Reach more customers with mail

Customer acquisition has become a key challenge for marketers.  The good news is there are three ways you can reach more customers with mail- Partially Addressed Mail, Direct mail and Door Drops. 

Many brands face the reality of depleted marketing lists, so attracting new subscribers and increasing customer acquisition has become a top priority. Royal Mail Market Reach has published a guide on 3 Proven ways to boost your acquisition strategy. 

How can mail boost your acquisition strategy?

Mail is a proven channel when it comes to boosting acquisition. Its physical and tactile nature grabs customers’ attention, putting your brand directly into their hands. And it’s this physicality that also means it’s a channel customers remember.

All reasons why mail, as part of a multichannel acquisition strategy, can increase awareness and help drive sales. Even digital first businesses like Google and Amazon use mail in their acquisition campaigns.

1. PARTIALLY ADDRESSED MAIL- Target new customers without requiring their data

Partially Addressed Mail is a highly targeted and responsible way to reach new customers.  Instead of addressing the mailing to an individual, you can target small groups of around 15 carefully selected households. 

There are a couple of ways of targeting new customers – ‘topping up’ and ‘lookalikes’. ‘Topping up’ targets people in postcode areas where you already have customers. ‘Lookalikes’ are simply new postcode areas identified as similar to those where your current customers live.

By combining both ways, you’ll get greater coverage of potential customers, helping to make your campaign successful. Partially Addressed Mail is therefore ideal for achieving targeted reach in specific locations, particularly when combined with other channels.

2. DIRECT MAIL- Reach new customers in a personal way

Direct Mail (DM) is addressed mail sent to a named person. It’s a strong acquisition tool because it opens a one-to-one relationship between your brand and prospective customers. In fact, 70% of people said mail made them feel more valued compared to 30% for email.

Personalisation is one of the reasons why DM has a 94% engagement rate, literally placing your brand into a named individual’s hands.  If you have a database or purchase third party data, make Direct Mail a tactile and engaging part of your multichannel acquisition strategy.

3. DOOR DROPS- Reach more households, locally or nationally

Door drops are a flexible and cost-effective way to get leaflets, flyers and brochures into customers’ hands, either locally or nationally. Their versatility is what makes them so appealing.

Whether you want to achieve a broad reach across a specific area, or nationally across
multiple areas, door drops are a targeted way to find the right people at scale. They’re perfect for things like new store openings, events, or promoting services in your local area.

Door drops work hard, too. Research shows that 90% of campaigns that included door drops saw an increase in new customers, compared to 59% of those without.

In addition, 67% of people were prompted to buy after receiving a door drop. So, it’s no surprise that these mailings can add a healthy boost to your sales.

Conclusion

In a world where acquiring new customers is proving ever more difficult, mail gives you a choice of three flexible and effective ways to boost customer acquisition as part of your marketing mix.

At POSITIVE+ we can manage all aspects of your mail campaign.  From data cleansing and personalisation to printing and postage, we can take care of the whole process to provide a seamless, cost efficient and high-quality campaign.

To bring your creative ideas to life call us today on 020 8544 5500, email hello@wearepositive.com or visit our Direct Mail page for more information.

Download Royal Mail’s 3 Proven ways to boost your acquisition strategy guide at marketreach.co.uk/3ways

Customer views on sustainability

The recent ‘Sustainability in Retail’ white paper from shop! and POPAI looks at the importance of sustainability from the perspective of customers, brands/retailers, designers and suppliers.  In this blog post we pick out the key customer views on sustainability, review how some brands are addressing sustainability and cover how to develop a sustainability plan for your business.

Customer views on sustainability

Studies show that many consumers value products and brands that are environmentally friendly. Brands, retailers and their suppliers can win the trust of consumers—and even cut long-term costs—by embracing sustainable practices and materials. 

A survey on customer views conducted by IBM and NRF found that:

  • 60% are willing to change shopping habits to reduce environmental impact.  
  • 80% believe sustainability is important.
  • 70% of sustainability believers would pay a 35% premium for sustainable brands.
  • Support for sustainability crosses all age groups.

How some brands address sustainability

Levi’s is a leader in reducing chemical and water use in products (did you know a pair of jeans can take 90 gallons of water to produce?). The company uses more than 20 water-saving finishing techniques and shares them with the industry.

H&M conscious collection green hang tags highlight products containing at least 50% sustainable materials.

