Mailing Council - June 16 news

Postal providers work together to launch first-ever industry-wide scheme to promote growth of mail
The providers of postal services in the UK recently announced the launch of an incentive scheme for advertising mail. The new Growth Incentive credit scheme will lower prices for advertisers who want to use mail to grow their business.

For the first time advertisers can earn postage credits of up to 10.5p per item on the price of advertising mail.

The Growth Incentive scheme has been created through a partnership between all Wholesale postal providers (known as Access Mail Providers) who have come together to create the scheme and offer it to clients that want to grow their use of mail.

With the Growth Incentive any business, whether a retailer, charity or financial services provider, sending the minimum quarter of a million additional advertising mail items in a year can gain potential savings of between £6,000 to £11,000.

Credits are offered to advertisers on all incremental advertising mail posted during a 12 month period. The incremental volume must be in addition to existing mail volumes. Full terms and conditions apply.

This is the first time that advertisers, regardless of which postal provider they use, have been able to earn postage credits on the wholesale prices for advertising mail. Advertisers should contact their postal provider to find out about the financial benefits of this scheme.

Royal Mail is running a workshop on the Growth Incentive Scheme – Wolverhampton, 17th June – aimed at mailing houses promoting Direct Mail. Royal Mail would also like to know level of interest for a first time user incentive scheme across Retail and Wholesale.

OFCOM releases consultation
Ofcom has finally released its consultation on the Fundamental Review of Regulation. It is proposing to only make minimal changes to the current regulatory regime. Key points are:

- No price controls on mail (except for a price cap on 2nd class stamps that will continue)
- No additional products mandated for access (it had been rumoured that Ofcom might widen the scope of access so that Downstream competitors could offer a wider range of services)
- Additional monitoring to ensure that Royal Mail can’t subsidise its parcels business with revenue from the monopoly letters business
- Regulatory regime to last for 5 years
- Royal Mail’s provision of the USO is currently profitable so Ofcom do not believe any further steps are needed to protect it.

Digital Stamp officially launched
Royal Mail’s Digital Stamp was officially launched as a product on the 2nd May (NB there is now a Royal Mail Retail version available too). Customers wishing to use it will need to pass accreditation for the quality of the printed stamp - poor quality digital print will not pass accreditation. This is because the Royal Mail Stamp Team have insisted that any digital stamp has to meet the same visual standards as a paper stamp.

Royal Mail has said that in spite of requests for feedback on the digital stamp trial, very little results data has come back. Royal Mail is interpreting this as possibly meaning that the results have been so good that no-one wants to share the data – well, it would, wouldn’t it! The Mailing Council would love to hear from you if you have done any testing of the Digital Stamp on your campaigns.

CBC price increases
Don’t forget, the price for CBC (Customer Bar Code) mail increases on 4th July. Royal Mail has written to all CBC customers to encourage them to migrate to MailMark and save money.

Data Protection
The draft text of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has now been agreed and is expected to be passed by the European Parliament later this month. This is usually a formality but the clock starts after the Parliament has formally approved it and it has to be UK law within 2 years.

Although there is broad agreement some of the text still needs agreement on precise interpretation (and does it mean the same in all the different languages?). Both the Information Commissioner and DMA websites are being updated regularly to reflect changes and any information on interpretation as it becomes available, so please do check them regularly for updates.

Until next time.

Kerry Holden
Chair, Mailing Council