Charities missing out on postal savings, say Post-Switch
Howard Lake | 2 March 2007 | News
Independent postal broking agency Post-Switch is urging UK charities to save money by beating a Royal Mail price rise on 2 April. It claims that charities are missing out on up to 22.5% savings in their mailing costs.
In the run-up to the Royal Mail’s price increases in April, Post-Swith is urging charities to switch postal providers, and it is offering a price freeze itself to encourage them to use its services.
On 2 April 2007 Royal Mail will raise first class postage by 2p and second class by 1p and its commercial service ‘MailSort’ will increase tariff prices by 1% – 3.8%. Furthermore, as part of its pricing agreement up to 2010, Royal Mail is allowed to propose a further price hike in April 2008, as revealed by Financial Times on 27 February 2007 in its article “Royal Mail seeks 6p on stamps to aid survival”.
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Post-Switch provides advice on matching the campaign mailing to the most suitable supplier at the optimum tariff. It has experience of securing savings on donor acquisition and re-activation mailings as well as fundraising activity. It negotiates on behalf of a charity or its direct agency with up to 20 rival postal providers including DHL, UPS and TNT to achieve the best price and the best delivery date. Its charity clients include Marie Curie Cancer Care and NSPCC.
Post-Switch say that they can secure savings of up to 22.5% against MailSort charges.
Ian Liddle, Head of Direct Marketing, NSPCC said: “Using Post-Switch we could choose the exact day we wanted our DM appeal to drop, even though it was between Christmas day and New Year’s day. And, the saving we made over Mailsort 3 improved our campaign ROI.”
Post-Switch is offering charities who sign up before 2 April a postal price freeze until the end of 2007. So, if the rival operators to Royal Mail also raise their price, Post-Switch clients will not be affected by the increase.
Jonathan DeCarteret, Senior Market Analyst at Post-Switch, said explained that the best savings come from the flexibility of using one operator for one type of mailing, such as a DL or C5 mail pack, but then switching to a rival offering the lowest rate for the delivery of, for example, a C4 pack.
Post-Switch is a member of the Kingfisher Group based in Shoreditch, London, which includes direct response charity fundraising agency Domain.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.