Stella McCartney is leading the way in sustainable flagships. The London store is lined with recyclable foam and wastepaper from local offices and uses biodegradable mannequins.

Lush naked or plastic-free stores remove the need for packaging. The store fixtures are primarily made from re-employed, reused wood.

 IKEA has committed to using only renewable and recycled materials and to reduce the IKEA footprint by ~70% per product by 2030.

Developing a sustainability plan

According to the ‘Sustainability in Retail’ white paper, companies should begin their sustainability journey by identifying their largest environmental impact areas. For example, their biggest goal might be to reduce energy use and emissions in manufacturing or to minimize material use by improving product design.

Next, they need to research how to make measurable improvements to their products or services that will assist with the development of their green initiatives. When it comes to developing an organization’s sustainable initiatives, no one size fits all. Companies need to strive for eco-efficiency in their own way.

Finally, companies need to convey their sustainability message to their internal and external stakeholders without falling into the greenwashing trap. The sustainability communication strategy needs to address the motivations of the specific stakeholders.

The  ‘Sustainability in Retail’ white paper is available for POPAI members to download from https://bit.ly/2XW3tnC

POSITIVE+ is proud to be a member of POPAI UK & Ireland, a progressive industry association, promoting best practice and dedicated to enhancing the total shopper experience.

If you need help to boost your brand’s eco-credentials call Tony Dennington today on 020 8544 5500 or email tony@wearepositive.com

Carbon Offsetting

What is Carbon Offsetting?

In 2020 POSITIVE+ captured 5,013kg of CO2e through the Antalis Future Focus Campaign.  This enabled Forest Carbon to plant 20 new trees, creating a new woodland area of 125m2  in the UK. But what is carbon offsetting?

Carbon Offsetting is the action or process of compensating for carbon dioxide emissions arising from industrial or other human activity, by participating in schemes designed to make equivalent reductions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

It has long been the case that printers could carbon balance paper products, but we’re now able to go further by offsetting the carbon on papers, packaging and plastics, thus protecting and promoting vital forestry worldwide and at home.

The Antalis Future Focus Campaign scheme enables us to offset the carbon generated across a wider product range; through a choice of the planting new indigenous woodland across the UK and Ireland, or through the protection of forestry at risk of deforestation in South America.

Forest Carbon are certified to the standards of the Government’s Woodland Carbon Code. This means that the right trees have been planted in the right place, the estimated carbon capture is conservative and scientifically sound, and the woodland is protected for the long-term. 

POSITIVE+ is proud to be part of the Antalis Future Focus Campaign.  In 2020 Positive and Colouration founded POSITIVE+ to offer clients an even wider range of creative solutions, with more capacity for larger projects, as well as access to the most sustainable design and manufacturing practices.

To find out more about carbon offsetting or to boost your sustainability email Tony Dennington, Chief Commercial Officer tony@wearepositive.com or call Tony on 020 8544 5500. 

Sustain logo

How sustainable is your Point of Sale?

POSITIVE+ is proud to present Sustain, POPAI’s eco-design indicator, which has been specifically developed for the Point of Purchase industry.

Sustain logo

The eco-design indicator lets us simultaneously measure up to six versions of your project and discover their environmental impacts – so we can work with you to adjust your designs for optimum results.

Sustain will generate a score for products and packaging separately, based on a number of criteria. These are:

  • Design– Analyses the list of materials in each component, counting number of unique types and measuring ease of disassembly.
  • Materials & processes– For each component, Sustain calculates the carbon content, renewability, recyclability and recycled content.
  • Supply chain– The tool measures the weight of each component, transport type and distance between supplier and manufacturer. 
  • Delivery logistics– Establishes quantity of product in container, along with transport distance and transport type. 
  • End of life– This includes ease of disassembly and how the material will be disposed of, such as reuse, recycle, incineration and landfill.

Once we’ve got your statistics, we will offer some recommendations to improve your scores, such as how to reduce the carbon footprint and increase the recycled content and recyclability.

Tony Dennington, Chief Commercial Officer at POSITIVE+ said, “Many of our clients are looking to reduce their environmental impact this year.  By using Sustain we can accurately calculate a sustainability rating for point of sale projects and make recommendations on where further improvements can be made”. 

In 2020 Positive and Colouration founded POSITIVE+ to offer clients an even wider range of creative solutions, with more capacity for larger projects, as well as access to the most sustainable design and manufacturing practices.

