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Regional Manager, Supplies Manufacturer

DIRECT MAIL

Postage discounts UK Workshare -Mailsort, Walksort, Presstream and Cleanmail

An integral part of any mailing service is to be up to date on and advise about available postage discounts. Currently Royal Mail remains the most competitive supplier for most small sized mailings (those below 100,000) and the main workshare products available are Mailsort, Presstream, Walksort and Cleanmail. Some products require a minimum posting of 4,000 and others just 1,000 packs and within the Mailsort products available there are different types – Mailsort 1400, 700 and 120. Some companies may offer only 1400, even though but 700 and 120 can offer the greatest savings for some pack types and weights. At Sharp Cat we will check your mailing criteria and advise you of the best options available to you, given your pack weight, thickness and size and required delivery time. This can be calculated either as an estimate without your data or as an exact figure if your data is available.

Postage Discounts – Overseas

Often bulk shipments of material are required and we can arrange courier shipments for you at competitive rates and with inclusive POD’s (proof of deliveries).

Some mailing providers favour consolidation for overseas posting. As a rule Sharp Cat generally favour Royal Mail products which offer a proven delivery and using their discount sortation products, competitive rates.

This has a distinct advantage over most consolidators – returns are supplied back as they arrive and on a daily basis, just as with UK post and do not spend time sitting in a warehouse awaiting shipment in batches. This is particularly relevant if you are working on a campaign with more than one mailing stage – so that returns can be recorded on the mailing database before the next mailing phase.

Envelope Collation and Pack Fulfilment

The “stuffing” element of direct marketing is sometimes given low credence, but being a reflection on your business and seen by your prospects and customers it is essential that collation is carried out accurately and to high standards. We place an equally great emphasis on the importance of accurate collation and as a result have never sent a mailing out incorrectly - please see quality for more detailed information about our collation quality ethos.

Labelling, Matching and Nesting

Once again a simple process – but if carried out without care labels can be skewed, mis-matches can be made and your company image receives a negative.

Folding, Guillotining, Stapling

Folding, Guillotining and Stapling are all standard mail services, but none-the-less deserve the same attention to detail as other elements.

You want your fold to be flush and accurately placed, your guillotining to be straight and stapling to be properly placed.

If your mailing entails any of these elements, Sharp Cat checks these criteria as part of your collective mailing quality audit.

Adhesion and Boxing

As with other finishing services, neatness and accuracy prevail and adhesion and boxing are carried out and quality audited with these criteria in mind.

Personalisation

Laser printing still offers the best in quality for the personalisation of letters and other compatible material sized from A6 to A3, simplex or duplex within paper specification.

Our laser printing is carried out on a large number of printers – all are either HP or Xerox brand and we print to 1200dpi minimum as standard. Printers are run by knowledgeable minders whose job is to make sure that each batch of letters matches the signed off proof for content and the expected laser standard for quality. This avoids unnecessary wastage of your printed material due to problems that can arise from fusers, rollers and low toners.

Any wrecks or spoils are reprinted. The security of your data is important for the protection of your company, prospects and customers and so reprinted matter is forwarded for shredding before recycling.

As with collation all records are audited and in this instance printing is controlled by spool sheets.

As you might expect all laser toners are recycled – see recycling for more.

Laser printing can include any number of personalised data variables within the printed page – and we do not charge any additional premium for extra variables over and above the standard name, address, company and job title (if applicable) and URN.

Inkjet printing offers a versatile personalisation medium for alternative material such as one-piece mailers, cards and envelopes albeit generally at a lower print quality – typically 300 or 600 dpi.

Labels can be the answer to maintaining laser quality on a non-laser compatible piece – as long as they are fixed onto the piece straight. Skewed address labels are not a feature of Sharp Cat and we work on a regular number of label-addressed mailers – usually with a two or three way match with the outer envelope and / or response mechanism.

Colour Laser

Colour laser is particularly cost effective for smaller campaigns and for lower volumes of 5,000 or below offers a quality output at a better rate than that offered by traditional litho letterhead and mono laser print. See digital print for more.

Wrecks and Spoils

Have you ever considered what happens to your mailing wrecks and spoils?

Almost without exception any mailing is subject to wrecks and spoils – even when hand enclosed.

Even by hand, envelopes may tear, labels rip, watermarks be present on letterheads or outers and by machine some tears and jams are almost inevitable.

