When one of our clients noticed that ticket sales were looking a bit thin for their 2025 pantomime, they came to Sharp Cat for some support. Because they had cleaned their data in the spring, their season brochure was posted to fewer addresses than usual. It was a challenge that Adam, from our Tech Team, really sank his claws into.

Using their current customer database, Adam created a heatmap to identify “hot spots” where households were most likely to book tickets.

The Strategy: Precision Targeting

The client had a budget for 1,370 properties. To ensure the mailing wasn’t just a shot in the dark, Adam narrowed the field with a tailored approach:

• Drivetime: Identified postcodes within a 30-minute radius of the theatre.
• Distribution: Sorted postcodes alphabetically and selected every other one to ensure an even spread across the region.
• Property Type: Prioritized detached properties, followed by semi-detached and terraced homes.

The results? The client was highly satisfied with the response rate and is already looking to use similar methods for future mailings.

“That’s great, thank you. I am really pleased with that result for a first go. We are looking at the possibility of doing something similar with the next wave of brochures.”

Round Two: Pouncing on New Opportunities

That same client soon returned to us with a similar challenge for another one of their theatres. To make sure they didn’t miss a whisker of an opportunity, Adam suggested a few ways to sharpen their targeting:

1. Lookalike Areas: Identifying “neighbourhoods of interest” where current ticket buyers live, as their neighbours are likely to have similar interests.
2. Win-Back Data: Targeting households that have purchased tickets in the past but haven’t booked yet this year.
3. Automated Reminders: Sending leaflet mailers to “Panto Regulars” who hadn’t booked yet to save the client the manual labour of tracking them down.

The client loved the idea of reaching out to those “missing” regulars. We mailed 2,239 identified customers, and the client was once again feline great about the results!

Is your mailing list looking a bit thin?

Don’t just scratch the surface of your data. Get in touch with Sharp Cat today to see how we can help you top up your mailing lists and find your next “purr-fect” customer.

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At Sharp Cat, we aim to deliver more for your money to ensure you are getting the best value mailings. Following our last article, where we highlighted just a few of the perks that can make your campaign worthwhile, we still have some unique services that you need to know about before choosing your mailing house!

Account Managers

Have you ever found it troublesome to get in contact with your supplier? As standard, every client receives 2 Account Managers so you will always have someone to communicate with throughout your mailing.

Double the Account Managers also means double the expertise; with continuous communication, they’re available to provide their insights through every step of your project to help you reach your marketing objective.

Mail Opt Out & Returns Handling

A cluttered office means a cluttered mind! Don’t let returned mailings affect your productivity when we can provide a painless return handling process that is GDPR complaint and maintains good customer relations – all without you lifting a finger!

Simply opt-in to return management and we will handle undeliverable or returned mail. We supply monthly updates where you can see what has been sent back and the reason for return.

Pallet Recycling Scheme

Sharp Cat operates a unique recycling scheme offering delivery pallets to the community. Repurposing everyday items gives you a unique piece of furniture that can be sized to fit any nook or cranny, so you’ll finish with something that’s tailored to you.

Sharp Cat has a wealth of print and mail information to share plus a variety of added value services. To find out how we can tailor your campaigns to meet your marketing needs, email mail@sharpcat.co.uk or give us a call on 0333 772 0946.

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In a digital world, businesses are torn between e-marketing or direct mail. It’s apparent that social media and emails reach a wide audience, but we are exposed to at least 4,000 ads each day![1] Have you engaged with your customer? Have you cut through the noise?

To make marketing campaigns as effective as possible we work with you to advise how to target the right audience. We can help you…

• Produce powerful messages and designs
• Print and produce engaging marketing material
• Measure the success of your campaign.

1.    Eye Tracking Technology – scientific analysis of your creative

Eye tracking provides an insight into how customers are looking at your advertisement and how slight modifications to the creative can increase its effectiveness.[2] Following a reader’s eye movements through eye tracking technology explains how a mailing grabs our immediate attention; giving marketers that crucial insight into the customer’s perspective.

