Royal Mail MarketReach: Encouraging Brands to Use Combination of Mail & E-Mail in Marketing Campaigns

Cassidy Walton — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 13:08:52 +0000

Royal Mail has made it easier than ever to start a mail campaign with their network of highly regarded Mail Made Easy experts.

MarketReach was launched in 2015 to promote the effectiveness of mail and improved ROI for companies such as Hive, Ikea and Kit Kat.

A resounding 87% of recipients went to their newsagents to claim a free Kit Kat [1]

Sharp Cat is proud to be one of Royal Mail’s trusted partners with established credentials, on standby with all the support you’ll need such as robust data security, high quality print and fast mailing.

What Can a Mail Made Easy Partner Do for You?

Choosing a Mail Made Easy partner can help you with the mailing process by finding the right target audience, developing your designs to drive response, delivering your campaign and reporting on the results.

Covering catalogues, direct mail or door drops, Mail Made Easy can help you with the entire campaign or a small part of the process.

Mail Made Easy can also help with integrating existing marketing activity with direct mail. Having each platform of communication build on the previous one, to maintain continuity plus break up the expected routine of some marketing campaigns.

Why Does Mail Cut Through the Noise?

Mail makes your customers feel more valued than email[4]

In our digital world, it’s never been easier to target customers. However, we receive up to 10,000 marketing messages a day[2], so it’s never been harder to cut through the noise and stand out as a brand. With 51% of emails being deleted within 2 seconds[3], brands must demonstrate that they value their customers. Sending a tangible piece of mail that your customer must physically interact with is more likely to grab their attention.

The physicality of mail is the perfect opportunity for your customers to feel valued and is memorable too; 80% of people say then can remember mail advertising sent to them in the last 4 weeks[5].

How Do Mail & E-Mail Complement Each Other?

Brands should play to the different strengths that mail and e-mail have to offer[6]

Email is quick, easy to read, informative and can be responded to instantly. It’s most appropriate for quick messages such as order confirmation or acknowledging an enquiry. People recognise its informal feel, making it perfect for following up on enquiries, requests and offers.

Mail can immerse the customer and hold attention for a lot longer. This makes mail suited to communications to contemplate for a while, such as catalogues or brochures.

The main challenge brands face is evolving a transactional relationship into a strong, loyal, personal relationship. Use mail to take the time to tell customers more about the brand, products and services on offer.

The crucial differentiator between mail and e-mail is how mail can make us feel valued.

We believe that attention to detail at the beginning of a mailing makes for success at the end. Our comprehensive mail services give you all the support needed for a strong mailing campaign.

With a reputation for high-standard mail services, we welcome fast turnaround mailings, always meet tight deadlines and welcome your call.

[1] KitKat: D&AD, 2012

[2] American Marketing Association, 2018.

[3] Litmus Email Analytics, 2013

[4] Royal Mail MarketReach, 2014.

[5] TGI, Kantar Media, 2014.

[6] Royal Mail MarketReach, 2014.

The post Royal Mail MarketReach: Encouraging Brands to Use Combination of Mail & E-Mail in Marketing Campaigns appeared first on Sharp Cat.

Are you handling your Mailing Returns correctly?

Lioncat — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 01:23:24 +0000

A good Direct Mail Returns Management Service (RMS) can be a very useful tool to assess the success or failure of any marketing campaign,

Direct mail has been responsible for getting the message across in some fantastic marketing campaigns. However, a campaign only has the possibility of becoming a success if it is seen by the addressee and crucially the correct target audience. If that audience has moved then the marketing material that you might have spent days or weeks working on will not be seen, except possibly by the postman who will see it twice – once on delivery and once on return!

Imagine that your marketing campaign has failed.. not only will you have spent a lot of money on it and have a very poor response rate to boot, but you will questioning how and why this could have happened. One of the key elements to be examined will be your data. Ask yourself, how good was the data used? What could I have omitted mailing so that this was more successful?

Sharp Cat can help you to create a solid, valued direct mailing audience by using direct returns data.

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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