TNT survey reveals a third of donors give after receiving direct mail

Cathy Pharoah, director of the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy, says direct mail remains “hugely important”

One-third of people who make donations to charity are prompted to do so by receiving direct mail from the organisation in the post, according to a survey by delivery company TNT.

The poll of 2,000 British adults found that 57 per cent of those who respond to mail appeals do so by post.

It also found that 10 per cent of respondents would use information sent through the post to find out more about a charity, but 87 per cent of people would go online.

Cathy Pharoah, director of the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy, said it was important for charities to develop an integrated multimedia approach to fundraising.

This should include online avenues, mobile phones and texts, as well as more traditional methods such as post, she said.

“Direct mail may not always be the most cost-effective way for charities to fundraise, but it is still a hugely important way for charities to get their message out. It is particularly important for the many donors who still prefer to give through cheques sent in the post,” she said.

Nick Wells, chief executive of TNT Post, said: “This survey shows that direct mail or door-drops, both on their own or part of a multimedia strategy, continue to deliver results.”

Charities sending out large amounts of direct mail should be aware that Returned, unwanted and undelivered mail produces vast amounts of waste paper and 80% of the carbon footprint for direct mail pieces lies in the ‘end of life’ solution.  Veridata recycles all waste paper.It also wastes money.

In addition to increasing a mailing’s return on investment, adMail also aims to promote best practice in data management; customers using the adMail service will commit to diligent data processes through suppression of customer and prospect data against consumer and business data files, such as the Mail Preference Service

For assistance with data cleansing, businesses can utilise TNT Post’s dataMatters service – a suite of data products designed to help organisations improve the accuracy of data used for direct mailings, in order to achieve optimum marketing efficiency, return on investment and audience impact. When married with TNT Post’s greenPost service, which looks at responsible, recyclable resourcing, clients can also reduce the environmental impact of the mailing.

adMail is available for delivery in a five working day delivery window and is for customers sending upwards of 4000 items a day, or at least 10,000 items a day for Access 700 CBC customers.

Nick Wells, chief executive of TNT Post UK, comments: “adMail offers the direct mail sector a new, cost-effective and efficient service that meets the needs of marketers in the current economic climate. By introducing a reduced cost service for promotional direct mailings, we aim to provide real value to customer.”

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Carbon footprint – if you are sending out large amounts of mail/catalogues in the UK/Europe  - You should be aware that 80% of carbon footprint of mail is in the returned piece. Solution? VERIDATA ]]> http://www.veri-data.co.uk/blog/2010/tnt-post-introduces-admail-for-promotional-direct-mail/feed/ 0 http://www.veri-data.co.uk/blog/2010/the-uk%e2%80%99s-direct-marketing-industry-generates-205-billion-in-sales-annually-in-the-uk-according-to-the-findings-of-new-research-published-by-the-direct-marketing-association-dma/ http://www.veri-data.co.uk/blog/2010/the-uk%e2%80%99s-direct-marketing-industry-generates-205-billion-in-sales-annually-in-the-uk-according-to-the-findings-of-new-research-published-by-the-direct-marketing-association-dma/#comments Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:26:00 +0000 tim http://www.veri-data.co.uk/blog/?p=297 The DMA’s inaugural Value of DM Report, which provides a detailed picture of the total financial contribution the direct marketing industry makes to UK commerce, cites the retail sector as the biggest beneficiary of direct marketing. More than £102 billion in sales are attributed to direct marketing – 36 per cent of the £285 billion in retail sales recorded by the British Retail Consortium in 2009. Direct marketing is also responsible for nearly £76 billion in revenue for the consumer financial services sector.

The Value of DM Report also addresses the economic worth of the direct marketing industry aside from the sales it generates. UK companies spend £43.3 billion on direct marketing activities every year; nearly £17 billion is earned by workers employed within the industry; and companies spend an additional £12.5 billion on employee overheads. More than 1.1 million UK workers are employed by or are indirectly connected with the direct marketing industry.

Commenting on the findings of the Value of DM Report Chris Combemale, executive director of the DMA, said:

“At a time of tremendous economic turmoil, the Value of DM Report shows that direct marketing has been a consistently solid sales generator for businesses throughout all sectors. As well as the financial contribution direct marketing makes to UK PLC, the report also shows the value it adds to peoples’ lives through employment and empowering them as consumers.”

Elsewhere in the Value of DM Report, the findings reveal the spread of expenditure on the spectrum of direct marketing channels. Over 30 per cent of direct marketing budgets are now allocated to online and email, with catalogues and direct mail accounting for 28 per cent and 26 per cent respectively.

