of respondents said they used the mail to communicate all important health information, while only 24 per cent used email.

The effectiveness of any direct mailing campaign can be increased by personalising the addressing of correspondence.

Marketers should always ensure the quality of data they hold is as high as possible to ensure a campaign’s success.

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TNT Post receive the ZOOMtxt Power User Award 2008

Posted by | Aug 4, 2008 | |

Kodime announced that the marketing department at TNT Post is receiving the Power User Award 2008 for their advanced ongoing use of its ZOOMtxt mobile marketing software solution.

Simon Dolph, Head of Marketing TNT Post, remarked: “Over the past year we have begun to actively use Mobile marketing in a variety of scenarios, from recruitment via B2B information services to supporting our efforts to lower the carbon emissions of our entire supply chain. In all cases, ZOOMtxt has proven itself to be a very flexible and reliable solution, and has allowed us to easily explore and learn what works best for TNT Post in mobile communications.”

ZOOMtxt is Kodime’s complete software solution for mobile marketing. Enabling a complete set of mobile marketing and messaging scenarios, ZOOMtxt is 100 pct software as a service (hosted solution), connects to all UK mobile operators, is easy to use and backed by an experienced support team. From two-way SMS communication to shortcode numbers, mobile internet sites, instant response and outbound push campaigns, interactivity such as SMS to win, SMS to vote, mobile content distribution and more, ZOOMtxt enables organisations to easily operate a range of mobile marketing activities without occurring overheads.

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Wrongly addressed mail damages brands says Veridata (UK)

Posted by | Aug 4, 2008 | |

Veridata says that mailing out millions of pieces of direct mail needs to be done responsibly and that it can be a waste of money as well as actually damage a company’s reputation by delivering to the wrong address/recipient effectively becoming an annoyance rather than a way to reach potential buyers.

Veridata, which specialises in providing data capture solutions, says that that around 10 pct of all direct mail fails to even reach its target and that 13 pct of the population move very year. With pressure on direct marketing companies to update mailing lists and reduce the volume of paper that goes to landfill, accurate databases are essential says Veridata.

The UK government has already asked the direct marketing industry to get its house in order or face sweeping measures to curb what some householders and business see as a deluge of unwanted and irrelevant sales literature, and much of the problem is down to companies using old or outdated mailing lists.

Veridata handles returned mail from marketing campaigns, extracting the contents, scanning relevant address, verifying and collating the data and then returns this information to direct marketers to provide up-to-date information which reduces waste.

‘Stop Junk Mail’, the main lobby group calling for strict limitations on junk mail, says that people can reduce the amount they get through their door by opting out. Royal Mail which is the single largest distributor of door-to-door mail does have an opt-out facility although it warns that you could lose important information distributed by local authorities and other organisations.

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