Lauren Sharp Investigates
Lauren Sharp joined PostalAudits in 2010. Here she takes a critical look at some of the innovations and changes that have helped shape the postal activities of some of the UK's largest users of mail services.
Hays Specialist Recruitment
One Step Closer to a Paperless Office
Working in a paperless office? ... Probably not!
Despite the fact that we are fast becoming a virtual world, direct mail continues to play a vitally important role in the communication mix – and with a very high percentage of UK businesses claiming that physical letters are set to be high on their agenda for the foreseeable future, it looks like it’s here to stay.
An email may never have the personal edge that a letter has and is more likely to be missed or ignored. Physical mail continues to deliver - it works! It's still essential - but it brings with it problems all of its own.
The continuous daily pressure to meet the 4pm collection and the added strain of peak periods can make direct mail a demanding communications medium. If there was some way to get one step closer to a paperless office, cut the cost and gain more control - wouldn’t you jump at the chance?
Hays Specialist Recruitment like many leading businesses had struggled with huge pressures on time and facilities, spiralling cost and overall lack of control and governance of mail right across its highly regionalised business.
Hays Specialist Recruitment is a global leader in specialist recruitment. It has over 4000 employees in its 170 UK offices alone. It sends out nine million letters a year, five and a half million of which are candidate and client mailers from its high street offices. Hays is one of the UK’s largest users of mail services – with a big annual mail bill to match. At its height it was spending of £4.4 million a year on postal services – that’s a lot of stamps.
Trailfinders
A Jouney to Fulfillment
The internet is certainly having an impact! It can drive efficiencies and make transactions more instant. However, there is a risk - many companies are concentrating so much on their online presence that it can leave customers wondering what happened to that personal touch.
I know that in this day and age almost everyone owns a computer - making online transactions a natural choice and we are all doing everything that we can to limit the amount of paper that we consume - but if everything was done online I know that I'd miss the excitement of receiving tickets through the post or leafing through a holiday brochure over breakfast. I don't think I'm at all "rooted in the past" but maybe I like to receive hard copies and letters for the same reasons that I enjoy going into retail stores on the high street - it's not a case of "either or" - its about having a personal preference. In any case, I always make sure that I recycle paper so where's the harm?
Travel companies are fast becoming more digital and I for one am grateful to find that there is at least one that has embraced new technology without waving goodbye to the traditional methods - which, quite frankly, in a competitive market can make all the difference.
Trailfinders founder Mike Gooley, an ex SAS officer, started the company in 1970. Having had a passion for adventure trips all of his life, decided after leaving the army to start bringing people along with him to experience a bit of adventure. This quickly turned into a business and Trailfinders was born.
Trailfinders has grown and adapted over the years and now offers much more than a little adventure. Whether you are after a five star luxury resport or a back packer's dream Trailfinders aim is to offer holidays that are tailor made to the individual's wants and needs.
Trailfinders now has 28 travel centres throughout the UK, Republic of Ireland and Australia emloying more than 1100 members of staff and has made travel arrangements for over 1 million clients. Every day, at every location, its talented and committed teams deal with peoples' dreams. Fulifiling the promise in every respect is what makes Trailfinders tick - and this goes for every aspect of the travel experience from enquiring and booking to unpacking and memories.
Like most travel providers, communication is critical and Trailfinders know that one of the most effective ways of communicating is through mail. The medium works. It is highly responsive, it is tactile and it engages with the recipient in a highly personal way.
The likelihood of receiving a letter, opening it and reading it is still far higher than an e-mail which may be deleted without reading or sit in spam mail boxes unread. A letter also shows a little more effort and makes the customer feel valued whether it's a letter on the latest deals, a holiday brochure or a confirmation of your dream getaway. This, however, does not come without a price tag and therefore it makes sense to look closely at the need for economy, efficiency and consistency.
You can't communicate through the post without producing paper and packaging but it is easier today to control costs, to be efficient and to limit the impact on the planet than it has ever been. Paper is here to stay.
