Royal Mail is offering discounts to customers posting machine-sortable mail, which could have repercussions for marketers sending creative DM.

From 2 April two products will be introduced. The Automated Standard Tariff large letter service – which gives a six to nine per cent discount to business customers sending up to 250 large letters that can be sorted by machine – and Cleanmail Advance, which will offer discounts for customers sending over 1000 items with correct and readable addresses.

Lorna Clarkson, director of commercial policy and pricing at Royal Mail, says that these changes have to be implemented due to the handling costs of business mail. “Business mail continues to heavily subsidise [personal] mail sent by customers. In a commercial world, we are committed to offering discounts to customers who give us mail that can be sorted by our machines, rather than by hand. These items cost us less to handle so it's right that we reflect this in the prices we charge those customers,” she comments.

This is the next step on the mail standardisation ladder, leading on from the Royal Mail's Pricing in Proportion (PiP) scheme introduced last August (see B2BM Apr 06, p20). This resulted in upheaval for B2B direct marketers by changing the cost of some standard DM items, whilst ignoring others.

While the general costs of business mailing are not directly going to increase, organisations sending standard letters or large letters will gain discounts in favour of those sending bulky, over-sized packages.

However, Patrick O'Neill, spokesman for Royal Mail, comments, “These changes won't affect DM at all. The costs of posting tends not to be a factor in the creative decision. It doesn't matter if you pay a few pence for postage if you have high response rates. For people involved in DM, postage price is not the key decision maker when it comes to creative.”

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