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Royal Mail Mailing House Scheme
28th April 2009
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Perceptive browsers of the Cambertown web site will see that a new logo has recently appeared on our home page. We are pleased to announce that Cambertown is now an “official” member of the Royal Mail Mailing House Scheme. You may remember the old QMP (Quality in Mail Production) standard, which was backed by the Royal Mail and which came to an end over a year ago. Cambertown was QMP accredited since the scheme’s inception, and continued to be so, up until the day the QMP scheme was discontinued.
Now, QMP has been replaced by the much bigger, more all-encompassing, Royal Mail Mailing House Scheme, but it wasn’t simply a case of migrating across from the old scheme to the new one. Cambertown staff have had to attend training, and sit a written test set by Royal Mail in order to qualify. Having accomplished this with a pass mark of over 80%, we can now proudly display the RMMHS logo (bronze version). At present, everyone who has qualified for the scheme is at bronze level. Clearly our ambition is to get to "gold" level, and, ideally, to achieve this long before Britain’s athletes attempt the same thing in 2012! We’ll let you know how we get on.
Part of our participation in the scheme is to provide case studies of how we have successfully carried out direct mail campaigns in order to help spread and promulgate best practice across the whole industry. If you think any of your own work might benefit from being worked up by us into a case study, then please get in touch with me. The case studies can be “anonymized” if you don’t want to give away anything which might constitute competitive advantage or client confidentiality.
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Royal Mail launch new product, Sustainable Mail.
28th April 2009
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Despite the image it sometimes has of being “wasteful” in fact, most careful practitioners of direct mail have already been doing it in a "sustainable" way – even though direct mail is very cost-effective, still, given the costs of print and postage, there is no point (and a very short future for your budget) in blasting out badly addressed mail, willy-nilly, on a massive scale, to people who are not interested or not there to read it, and data changes remarkably quickly. What Royal Mail have done is to bring together the concept of careful data management with the concept of using specifically environmentally accredited materials for your print, and grafted on to these a monetary reward, in the form of additional mailsort discounts for mailings which comply.
At present, Sustainable Mail is only available on direct mail (as opposed to transactional mail) and only on mailsort mailings of letters and large letters. Royal Mail do have plans, however, eventually, to roll it out further. Obviously not all clients and mailings are going to fall into the category that can immediately benefit from it, but you should know of its existence, nevertheless, especially if “sustainability” and all that it implies, is part of your own business ethos.
The qualifying criteria for Sustainable Mail, in terms of the Royal Mail instructions themselves run to some eleven pages, and are of course available via the Royal Mail web site, but the easiest route, if you are interested, as always, is to let Cambertown do the leg work for you and if you want to know more, contact your account handler for details of whether your mail would qualify and/or benefit. Whether the various alternative mail providers to Royal Mail will in turn develop their own sustainable mail products, in response to Royal Mail’s initiative, remains to be seen. If they do, we will of course let you know.
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Royal Mail price increase and minimum order change
March 06th 2009
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Royal Mail are planning a price increase in early April 2009. As usual, we expect that this price increase will affect all Royal Mail products one way or another and also that it will, in turn, impact on the prices of other alternative mail "downstream access" service providers, whose prices are based on Royal Mail's pricing structure.
So, if you have any large mailings planned for the near future, please call your account handler at Cambertown and we will endeavour to do our best to speed them through before the price increase and save you some money!
Also, for those clients affected, the £20 Minimum Order Value for paper based postage docket books goes live in April, on April 6th, to be precise. The minimum order value for sales orders placed on paper posting "cheques" (this is what Royal Mail call the things that everyone else calls "dockets") will increase from £5 to £20 on 6 April 2009. In addition to this, every posting "cheque" they receive, regardless of its value, will be subject to a £1 handlng fee.
Orders placed via Online Business Account are not affected - the minimum order value for sales orders placed online will remain at £5, with no handling charge.
To avoid the possibility of inadvertantly being charged £20 plus a £1 handling fee by Royal Mail, clients should either ensure that, if they are using a paper-based docket book, they never mail less than £20-worth of post at one time, or, better still, speak to your account handler at Cambertown about moving to a Royal Mail online business account (OBA) where the minimum value is only £5.00 and there are no Royal Mail handling charges.
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Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year To All Our Clients
December 17th 2008
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As regular clients will know, Cambertown has adopted a policy of deliberately not sending "corporate" Christmas cards for a couple of years now, preferring instead to make anonymous donations of the corresponding amounts (what it would have cost, to produce and send a card) to a charity or charities of our choice, on the grounds of sustainability.
However, we would like to take this brief opportunity, at the busiest time of the year, to thank ALL of our clients for the cards and other gifts which have been sent to us, and to warmly reciprocate their good wishes.
Thank you for all the work and custom you have put our way during 2008, and we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy, wealthy and prosperous New Year!
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Royal Mail Clamping Down On Non-comforming PPIs
November 12th 2008
This news story concerns Royal Mail postage paid impressions (PPIs) and is particularly aimed at those of you who organise your own print of items such as address carriers and envelopes which bear PPIs.