POSITIVE+ is proud to be a member of POPAI, a progressive industry association, promoting best practice, dedicated to enhancing the total shopper experience.

To improve the sustainability of your point of sale materials please email Tony Dennington, Chief Commercial Officer tony@wearepositive.com or call Tony on 020 8544 5500. 

We remain open

We are remaining open and fully operational.

I am pleased to confirm that we will remain fully open and operational during the current national lockdown commencing on 5th January 2021.

Our site is Covid-secure and we will be working to Government guidelines to ensure the safety of our colleagues at all times.

We will continue to offer our full suite of services including design, print, production, promotional sites, installations, direct mail, web2print and multichannel marketing.

We have over 150 social distancing solutions available to purchase in a range of designs and colours on our dedicated social distancing solutions website and online shop.

Our business will continue with all normal lines of communication open. Please continue to contact us via our usual phone number 020 8544 5500 and email hello@wearepositive.com

Yours faithfully,

Danny Sullivan
CEO
POSITIVE+

St Mungo’s Charity Xmas Dinner

This Christmas POSITIVE+ is working in partnership with Chestertons to support St Mungo’s, so those who have experienced homelessness this year can have a warm and delicious meal on Christmas day.

Charity is a big part of POSITIVE + and we are passionate about how we can give back to the community, which is why we are launching Positive Heroes where you will see the team at POSITIVE+ fund raising for our clients’ charities and the ones close to our hearts.

Our client Chestertons’ main charity partner is St Mungo’s.  Usually, their teams would visit shelters and housing centres at this time of year, spreading Christmas cheer with gifts and decorations.

To adhere to social distancing guidelines, this year Chestertons are taking donations, so instead they can provide those who have experienced homelessness this year with a warm Christmas dinner.

St Mungo’s provide a bed and support to more than 2,700 people a night who are either homeless or at risk, and work to prevent homelessness, helping about 25,000 people a year.

They support men and women through more than 300 projects including emergency, hostel and supportive housing projects, advice services and specialist physical health, mental health, skills and work services.

For further information or to make a donation please visit mungos.org/

Estee Lauder Christmas display

Estée Lauder boost sustainability

Estée Lauder is committed to building a sustainable business with respect for people and the environment.  POSITIVE+ worked in partnership with them to produce sustainable Christmas displays. 

The founding values of Estée Lauder inspire their commitment to operate responsibly and motivate them to build a sustainable business based on uncompromising ethics, integrity, fairness, diversity and trust.

They wanted to increase Christmas sales through sustainable point of sale materials.  We worked in partnership with Estée Lauder to help them achieve their ambition of using responsibly sourced paper products whenever possible.

We sourced corrugated cardboard from well managed forests with a high percentage of recycled material.  Corrugated cardboard is one of the most highly recycled materials on earth and is also biodegradable.  It is both strong and lightweight which also makes it easily reusable. 

The point of sale materials were manufactured with our specialist cardboard engineering processes.  We implemented our ISO 14001 environmental management system to minimise the impact of the production process. 

See the Estée Lauder Christmas displays in selected Boots, Debenhams, John Lewis, House of Fraser, Selfridges and Bentalls stores across UK now!

Benefits to the client:-

  • Bespoke retail displays designed to increase sales
  • Responsibly sourced, recycled, recyclable, reusable and biodegradable material
  • ISO 14001 certified sustainable production methods. 

Founded by Positive and Colouration, POSITIVE+ provides creative design, print, production, installation, direct mail, online ordering and multichannel marketing solutions to clients in the retail, beauty, fragrance, leisure, media, financial, charity, health and wellbeing sectors.

To bring your creative ideas to life call us today on 020 8544 5500 or email hello@wearepositive.com

Danny Sullivan, Tont Dennington, Positive+

We are one

Positive and Colouration become POSITIVE+. Building on the success of our year-long partnership, our two companies are moving forward as one new brand.

Positive’s Danny Sullivan has been appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of POSITIVE+ and Colouration’s Tony Dennington has been appointed Chief Commercial Officer (COO). 

Danny Sullivan said, “By bringing the two companies together we have been able to offer all of our clients a wider range of creative solutions, with more capacity for larger projects as well as access to the most sustainable design and manufacturing processes”.

Family run Positive, which was established in 1993 provides design, print, direct mail, web2print and marketing solutions for clients in the retail, media, financial, charity, cosmetics and health and wellbeing sectors. 