The Value of DM Report can be downloaded from www.dma.org.uk/research

Stay ahead of carbon Reduction Commitment Scheme’/'green tax’ we recycle all waste paper lowering carbon footprint

Lawrence Durrell

It attracts a lower charge rate to capture than standard alpha/numeric data and we can return the data files on a daily basis if required.

Veridata now offers this encrypted 2d bar-coding system which means that capture of name & address, campaign codes etc. is considerably cheaper and enables us to offer our customers great savings for processing their returned mail.

CodEffect capture solution offer a fixed charge, regardless of the amount of data captured.

The CodEffect service has two distinct elements – simple data capture from returns and

data verification & enhancement. If required it can explain the reason for returns by

running them against a number of industry wide data sets.

The discreet  two- dimensional  barcode can be set in various places in or outside the envelope

For the ‘core’ data capture service the price is simply based on the number of scans performed – the amount of data captured is irrelevant. There is no charge for the software or creation of  a barcode.

Also included in the cost is the destruction and responsible disposal of all waste paper, which is recycled locally; this helps reduce your carbon footprint. Our service also helps you to comply with EU Directives on Landfill PAS2020 and Royal Mail’s Sustainable Mail.

Technical Requirements

Veridata in partnership with Arbutus Ridge will provide all software required to manage the printing of the CodEffect 2d barcodes free of charge and will work alongside the Client and chosen print company to install and test the process. Full technical requirements will be produced on agreement of contract.

Supplied as Windows DLL’s, which you can integrate using Visual Basic

For further information please contact

Tim Craig Business Development Director

Tel: 07970 759282 email: tim.craig@veri-data.co.uk

Twenty years before my son became an international film star I met many national and international sports personalities, actors, musicians, climbers, politicians, etc because I had pubs in England and bars overseas. In one, the Bamboo Bar on the West Coast of Barbados in the late seventies early eighties ‘personalities’ were two a penny. Now it may say more about a defect in my personality but I never felt any sense of the need for overt adulation or deference when I met any of them.

To watch a sporting hero score a try make a century etc  has left me breathless with admiration at the time, but regrettably ninety percent of the time meeting the person never moved me. I have liked some of them certainly as I liked the serious musicians I have met, I am talking millions of albums, and their incredible music and stage performances,  but alas  too often the sense of wonder has been shattered. ‘Ah, so this is so and so’, I would think, usually followed by; ‘they’re much smaller, fatter, less charismatic, etc than I expected’ and their conversation invariably disappointing. I have always believed in behind a bar, or not ‘Do as you would be done by’, and if they were rude arrogant or unpleasant, which I have to say very rarely happened with the real stars it was always the ‘D’ list dross who had a problem, then I would let them know I was not best pleased. Conversely respect and courtesy were accorded.  The ‘A’ list/’D’ list business is not dissimilar to old and new money.

In the last five years I have met many film stars or ‘A’ list celebs. I have also met politicians, academics, musicians and sportsmen most I am afraid have left me more disappointed than awed over or otherwise. There are equally many I haven’t met that I always wish I had, like Willie John MacBride, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and writers too many to mention, but TV people absolutely not and as for the aristocracy, no desire whatsoever.

To be fair running a beach bar in the tropics is not your ordinary midden, but does fame automatically have a right to respect? I certainly do admire and have a high regard for particular talent, performances or achievements but sadly on meeting the human beings behind the image that regard has not always been sustained. I’m not much good at anything so maybe I should have a little more humility.

What I have come to realise over the years that it’s the ordinary, the insignificant, the self-effacing people that you meet and dismiss for all the wrong reasons, appearance being one, which can turn out to confound and surprise you most. There have been many encounters that have left me speechless, in tears or feeling very, very small.

There were two regulars who by chance one night I discovered were founder members of the SAS, and another who one of the pilots who flew Swordfish against the Bismark. A Captain in the Royal Navy who was with RND at Antwerp in 1914 and who until the age of one hundred, three mornings a week would walk two miles with his Jack Russell to arrive, at my pub at precisely at 11.30, where he would drink two Worthington White Shields, read The Telegraph and walk home. An ‘old contemptible’ who having survived some of the most savage fighting of 1914/15 on his first leave home to Liverpool, changed into his civvies to join his mates in the pub. He was stopped in the street by two young women who each gave him a ‘white feather’. He kept them in his bible, survived four years in the trenches and brought them in to show me.

A chap who ran a menswear shop in Chester ex RAF shot down over Germany and captured, he escaped to spend a year walking home across Russia, south through Iran to India. Young men on R & R Thailand in the early seventies, especially the ones with the ‘thousand yard stare’, and Russian Spetsnaz in Budapest in the nineties fresh from Afghanistan. These are just a few of the people I have met and in whose presence I felt truly felt overawed, at a loss for words or down right scared.

