The role of direct mail and transactional mail

As media director I’ve got a couple of really key things that I need to do. First of all I want to grow direct mail and that means taking share of advertising budget away from things like TV, radio, press into direct mail. The other thing I want to do is sustain what’s called transactional mail. So that’s bills, statements, just general correspondence where companies are running themselves using the mechanism of the mail and I need to make sure they carry on doing that. So a growth task on direct mail and a retention task on transactional. One of the key things I want to do is turn data and insight into a core competence for Royal Mail.

Why direct mail works
I passionately believe that actually nothing really cuts through like a brilliantly crafted, well targeted letter just to you. If you’re watching a great TV advert you can come and go, you might be making a coffee.You’re quite passive when you’re listening to radio. Sometimes something might grab your attention, sometimes it doesn’t. But something that you hold and can stimulate you in so many different ways I just think is magic.

Opportunities from online shopping
Online ecommerce is absolutely huge for us. I mean I think the shopping habits of the nation are really changing. I think if we can get the convenience right so it’s dead easy 24/7 to go on a website. We need to make the whole shopping experience slick so that when things are coming to you you’re not agonising about am I in, am I not in, you know, we’ve got a way of giving you different places to have your goods left or an alternative delivery place so it’s just dead easy. It’s not just the fulfilment side though, it’s about businesses capturing more customers, writing to them, sending more catalogues, it’s all great business for us.

Why transactional mail matters
There’s another thing that we haven’t talked about which would be the transactional side. So how do I make sure that we have transactional mail going forward? Bills, statements, personal correspondence. We need to be showing that, yes, there’s a cost but if you can turn that bill or statement into something more than the just financial information, that it’s part of your customer touch point and you start to do things with it. I mean in many ways I think Barclaycard know more about me than my missus, probably a slightly dangerous thing to say but they know what I’m buying, where I’m going, how often I eat out, how often I go up to Manchester City to watch them play football. 

Could they be doing more with that information?  I think they could.  Can we be helping that? Absolutely. So we’ve just done a campaign which is talking to billers and those who are producing statements to say here’s how you optimise the layout and information that is in that piece of communication. So that’s kind of stage one.  Now what we need to move on to is to say, how do you make this a lot more powerful in terms of something that is a customer relationship tool? Yeah?  And that’s part of the journey there.

Changing perceptions of direct mail
One of the biggest problems I come up against, I think it’s one of the biggest problems in life for marketeers anyway and that’s one of habit. Breaking people’s habit is very difficult and if I’ve always done TV, if I’ve always used press or if I’m seduced and excited by Google that takes some reining back. The way that I have to tackle that is have evidential stuff to talk about. So case studies, examples of how others have used it, ways I can help, and that’s something we’ve been doing through something called mmc.co.uk.

So TV will have something which is the home for great advice and information and nickable stuff if you’re doing a presentation to a client, and that’s called Thinkbox.  You have the Radio Advertising Bureau, the IAB for the internet, and you now have MMC, the Mail Media Centre, for mail. So for many years we’ve been bringing customers into a physical building. It’s the Mail Media Centre in Covent Garden, which is where I am, but I need much greater reach. So we’ve introduced a website portal where people can come in and get loads of information.

The role of MMC and media consultants
It’s all very well for me to say DM’s great, go do, we need to show how and that’s really the purpose of mmc.co.uk.  And also if you come in to see us because I’ve got lots of media consultants.  They’re not postal experts, they’re media experts who can tell you how to solve a business marketing challenge through not just the mail but how you might do a whole bunch of complementary things. And what essentially I’ve done is taken the brain out of some of those people and stuck them on to the web, in the website, so it will show you case study information, trend data, examples of other customers and the metrics. 

So if I try and think of myself as a media planner, you know, I need things.  If I say we think DM is a good idea.  Well, why, if I’m the client now, will persuade me?  Well, here’s some trend information, here’s some examples of how others have done it, here’s some brilliant creative thought. Actually we thought we could now do this for your brand and so on and so on.  And I think as Thinkbox have, which is the TV site, on ours there is also a section called nickable stuff and that’s, I’m quite happy for people to plagiarise, cut and paste, make it part of your presentation. We’re here to help.