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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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The Writing is on the Wall for CBC

By |2017-01-12T14:12:51+00:00March 11th, 2016|

If you haven’t done so already, get on board with Mailmark! If you are a Mail Producer and you aren’t yet offering Mailmark then time is running out. On 4th December last year Royal Mail restated its commitment to phasing out CBC when they announced the findings of their Mailmark migration consultation. Not only did this document confirm the intention to fully withdraw CBC in less than 2 years but it also set the scene for further price increases in January 2017. 1 month after the final nail was hammered into the CBC coffin, Royal Mail announced not 1 but 2 price increases to their Access CBC barcode service. By the end of this month (March) the first increase will [...]

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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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Mailmark drives increased interest in direct mail

By |2017-01-12T14:25:29+00:00December 21st, 2015|

Direct mail has experienced a significant spike in interest and take-up in the last three months. That’s according to market analysis, sales figures and incoming leads from data quality and hygiene firm The Software Bureau. The Software Bureau cites two main contributing factors for this growth: the cost reduction in postage offered by Mailmark and a reduction of client confidence in digital display advertising. Mailmark was introduced by Royal Mail 18 months ago with the aim of making advertising mail more accountable. It is also now the most cost effective way to send bulk mail. In January 2016 a new price differential for Mailmark will be introduced making it up to 5% cheaper than other postage solutions. The Software Bureau [...]

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Digital’s loss will be DM’s gain: but only if we’re honest

By |2017-01-12T14:42:27+00:00September 22nd, 2015|

When even WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell admits that something might be up with a medium, you’d be a fool not to take heed. He recently added his tuppence worth into the furore surrounding digital advertising sparked by research from PageFair and Adobe that revealed up to £50bn might be wiped off global digital ad spend next year. To add to the medium’s woes, a separate study from Meetrics estimated that £485m worth of online ads had never been seen as a result of glitches in programmatic buying. While this is highly unlikely to be armageddon for online advertising, such damning statistics will inevitably have some clients running scared and online budgets will resultantly experience shrinkage – two Bellwether Report’s [...]

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Cygnus Accreditation Launched

By |2017-01-12T14:46:32+00:00September 7th, 2015|

In response to industry demand The Software Bureau is launching The Cygnus Academy, a series of accreditations covering data processing for direct mail production and data hygiene. The accreditations can be gained by attending examined training courses, which will take place around the country throughout the year. The training courses will be offered in three levels; introductory, intermediate and advanced and are open to anyone in the industry, not just Cygnus users. Overview of courses Introductory level: This course is aimed at new recruits and those that have little knowledge of using Cygnus. The course, entitled ‘An Introduction to Cygnus’, will ensure they are capable of not only using the software on a productive level, but also have a rudimentary [...]

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Onepost and The Software Bureau Join Forces

By |2017-01-12T14:50:28+00:00July 17th, 2015|

The Software Bureau and ONEPOST have collaborated to bring ONEPOST customers and mailing houses a seamless Mailmark software solution. Mailmark is Royal Mail’s new barcode and optical technology for handling bulk mailings. It will replace its OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and CBC (customer barcoding) options. It is part of Royal Mail’s drive to modernise its processes. Mailmark will create more transparency in the mailing system enabling organisations to more easily integrate advertising mail into wider marketing campaigns. Moreover, in order to aid the transition to Mailmark Royal Mail has announced a further price differential from January 2016 which could be as high as five per cent. This will make 1st and 2nd class standard letters significantly cheaper for mailers than [...]

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