Just a short time ago, everything that Trailfinders printed and despatched was produced and mailed locally - there was no centralised mailing operation. This created three problems:
- It was expensive - mail costs were on the rise
- Tone of message and brand consistency was impacted
- Time consuming localised process
Hybrid Mail Platform
Trailfinders want their customers to have a consistent experience irrespective of where or how they may book. At the same time, efficiency is essential - so the introduction of hybrid mail provided a platform to review the way things were done.
Hybrid mail is the process whereby mail is generated electronically and forwarded to a centralised print site for production and despatch as a physical mail pack.
Whereas most companies seek to outsource this type of system, Trailfinders elected to create its own. Today, everything that Trailfinders post is printed centrally at a single site - providing opportunites for bulk mail, reduced postal costs and local efficiencies in parallel. The only exception to this rule is the tiny amount of handwritten mail where a personal message from the high street advisor is essential.
The system uses fixed templates allowing flexibility for personal messaging whilst controlling brand and consistency. A lot of companies may be hesitant in building a hybrid mail platform - but Trailfinders have demonstrated consistently that when they decide to do something they go right ahead and do it. It has been a success story. Trailfinders is now able to get a far better price for their mail and it has achieved the balance between economies of large scale print and the control and ownership of an internal department. Everyone involved in the process of communication, from the advisor on the high street to the printer at the central hub is truly a part of the Trailfinders team. With the postal operation effectively centralised, the choice of postal carrier and postal service is the next step.
Louise Breton is the administrative director at Trailfinders and it’s her role to choose which mail companies can be trusted to deliver a great service to customers.
‘If a customer calls us they expect their travel details to be on their doormat the next day, or the next working day. We’ve been using Royal Mail First Class, Packetsort™ for five years now and we’ve had no problems at all. We’re very happy with it. It’s a really efficient service.’
Trailfinders send out all the mail that you would expect from a travel company - including brochures, insurance and confirmations - but it is also careful not to overmail and "exhaust" the client with too much information. It has acheived this by installing a system that allows all employees to see what the customer has already received. The central mailroom also "hand finishes" packs to the customer by hand picking any additional information that may be required.
PostalAudits - Adding Real Value
In recent years, Trailfinders appointed PostalAudits to review its use of Royal Mail services from a cost and quality perspective. The resulting Postal Audit was a critical appraisal of all mail communciations, the manner in which mail services were bought and the way in which they were accessed. This included Trailfinders internal processes and the geographical locations of its client base.
The audit showed that while Royal Mail had played an important part in the development of its core business, Trailfinders had not necessarily used its services in the most productive and cost-effective way. PostalAudits identified a number of opportunities to improve consistency and reduce the costs associated with Trailfinders' postal services.
Among the recommendations were the adoption of a different range of Royal Mail services that would not change the customer experience in terms of delivery time but that would certainly present Trailfinders with reduced costs. It's a case of taking a view of the entire mail process. Royal Mail played its part by engaging to introduce the revised services - and the improved discounts. The Trailfinders account management team at Royal Mail are the first to recognise that improved cost effectiveness of mail services has the effect of securing loyalty and growth tomorrow - simply because the medium is working so much harder for the client. The unit price of Trailfinders mail is now among the lowest in the market and has generated a six figure annual cost reduction.
Read All About It
Three times a year, Trailfinders mail the "Trailfinder Magazine" to its 1 million client base. This is an innovative communication packed with industry news and holiday information. Trailfinders send this through Royal Mail via a mailing house operation due to the scale of the mailing task.
‘Trailfinders’ main marketing tool,’ says Louise, ‘is its glossy, 40-page Trailfinder magazine, which is mailed three times a year – at Christmas, shortly before Easter and during the second week of July.’ The magazine effectively gives people a summary of what Trailfinders is all about, with regular features, articles, ideas for trips and special offers plus a letter that introduces the magazine and flags up a range of travel brochures that are also available. The magazine is mailed to existing customers from the past three years (currently one million people, up from 800,000 in August 2006).