We take for granted the familiar like letter boxes which in the decades following the introduction of the penny post in 1839 were viewed with suspicion, before they became accepted the postman knocked. Did he knock twice and did he ever play Postman’s Knock on his round?

Today there is an average of 75 million letters delivered every day in 1839 there were 76 million delivered in the first year but it soon rose to 350 million a year, that’s a weeks worth now.

I am only guessing but I bet up until the Second World War that they did not have a major issue with returned and undelivered mail? I know they do now and for my own part I hope they continue to do so for it is our raison d’etre for being in business.

I must look up the facts and figures and what impact the introduction of postcodes had on deliveries.

1. We had four days in St Agnes Cornwall staying with Kirsty’s (my wife) sister and what a week for weather. We love Cornwall, we have been going there four or five times a year for 20 years and we particularly love the north coast winter or summer the walking and beaches are spectacular and if you like surfing the place to be. I find the rhythm of the sea spiritually healing and we although it was only a short break it’s good to switch off. http://www.porthvean.com/
2. We are undergoing a strategic review of our business and the need to up the security to meet the scrutiny of compliance departments of major financial institutions.
3. Last year was terrible for so many SMEs financial services mailings dropped by 80% and then we had the mail strikes.
4. Keeping pace with the shear volume of information and social media is onerous but it’s here and it’s a part of the future embrace it or die. Check out check out http://www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-the-fk-is-social-media-one-year-later. the numbers confound.
5. Reviewing our web site we are always looking to improve ways of engaging with customers present and new your feedback is important. As a service company we want to give you the best service we can and we are here to tailor our service to meet your needs. Direct Mail will be around for a few years yet and we can:
   • make yours more efficient
   • targeted
   • save you money, (we know we can)
   • help enhance your brand image
   • mitigate opportunities for identity fraud
   • and cut your carbon footprint

You I am sure would like to make more money/cut costs we are in business to make a profit we can both benefit from talking.

PS Ask us about the huge savings and efficiencies to be made from using CodEffect 2d Bar Code

By using our Returned and Undelivered mail (and catalogues) service you can can help cut that cost, save your company money, protect your brand and send out positive green mess age to all your customers.

I hate waste and I see it all the time, piles of ‘junk’  direct mail,  duplicate letters to myself and then again to my wife it’s poorly  badly targetted mail.

I have nothing against Direct Mail I have been prompted to buy goods from Direct Mail but there is an iniquitous amount of waste through sloppy targeting and duplication and it does piss people off.

It’s not rocket science and we have been doing it for fourteen years so we know our service can reduce this waste and we can prove how we do it (and  by using CodEffect we can reduce that even further), and we recycle all the waste paper.

Few businesses monitor the amount of mail they send out, or the cost of returned mail or the potential damage to their company or brand and for every piece of poorly targeted business mail returned to sender, a staggering 20 are thrown away.

People throw away 59 percent of the mail they receive for previous employees.

Direct Mail Landfill costs £40 a ton.

Facts like these are are everywhere but when I read,

‘We’re the last billionth of a second in the evolution of matter’. DeLillio

I think I really should get a life.

Hate Monday mornings always a reality check, and having to get my head into a business mode. I was musing on what I’d really like to be doing and right now I would like to be somewhere where I could turn off all media television, radio internet for a month. How good would that be? (Descartes said, ‘He who lives hidden lives well.’ ) Well I would like to live well hidden and you know  nothing would change.  Turn it all back on and the same sad rubbish would come out, politicians gibbering on about the economy, oil spillages and ecological disaster another sixty people blown to smithereens by a murderous car bomb, another poor boy killed in Afghanistan and the sudden rush of sadness thinking of the sixty, or the one parent somewhere receiving the news.

How jolly to know that according to the World Health Organisation, depression will become the second leading cause of worldwide disability by 2020, second only to heart disease. Yet research has shown that doctors have been regularly labelling people as depressed when they are simply sad, and that sadness is good for you. Researchers have also undertaken studies to ask happy and sad volunteers to judge the truth of a range of urban myths and rumours, and found that sad people tended to be more sceptical. This is because negative moods lessen the likelihood that a person will rely on simple stereotypes when responding negatively to minority groups and that when you’re sad, you pay more attention to new information in the outside world

Sleeplessness, lack of concentration and changed appetite are all side affects of normal sadness but the way that doctors interpret these criteria of sadness is to describe them as depression, which they then treat yet more antidepressant drugs. How sad is that?

Things that make me sad right now are the physical distances between my children and me and how little I get to see them. Success and fame have their downside and the far side of America is a long way away.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. Isaac Asimov