Royal Mail has said that from October 1st , they will no longer accept mailings where the printed PPI does not conform to their specification. If the PPI is non-conforming, they will return the mail to us for re-working.
The full Royal Mail specification for acceptable PPIs is actually quite complex, taking into account things such as typography, minimum sizes, and positioning, so to simplify matters, rather than reproducing all that detail here on this page, the simplest thing is, if you are contemplating putting something to print which has a Royal Mail postage paid impression on it, run it by your account handler at Cambertown first - if we can’t advise on it there and then, which we should be able to do, we can certainly get it checked out for you and make sure, before you commit to print, that it will be acceptable to Royal Mail.
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RSPCA Rescue Pheasants
June 3rd 2008
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Warehouse staff at Cambertown are used to dealing with unexpected deliveries, but this time, they needed some outside help when a family of pheasants took up residence in the loading bay. The mother pheasant and her chicks were in danger from lorries and forklifts, and couldn't be allowed to remain in situ, so Cambertown's warehouse manager called in the RSPCA, who have now successfully captured the birds for re-release in a less challenging, less industrial environment.
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Mum and 2 chicks.
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New Polywrapping Machine
July 26th 2008
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Cambertown's continuing investment in mailroom technology took another giant leap forward this month with the acquisition of another polywrap line, significantly increasing the company's capacity to provide high-speed automated polywrapping for magazines, brochures and catalogues. .
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high-speed polywrapper.
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Royal Mail increase minimum charge for paper dockets
January 14th 2008
Clients who use paper docket books to send their mail via their Royal Mail accounts should note that from April 2008, Royal Mail will increase the minimum charge for a paper docket mailing from £5.00 to £20.00. So if you only have a few items to send (eg if the bulk of your mailing has gone mailsort and there are only a few standard tarrif or overseas items to go on a paper docket) potentially this will be charged at £20.00 even if the actual postage value is only a few pence. The way round this is to switch to Royal Mail's online business account (OBA). Please ask your account handler at Cambertown for details.
While we're on the subject of postage generally, could we again remind clients that we really need the size, dimensions and weight of the item to be posted at the earliest possible stage in each mailing, especially if you are asking us to cost out the mailing via several alternative methods to see which is the monst cost-effective - thanks!
Donations Instead Of Cards
November 22nd 2007
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Cambertown has today announced that it will not be sending out a printed corporate Christmas card this year but instead will be making an appropriate equivalent donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee Bangladesh Cyclone Appeal. Marketing Director Steve Rudd commented: "It's not that we don't appreciate our clients, or the work they give us throughout the year, we like to think that they know this anyway, without the need for a Christmas card, from the contact we have with them on a day to day basis.
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Santa rescuing the refugees.
Drawn by Jack
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But as a socially-aware business, like many others, we have to recognise that we all live in the wider global community, and we hope our clients will agree that, at Christmas especially, we should maybe pause and consider those less fortunate than ourselves, and what we can do in practical terms to help them.
Obviously we would like to take this opportunity to wish all our clients and prospective clients the very best for the festive season and for a happy, healthy and prosperous new year"
For anyone wishing to donate online to the appeal, the Disasters Emergency Committee web site (DEC is a coalition of 13 major charities working on the ground in the worst hit areas to bring food, water and medical help to the victims) is www.dec.org.uk
The picture illustrating this item is called "Santa rescuing the refugees" and was drawn by the young son of one of our employees.
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Good Idea, Bad Timing!
November 15th 2007
We realise that direct mail, e-commerce and fulfilment might not be everyday requirements for some companies or organisations.
If you have irregular work of this nature that only happens at specific times of the year, or new campaigns coming up that you would like us to estimate on, we’ve now set up a page on this site where you can go to register your interest in the service that you might require, and to specify when you need to be contacted, and we’ll then remember and give you a call or contact you at your required time.
To go to the "Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You" page, click here
Fresh new look, bright new services, same high standards
August 16th 2007
Cambertown today launches a new look with a fresh identity and brand new website. "It’s all part of a move to keep things fresh and relevant to customers, and to reflect what we do best - the seamless delivery of direct mail, e-commerce and fulfilment", said Terry Sorfleet, managing director. "With over 20 years in the business we wanted to review where we are, what matters to clients and what we can do to improve our offer. And this is the result!"
As part of our re-branding, we asked clients selected at random what mattered most and the answers were enlightening. You appreciate our honesty, you enjoy the quality of our work and the ‘attention to detail’ we put into everything. Responsiveness was important, as was the personal touch we bring to our work. We valued your input and wish to thank those who contributed.
As well as our new look, we’re also celebrating a new addition to our family of direct mail and fulfilment services - e-commerce is now available! We’ll build and host your e-shop and then run it, fulfilling orders, managing stock and issuing you with regular sales reports. It’s good news even for clients who already have an online shop - we can simply interface with that to fulfil your customers’ orders.
Welcome to the all new Cambertown. We’re very excited about the future and look forward to working with you.
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