The most recent mailing in July was sent to 1.3 million people (the one million existing customers plus an extra cold data mailing). The mailout was done via Royal Mail Presstream® for 340,000 of the contacts, the remainder being sent via Mailsort® 1400. This represents a significant change in mix of services used in previous years and was recommended by PostalAudits which, after carfeful analysis of its mailing file had identified that a more cost effective service mix could achieve the same results.
Just as predicted by PostalAudits the response rates of the magazine have proved the point. "They’re very good we’re pleased to report. Louise reckons that after Trailfinder magazine drops, enquiries to the company leap up. For example, Trailfinders regularly sends out around 2,000 of its brochures each week (via Royal Mail First Class, Packetsort™), but after the Easter and July mailings this increases to 6,000 a week for about three weeks, and up to 8,000 after the Christmas mailings'
Reducing Cost - Increasing Efficiency
Trailfinders has largely sorted out "problems 2 and 3" - so what about "problem 1"?
Trailfinders has had a long and fruitful relationship with Royal Mail whose efficient operation in delivering the magazine and brochures has been instrumental in helping to drive sales and deliver new customers. 'Trailfinders needs the most reliable delivery service on offer and one that has solutions to the company’s many postal requirements'. Says Louise: ‘I’ve been with Trailfinders for 17 years and we’ve used Royal Mail during that time. It’s been an excellent service.’
Trailfinders know that when a potential customer enquires about a holiday - either online or at one of its high street sites, the chances are that other holiday companies are also being approached in parallel. Getting the brochure on the doormat promptly really does provide a competitive edge. Royal Mail's vast scale, experience and range of services has made it an ideal partner. It is still the only service provider that can genuinely achieve UK wide next day delivery at an economic price.
Trailfinders has long associated with Royal Mail because the synergies of brand have suited the premium and quality messaging in its communications. However, through the process of the Postal Audit, Trailfinders also became increasingly aware of the opportunities emerging through the competitive postal market and where these may be most effectively leveraged.
In 2009 Trailfinders appointed TNT Post in parallel to Royal Mail to collect and distribute "non-time-critical" mail. An important strand of this mail is the "Wedding Service" whereby well wishes can contribute to travel plans for the happy couple as part of the wedding gift. Receipts are generated for all donors - many of whom go on to become Trailfinders customers in their own right. High volume, revenue generating and transactional mail at low cost has been a winner for Trailfinders and TNT Post has delivered. Royal Mail is a vital supplier to Trailfinders - but it is not the most appropriate service provider for all postal requirements. PostalAudits' insight has been a critical part of this change to the status quo.
PostalAudits is an independent specialist and can therefore take an objective view of clients needs and postal services. In the case of Trailfinders it also provided a catalyst for change and not a little glue to bring together competitive service providers in an operation that would benefit Trailfinders and its customers.
Trailfinders method of working shows that, yes, we do live in a world which is more and more dominated by the internet - and that is something to be embraced. However, it's not quite time to say goodbye to good, old fashioned physical mail. The competitive postal market provides new opportunities for the continued success of mail as a communications and advertising medium - and I for one hope that physical mail is around for a long time to come!
Five tips on business growth from Louise Breton, Administrative Director, Trailfinders
1. Expect the unexpected
When your company promises tailormade holidays then expect some unusual requests. People come to us because we promise something individual so if your company promises a tailormade solution then make sure you can deliver on that promise.
2. Complaints are a learning opportunity
Working in the travel business is like any other consumer-facing business. We are delivering our customers their dreams and, if for any reason they are unhappy, it’s our job to listen and sort out their problems or queries. Our job doesn’t end when we’ve sold the tickets.
3. Politeness is free
Never fail to be polite and treat customers with respect. A courteous approach can go far.
4. Let customers know you care
Once you’ve got a customer keep hold of them by letting them know how you can help them again.
5. Use technology wisely
The world is changing and your business has to keep up with technology, as it offers huge cost saving and sales-generating opportunities.