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Lean DM – Focus on Intelligent Deduplication

By |2017-01-11T22:08:27+00:00August 17th, 2016|

On occasion we have all received the same piece of mail multiple times. Maybe we signed up to a service twice or made two frequent purchases from a website or donated to a charity over the phone and also by post. Regardless of the reason, it feels like a waste and as a consumer you know somewhere down the line you are paying for that waste. Failure to effectively remove duplicates from a mailing file can also have greater consequences. One high profile charity donor received more than 10 duplicate appeal packs and immediately and publicly withdrew their support for the charity. His viewpoint ‘you obviously don’t need my support if you can afford to waste money sending me all [...]

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Lean DM – Focus on Goneaway and Deceased Suppression

By |2017-01-11T22:10:53+00:00August 10th, 2016|

Around 1.5 million people move house each year and over 500,000 people unfortunately pass away. This level of constant change can lead to data decaying at rates of over 30% per year for some organisations. The Office of National Statistics estimate up to 110 items of mail can be sent to the deceased in the 12 months after their death. Sending mail to people who have died or moved house is more than just a waste of printing and postage costs. When a business chooses to send mail without removing these recipients the only message being communicated is ‘the brand does not care about its customers’. Relatives of the deceased or new occupants are of course highly likely to see [...]

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Lean DM – Focus on Home Mover Tracking

By |2020-03-05T15:48:54+00:00July 29th, 2016|

Introducing Home Mover Tracking In the first in a series of 5 in-focus articles we take a closer look at home mover tracking as a component of Lean DM. Home mover tracking is about ensuring mail reaches its intended recipient when they move house. According to the Direct Marketing Association 1.5 million people move house every year in the UK and most of us don’t inform everyone that sends us mail that we have moved. The challenge for marketers is to stop the hundreds or sometimes thousands of pounds they spent capturing that prospect or customer from disappearing when they move. A Marketing No-Brainer Data decay from home movers can strike body blows to marketing return on investment figures. The [...]

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Why home movers will be so important to marketers in 2018 and beyond

By |2017-01-12T12:26:26+00:00June 27th, 2016|

People in the UK are some of the most prolific home movers in the world. Stats show that on average we move eight times in our lifetime, which is almost double the amount of moves made by people in France, Germany and Spain. This figure has doubled in forty years. In 1975 the average Brit only relocated an average of four times and this growth is showing no sign of abating as people are increasingly flitting from one house to another to make their way up the property ladder. As a result of all of these home moves; around 11 per cent of the population or 7 million people, it is unsurprising that it is difficult for marketers to keep [...]

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Five reasons why an in-house data processing tool is a must for fulfilment houses

By |2017-01-12T13:04:15+00:00June 18th, 2016|

Direct Mail’s star is in ascendance. Stats and recent research show that volumes are on the increase. End users are becoming increasingly aware of the power of DM as a legitimate marketing tool as new initiatives from organisations such as Royal Mail are widely publicised. Moreover, as criticisms continue to be levied against telemarketing, lead generation and internet display advertising budget is being shifted across to DM from new and existing mail clients. This is obviously great news for those of us in the industry. But with it comes responsibility – and that responsibility is in the form of exemplary data hygiene. Get it wrong and we risk damaging the reputation of an already fragile (but recovering) medium. All of [...]

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Software Bureau’s Cygnus suite adds 125m records

By |2017-01-12T13:12:30+00:00June 7th, 2016|

The Software Bureau has added 125 million new records to its embedded suppression service within its Cygnus data processing suite. The update follows the REaD Group’s recent upgrade of its data hygiene suite – including the Bereavement Register, the Gone Away Supression File and GAS Reactive – to reach a claimed 100 million records. The refreshed data run through Cygnus provides 29 million new tracked address records and 96 million goneaways. This latest update makes Cygnus the most comprehensive data processing solution available for direct mailers, the company claims. Sitting within Cygnus is the company’s Lean DM workflow package which systematically addresses each of the five sources of waste and highlights opportunities to both optimise mailings and save money. The firm maintains [...]

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Making Money From Data Processing

By |2017-01-12T14:13:23+00:00March 29th, 2016|

You might consider data processing to be a necessary evil. An unfortunate and expensive activity you have to undertake to sell direct mail. However as clients continue to search for increased response rates and look to limit the potential for bad press, it is time to start bringing data processing to the front line of your business. Forward thinking mail producers like Pepper Communications have made Lean DM a key differentiator. Jude Whitford, Managing Director of Pepper was quick to see the potential of Lean DM and it’s having a real impact on his bottom line. ‘We have won 2 sizable new clients recently by focusing on Lean DM and the data services we can offer with Cygnus. Once we [...]

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A Blueprint for Direct Mail Quality – Lean DM

By |2017-01-12T14:18:41+00:00February 1st, 2016|

We have all heard the story of Henry Ford. He modeled the first assembly lines and pioneered mass production in the early part of the 20th century. Many of the concepts introduced by Ford were to become the precursors to lean manufacturing, one such concept was his focus on quality. Ford is famously quoted saying ‘Quality means doing it right when no one is looking’. Applying this mantra of ‘doing it right’ to direct mail raises a number of questions. For instance do you know of any mail producers or printers who claim to offer anything other than exceptional quality products and service? Can you genuinely articulate how the quality of your direct mail service is distinctively different to a [...]

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Introducing Lean DM

By |2017-01-12T14:22:54+00:00January 21st, 2016|

In a study by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) it was found approximately 20 million mail pieces are incorrectly sent each month in the UK. The direct cost of this is said to be between £200 million and £300 million annually. However this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the full cost of poorly executed direct mail campaigns. Incorrectly spelling a valued customer's name, sending the same mailing multiple times and missing recipients altogether when they move house is doing untold damage to brands and the perception of the direct mail industry. That is why The Software Bureau has launched Lean DM, an initiative to help mail producers adopt best practice and deliver superior campaign [...]

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Is ‘preference’ a Dirty word?

By |2017-01-12T14:39:25+00:00November 10th, 2015|

For years there have been rumblings about various industry-wide consumer preference services giving  consumers the chance to select (or deselect) channels, sectors and even specific brands they want to hear from. Such movements always provoke mass debate. Justin Basini’s Allow and REaD Group’s Itsmypost.com were two such initiatives that are no longer in existence. Is this because they didn’t work? Or perhaps because opposition from marketers was too strong to ignore? Why have these initiatives failed to gain traction? The question today is were these frontrunners onto something but just a little before their time? One argument against them was that the industry as a collective didn’t approve of any individual company profiting from their perceived misery, which is how many viewed [...]

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