Heat maps provide a visual representation of what someone may be drawn to within the essential first few moments of your communication. Simply using different visuals or arrangements can have a significant effect on your customer’s response.

2.    Trees for Life – rewilding ancient forests

Sharp Cat makes it easy for everyone to be green! With each mailing sent out, a new tree is planted in the Trees for Life UK forest restoration project on your behalf.

We’ll keep you posted by giving you annual updates on the number of trees you’ve planted to show how your organisation is contributing to a better environment.

3.    Postal Information Reports (PIRs) – posting confirmation

Following your mailing, we provide a full postal information report as a permanent reference of the important statistics relating to your campaign. All PIRs will include:

• A description and image of what was mailed
• Valuable facts and figures about the data collected in your campaign
• A visual map of the households and businesses receiving your mail
• The number of trees you have indirectly planted
• The option to add your own branding, so you can present your PIRs to clients

Click here to have a look at our sample PIRs!

The Catters team are here to enhance your marketing strategy through mail and aim for your campaign to get the best results possible; providing reports, case studies, statistics and research tools so you can produce mail that will engage with your customer. Best of all, all these services are free of charge!

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/08/25/finding-brand-success-in-the-digital-world/#295f249d626e

[2] https://dma.org.uk/article/focus-on-eye-tracking

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Confronted by the evident repercussions of decades of neglecting our environment, every business and individual is encouraged to take an active role in recycling.

Why should businesses monitor their environmental performance? Identifying and controlling your impact whilst demonstrating your commitment to protecting the environment will not only strengthen your brand, but also save costs through improving efficiency, productivity and reducing waste.

So, is direct mail a sustainable, communication resource to use? Yes! The reason being that paper is one of the most recycled products in the world, with recycling rates meeting 70-75% in most regions – generally the maximum recycling rate.[1]

To help maximise sustainability we’ve established some simple, straightforward approaches that can be implemented to make your mailing campaigns even more eco-friendly.

1. Re-Evaluate Plastic Envelopes

Plastic has become the most common form of marine debris and one of the central concerns we see pop up on our news feeds. Businesses are facing more pressure than ever to evaluate whether their plastic packaging is a necessity for their products. But how can you use plastic whilst minimising the consequences of the environment?

Sharp Cat has adopted a compostable and biodegradable polywrap – produced from potato starch. It’s a responsible alternative protecting your mail without leaving harmful toxins, whilst providing a robust and high-quality finish. At the end of its life, it can be thrown into the green bin or compost bin, allowing an enhanced customer experience where they can easily dispose of the packaging.

2. Have Your Data Cleaned

Whilst clean data is critical for the success of any kind of mail advertising, it can also reduce your environmental impact. Segmenting your audience by targeting interested recipients reduces the physical volume of direct mail pieces sent out, lowers costs and increases ROI.

Partially Addressed Mail is another responsible and GDPR friendly way to acquire new prospects, without using their personal data. Offering a solution to cold data lists, it applies data sources such as geo-demographics in order to identify postcodes and households with a strong match for new potential customers.

Personalise your marketing strategy towards those who have expressed interest. Use a returns handling service, such as Mail Opt Out. This provides a simple option for customers to choose to opt out of unwanted mailings whilst keeping your office space uncluttered. Visit mailoptout.co.uk for more details.

3. Only Work With Sustainable Paper Sources

Have you thought about where your printed paper originates from? Deforestation devastation is associated with unsustainable paper stocks. To ensure that your stocks are planted and harvested for paper use all you need to do is choose a printer that buys sustainably sourced paper stocks. Look for print and mail companies with PEFC and FSC papers.

It’s the small changes that add up to big differences in our environment.

[1] Two Sides 2019, Myths & Facts

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Address only mail is good for advertisers prospecting to new customers. It’s also ideal for geographically based mailings such as consultations. A good example of one of these mailings is HS2 high-speed rail where communities have been contacted about structural proposals. Address only mail enables companies to carry out geographically targeted direct mail marketing without the use of personal data. It does this by addressing households using geo-demographics at postcode level (c.15 households).

