Are you looking to make savings on your marketing campaigns in UK?

The Royal Mail is introducing a service that few people have yet heard of, but which could save you significant amounts on your postal budget. usps lite blue

The fulfillment element of your marketing campaign often is the most expensive element. Do you want to reduce your postage costs?

“Direct Mail is a powerful medium that can help your business achieve stronger returns. It is targeted, proven as effective and when added into your marketing mix could boost your ROI by up to 20% (Source Brand Science).”

Can this new Royal Mail service reduce your marketing expenditure? What has changed? How can this help you? Read on to learn more and make savings.

Types of mail. 
Research by the Royal mail has discovered that there are three main categories of mail user: these can be divided into following;

  • Personal mail
  • Transactional mail
  • Advertising mail

On average 65% of mail in the UK falls in the categories of Personal or Transactional mail.

Personal mail tends to be as its name describes mail sent by individuals for example Birthday and Christmas cards.

Transactional mail is that type of mail that has to be delivered for example to comply with regulatory requirements like your bank having to send you a paper bank statement, your credit card company having to write to you to inform you of changes of conditions, the Inland Revenue needing to formally inform you by post of your tax code.

Personal and Transactional mail have to be sent, hence it is a very much price insensitive. Therefore postal volumes change little when Royal Mail or its competitors increase their prices; it may move between carriers but it still needs to be delivered. Anecdotally we hear stories of individuals who reduce or eliminate Christmas cards however this is a marginal change as most people will still send letters or cards to celebrate personal and family occasions. It’d true that a significant amount of personal mail has migrated to e-mail but that major change occurred a few years ago and volumes of post have readjusted themselves to a reasonable norm.

Royal Mail researchers have determined that 25% of mail that they handle is in a category that is particularly price sensitive. This category they call “Advertising Mail”.

It relates primarily to marketing exercises: to the delivery of marketing and informational documents that mainly serve the purpose of brand promotion and lead generation.

How to make postal cost savings.
The good news is that Royal Mail is now recognises that this category of postal mail is highly price sensitive; they know that marketers will reduce volumes and contracts they place with fulfillment houses as postal costs increase and they will use alternative marketing media. However physical mail, direct mail, is proven to be effective and marketers know this and want to keep it in their strategies: but only if it is cost effective.

You may not be aware but Royal Mail has just introduced this month a different price regime for Advertising Mail. They call it “Royal Mail Advertising Mail®”.

They do not want to lose that stream of business. Whilst they have just increased the cost of Transactional and Personal mail by about 15%, they have only increased the cost of Advertising Mail by 3%.

So as a marketer or business how do you take advantage of this new category of postal mail? 
How do you avoid the larger price increase?

How do you get access and get your campaigns under the new umbrella of Advertising Mail?

Your first move is to talk with your fulfillment house and ensure they apply to the Royal Mail and register your campaigns as being Advertising Mail.