It’s all about quality and not quantity – though it’s nice to have both!

Monday, 6th January 2014

Categories: Data

Clients ask The Mailing Agency for advice and recommendations on a variety of issues but the top three are:

• How to reduce postage costs?
• How to improve the level of personalisation?
• What is the most appropriate postal communications over the short to medium term?

It’s often not complicated to resolve all of the above and in many cases they are all interrelated requiring a solution that recommends a number of changes.

However it’s always worth asking if the problem is just a symptom. Take the need to reduce postage costs. It could be that the real problem is more complicated than just a reduction in available budget or a need to reduce overall cost of sales. It could be that the response rate has fallen so making the overall mailing more expensive. The problem could have more to do with changing expectations of the market and or the wrong creative solution.

Increasingly recipients expect a degree of personalisation beyond the normal address and salutation. If it’s apparent that they have received a general mailing response rates can fall drastically. This could be the reason for an overall lack of response and therefore the unit cost of each conversion increases. If the reaction to this is to look for ways to reduce postage costs and print costs without addressing the media quality issue then the real issue is being missed.

So always ask the question – is this really the problem or just a symptom of something that needs a more comprehensive review.

Author: Gamze Bilgili