At Sharp Cat as an inclusive part of our service to you our policy is to re-print and re-collate any wrecks and spoils so that 100% of your mailing list is distributed.

This does add administration time to the end of each project and for this reason some companies prefer to overlook the despatch of wreckages. Yet each spoiled mail piece could be a prospective positive response – potentially increasing attendance, sales, awareness and interest figures.

Handwriting and Calligraphy

If mass production isn’t the answer for your campaign then calligraphy or handwriting may enhance your responses. We have supplied this for clients working on either high prestige or highly targeted projects – and to great effect. A typical example is the calligraphy addressing of high quality embossed cards with a personal invitation to an exclusive business event. Or a handwritten invitation to mid-high level donation charity supporters. Personal attention to these small, highly important audiences can really improve response levels and we can help by supplying either calligraphy or quality handwriting with proof-reading for 100% accuracy before despatch.

Proof Reading, Typesetting

Our proof reading service has been an incidental development that has evolved from staff taking a natural interest in client-supplied material and observing unintended errors.

We have therefore extended as an add-on optional service and one of our 2 proof reading personnel will read your material through for grammatical and spelling errors. We have been able to detect errors that have passed may eyes within client marketing departments – possibly because we have the advantage of not being so close to the topic in question and have not had the disadvantage of having read through the material numerous previous times.

Recycling

From the day of incorporation Sharp Cat policy has been to recycle everything possible. Cardboard, paper and redundant mailers are collected weekly.

The security of your data is important for the protection of your company, prospects and customers and so all personalised items such as letter spoils are treated separately for secure shredding before recycling.

Toners are collected for charity recycling.

Plastics are recycled and we have a strong in-house recycling ethic- even down to the composting of tea bags and other organic matter.

Print Management

In-house print knowledge and strategic print providers, each having been chosen for specialisation in particular print processes means that we can supply you with all the printed components required for your direct mail.

As well as saving you time a further advantage of this is that compatibility of items for mailing purposes is ensured and any potential pitfalls in design are identified before rather than after press.

Other supplies that we can readily supply for you include letterhead, envelopes – (paper, poly, hardback, padded, security), carrier sheets, folders, standard and unusual packaging materials, display packaging, materials related to exhibition and event organisation and other less common items. Please ask one of our Account Managers as we have a bank of knowledge and suppliers and may be able to help.

Response Services

After your mail has posted a well submitted campaign will produce plenty of responses and if you need these handled professionally, logged and reported back to you then we can help. Reports are available as a web-based option via secure login – giving you up to the minute access throughout the working day and at times that you choose.

Responses can be handled by the medium that you expect – post, email, web, sms, telephone, voicemail and IVR. Service partners provide some of these – for this we have an active policy, which means that we appear on site to oversee the quality of work.

Data suppression services will significantly reduce your return post. However any mailing file, however well updated will produce return and goneaway post – we have several return address options that can provide a portal for these whilst appearing to be a part of your postroom. It is advisable to flag returns on your mailing list and we can do this for you as part of a regular routine. As with response services the mailing data can be made available to you via the web so that you can log in to check results at any time that suits your working day.

Returns

What are returns?

Our view is that they are an often under rated, but valuable source of data in the quest to raise the integrity of your files whilst keeping marketing costs and environmental waste down.

For this reason, the provision of our postal address, receipt, sortation, bundling and counting of your mailing returns is provided for you without charge, as one of our range of Free Services.

Taking your mailing returns to the next stage it is advisable to flag them on your mailing list and if you would like to make use of our resource for this repetitive but important task, we can carry this out for you as part of a regular routine.

We recommend that we place the flagged returns into a master suppression file, which we can hold for you and use as a not-to-mail file for future mailings. Flags are categorised as standard into:

- Return to sender, address / company unknown

- Return to sender, please do not mail opt out

- Contact name changed

- Company name changed

- Address changed

These are core return reasons and if you require a narrower or wider list of categories, flags can be increased or decreased to suit.

Holding a master returns file can sometimes aid faster turnaround for mail or email campaigns where delays may be caused at the master database and the file can be supplied back to you at intervals for import into your own system.

Returns handling always pays off in terms of better targeting and the cost of delegating the flagging of returns to us usually pays off quite quickly in terms of saved postage and material over subsequent mailings.

DMA Members Hampshire