Sharp Cat provides address only data that covers the whole of the UK via Geolist. Geolist works with Royal Mail PAF, Ordnance Survey and the ONS to provide household and business addresses without Personal Data. This mail is addressed to a household or a business instead of to individual people.

Royal Mail refers to address only Geolist data as ‘partially addressed mail’.

Royal Mail has carried out some testing on address only mail at a lower postal price than Advertising Mail. The result found is that for marketing purposes the ROI is just slightly higher than sending mail to addresses with personal names. Because of this Royal Mail is launching the trial of Royal Mail Partially Addressed Mail™. This has a price benefit of up to 4p per item discount as well as the usual Advertising Mail discount.

This new price started 8 November 2018 and a year-long trial is planned.

What are the rules for Partially Addressed Mail with the lower Royal Mail pricing?

To produce a Partially Addressed Mail posting, clients can use PAF data. They must exclude all personal data (i.e. Roberts’ household) and must mail complete postcodes (e.g. all of the addresses within EX5 7AW). Geolist  There is a minimum posting requirement of 10,000 items.

geolist.co.uk meets all of the requirements of partially addressed mail.

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We have always promoted the idea that building trust with your mailing audience, allowing them to easily opt in or out of your database should be a priority. We have a dedicated website for this purpose www.mailoptout.co.uk. Take a look! Demonstrating on the envelope that removal is easy is just one way to ensure that trust. The days of sending out massive mailing campaigns to anyone on a database is to end in March 2018 with the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR).

All mail that is returned to Sharp Cat is counted and recorded for our clients as a free service. With your permission that information is data captured and held securely so that it can be used as a suppression file on any future mailing campaigns you might do with us. We understand that IT departments in companies are very busy and suppressing a set of data from a large Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system could take several weeks so we offer this buffer built into our own RMS. We will supply your returns data, free of charge, to you on a monthly basis so that you can remove the relevant information from your own database. With your data cleaned you will know that the addresses that you are reaching out to will be the intended audience. Further, once GDPR is in place  a good RMS will be even more important since any inclusion of an address which had previously asked to be removed from a database could create a major financial issue for your organisation.

Sharp Cat’s RMS will undoubtedly save you money – you will be able to see the value of returned data immediately. If you take into account the creative design, print and postage costs of wasted mailings the savings really do add up.

Some Live examples

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Do you wonder how green your mail is?

How eco friendly your last marketing campaign was or what the carbon foot print of your latest leaflet distribution is?

Do you stop to think about how you could do things differently so that what you do is more environmentally sustainable?

The impact that direct mail has on the environment has been a hot topic for some time….

Here at Sharp Cat we strive to be evergreen in all that we do!

To this end, some of the things we would like to mention are that..

We are part of the ISO 14001:2004 environmental quality system. This means that we aim to continually improve our environmental performance – better efficiency, less waste, more recycling.

We use FSC and PEFC accredited, sustainable papers and card stocks for printing and Royal Mail Sustainable® Advertising Mail products.

WHO?

FSC-The Forest Stewardship Council is an international non-profit, multi-stakeholder organization established in 1993 to promote responsible management of the world’s forests

PEFC- Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification- seeks to promote forest management through forest certification at both local and global levels.

These organisations have a common goal to reduce environmental impact, increase recycling and safeguard world resources.

At Sharp Cat we use data update options that save wasted print and post. Digital personalisation options reduce short-run surplus waste whenever appropriate too.

And……everything that can be recycled is: Toner and inks, IT hardware, worn card, paper, envelopes, pallets, pallet wrap, elastic bands, box cartons, teabags – whatever we can think of!

Our electricity supply is partially from green power and we power down all our equipment when it’s not being used.

Finally…………we love seeing things grow so a new forest tree is planted with each and every mailing!

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