*Clarity In Marketing

Royal Mail has launched a new service that gives its wholesale customers a discounted price for direct mail campaigns that meet criteria designed to reduce their environmental impact.

To qualify for discounts of up to 0.7 pence per item on downstream access prices, businesses will have to meet a range of standards to reduce unnecessary direct mail production through improved use of data services, including suppression of addressees who do not wish to receive direct mail. The responsible sourcing of materials and action to encourage the recycling of the mail piece also form part of the scheme’s specification.

Stephen Agar, Managing Director of Royal Mail Wholesale, said: “The price discount will encourage our wholesale customers to make the necessary changes to reduce the environmental impact of their direct mail campaigns.
“This further demonstrates Royal Mail’s commitment to support the advertising industry in creating more sustainable direct mail and we believe that our initiative will dovetail with our customers’ wider social responsibility initiatives.

"The new service is based on two levels of participation – entry level receives a price discount of 0.3 pence per item, while companies who meet the intermediate criteria receive an additional 0.4 pence per item reduction.

Minimum requirements to qualify for a price discount include:

• Mail items must be made from responsibly sourced materials – virgin fibre content or 50 per cent recycled
• All paper elements of the pack must be recyclable
• Recycling messages, including the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) Recycle Now logo, must be used
• A documented procedure to suppress customer and prospect data against the Mailing Preference Service
• 90 per cent of mailings must be fully and accurately addressed and postcoded in accordance with Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF®)
• Envelope windows must be recyclable (from 1 February, 2009)

To qualify for the additional 0.4 pence price discount under the intermediate level, further standards include:

• The use of suppliers, such as printers or mailing houses, with accredited environmental management systems
• The use of at least one commercially available deceased file and gone-away file for consumer mailings
• Instructions of how to opt out of receiving future direct mailings from a particular sender, and those opt outs must be kept on an internal suppression file
• Returned gone-aways and opt-outs must be removed from future mailing lists
• 50 per cent of finishes must be water-based
• 95 per cent of mailings must be fully and accurately addressed and postcoded in accordance with Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF®)

Royal Mail has also identified further criteria that it will consider implementing as a third phase, benefiting the most advanced direct mail users through further discounts.