Whilst Colouration, founded as a family business in 2001, has evolved to become a market leader in delivering high end displays and visual solutions to the beauty, fragrance, retail and events industries.

In 2019 the two companies partnered to form a larger print group and launched their Positive Planet sustainability initiative, with Colouration re-locating to Positive’s newly expanded Greater London site.

Tony Dennington said, “We have been working as one team for over a year and we felt now was the right time to move forward as one fresh new brand and to advertise all of our solutions on one all-encompassing new website.

Our focus moving through and out of covid-19 is all about sustainability. We want to dramatically reduce our impact on the environment by offering measurable alternatives to single use materials. By using greener products, recyclable plastics & adhesives and some very creative cardboard constructible floor and counter display ideas we will be able to offer greener solutions alongside traditionally produced POS items to allow our customers to control the impact we have on the environment.”

“The partnership has worked extremely well, and we certainly are open to future collaborations”, Danny Sullivan added.    

Positive’s Mike Sullivan and Jay Sullivan have also been appointed to the POSITIVE+ team of directors. 

For For further information please call Tony Dennington, Chief Commercial Officer, POSITIVE+ on 020 8544 5500 or email tony@wearepositive.com

Image shows Danny Sullivan, CEO, POSITIVE+ (left) and Tony Dennington, COO, POSITIVE+ (right).

J Lo raises her profile

Jennifer Lopez is one of the most powerful celebrities in the world with over 196 million followers on social media. We helped Designer Parfums raise the profile of the J.Lo Promise fragrance with brand activations at The Perfume Shop.

Since its creation in 2002, Designer Parfums has established itself as a creative and innovative force in the world of fine fragrance.   They wanted to increase customer engagement with the Promise brand through Covid-secure point of sale materials.

We collaborated with Designer Parfums to replace the fragrance tester bottle with an extremely lifelike plaque and used our Fogra certified colour match technology to ensure brand consistency across a variety of materials. 

Through our ISO 14001 certified sustainable production methods, we utilised cardboard engineering with materials from well managed forests and recycled sources, minimised waste and conserved the energy used in the manufacturing processes. 

From artwork to delivery, we managed the complete end to end solution at our huge 35,000 square foot Greater London production house, which is built for capacity. 

260 Counter Top Units with plaques were manufactured, packaged and promptly delivered to The Perfume Shop in induvial boxes along with an instruction sheet, tester bottle and the gift with purchase.

The Promise point of sale units are prominently displayed in selected The Perfume Shop stores across the UK now!

Benefits to the client:-

  • Increased customer engagement
  • Covid secure point of sale
  • ISO 14001 sustainable cardboard engineering

To bring your creative ideas to life call us today on 020 8544 5500 or email hello@wearepositive.com

Fragrance Foundation Awards

Fragrance Foundation Awards

Colouration, who are part of the Positive Print Group, are delighted to be a gold sponsor for this year’s Fragrance Foundation Awards.  The winners will be announced at 6pm on Thursday 27th August via You Tube. 

Set up in the UK in 1992 the Awards recognise excellence within the Fragrance arena, from Packaging and Advertising through to Best New Fragrance and are known as the Oscars of the Fragrance Industry.

The finalists include:

BEST NEW FRAGRANCE – MEN

  • Creed – Aventus Cologne
  • Dior – Sauvage Parfum
  • Diptyque – Eau de Minthé
  • Le Labo- Baie 19
  • Montblanc – Explorer
  • Tiffany & Co – Tiffany & Love for Him
  • Tom Ford Beauty – Lavender Extreme

BEST NEW FRAGRANCE – WOMEN

  • Acqua Di Parma – Yuzu
  • Hermés – Un Jardin Sur La Lagune
  • Jo Malone London – Poppy & Barley Cologne
  • Le Labo – Baie 19
  • Tiffany & Co – Tiffany & Love for Her
  • Tom Ford Beauty – Soleil Neige
  • Yves Saint Laurent – Libre

To see the full list of finalists please visit fragrancefoundationawards.com

COLOURATION offer the complete spectrum of in-house production facilities, from bespoke and premium large format print to acrylic fabrication and cardboard engineering as well as manufacturing counter units and floor standing permanent and semi-permanent Point of Sale for clients in the beauty, fragrance, retail and events industries.

For further information, please contact:

Tony Dennington, Managing Director, Colouration

020 8946 4466

tonydennington@colouration.london

colouration.london