According to the Royal Mail the recent price hike in postage is largely due to falling postal volumes, and of course the higher the price goes the more we switch away from the traditional letter! Even at its current level postage charges are very reasonable and compare with other countries but if you are sending our large numbers of invoices, sales leaflets or the costs soon add up.
There are alternatives to Royal Mail, companies such as TNT and have offered a service for the business user for a number of years and with sufficient volumes saving of up to 30% are achievable. Royal Mail Latvia consumer email list offers a range of packages including the excellent Door-to-Door service, great value if you want to target postcode zones, rather than named individuals. But the most commonly used alternative is of course email.
When and how you use email will depend on whether you are targeting existing customers/clients or looking for new ones.
Fast – emails can be fast to put together and fast to send out, we’ve worked on projects requiring a 24 hour turn around, something you could never do with traditional mailshots, even when 1st class meant next day, nationwide and ‘Postie’ delivered twice a day.
Cheap (or should I say low cost) If your email is going to work properly, ie get to the right person, be read and then acted upon it has to be properly designed. Someone has to build and manage your database, handle those unsubscribes and deal with irate customer complaints about Spam (more on this later).
If you’re using a third party to send your emails they will charge you for this service. Some offer a free service for small volumes, but if you want any of the really valuable data, such as delivery and open rates, you will have to pay.
Having said emails are ‘fast’, all too often this translates into ‘wrong’ – I’ve lost count of the number of emails I’ve received with typos, bad grammar, missing images and links. When traditional mailshots are printed there are often several people in the approvals process and more doing the Buy Leads – extra pairs of eyes that would pick up the problems before they leave the building.
