Hopewiser UK

AtlasSort

Since April 2012 the Royal Mail have abandoned their previous categories of Mail sortation and have introduced the following services:

Advertising Mail

The mail item must contain a uniform message to all customers with the purpose of promoting the sale of products and/or services.

The content of the mail item must be signed off by Royal Mail and any mail items failing to conform to the requirements risk the loss of the discount.

Sustainable Advertising Mail

As above but the mail items must comply to PAS 2020, the environmental standard for direct marketing.

Publishing Mail

This is the service for periodicals including newsletters, journals and magazines.

Again, the items are subject to Royal Mail scrutiny and must reach a minimum requirement, including being mailed at least twice a year.

Business Mail

General correspondence that is personalised for a transactional, contractual or relationship purpose. For the avoidance of doubt this would cover all mail not identified as either Advertising or Publishing Mail.

SERVICE OPTIONS

LOW SORT

Low Sort options are the most cost effective of the new Royal Mail services. If the mail addresses are of a sufficiently high quality and have Machine Readable labels then Royal Mail will offer the greatest discounts as this will provide the greatest efficiencies.

The primary requirement for Machine Readable items is that the addresses are of a high quality. Royal Mail require a 90%-95% accurate postcode and DPS (depending on the service) otherwise the customer risks losing their discount. The Royal Mail will check the quality of the data and this is not a simple or rapid process.

Labels should be able to be read automatically by either Optical Character Recognition or Customer Bar Code machines. In both cases the labels will be read by an OCR or barcode reader and matched to the PAF. The Royal Mail will sample all large volume mailings and any found to be below the data quality requirement will mean that the entire mailer will lose its discount.

HIGH SORT

The key advantage of High Sort is that the items do not have to be Machine Readable as the quality of the address provided is not measured by the Royal Mail. Larger items such as A3 letters and packets will also be sent through this service.

This allows the customer to send mail from flawed or low quality sources and still achieve a discount. The discounts under High Sort are only significant once the volumes are high enough to reduce the Residues that form part of the mailer, thus reducing the Royal Mail workload in handling a high volume of part filled bags. For example 50,000 items mailed using High Sort will receive a discount of 14%. (As of May 2012 although this may change).

BENEFITS

One of the most marked changes in the new Royal Mail Sortation services is the reduced focus on sorting mail, but instead on Machine Readable labels. Royal Mail have made a massive investment in mechanical sorters located at their Mail Centres which will deliver greater efficiency for Royal Mail.

The new pricing strategy means that unsorted Machine Readable mail is as cost effective as High Sort for volumes up to 100K items.

Whilst AtlasSort is critical in obtaining effective mailings discounts from Royal Mail, the real secret to lower costs is improvement in data quality. As mailing volume thresholds drop, more customers can take advantage of discounts provided the quality of their data is high enough.

Hopewiser can help with this issue, either through AtlasBatch or through our Bureau Service which will ensure that your address quality is as high as it can be.

Both High Sort and Low Sort services are available in 100k limited run or unlimited record run option

All Low Sort products have High Sort as an option included in the costs

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Product Features

• Full service compliance – outputs all reports to Royal Mail approved standards including line listing, computer planning reports, sorted output file, label generation, barcode printing and multi weights.

• Basic interface allows preconfigured set-ups to be executed from the command line, providing easier incorporation within automated run streams.

• Bag labeller utility allowing for easy generation of bag and bundle labels.

• Includes address labelling product to generate address labels

• Available on all platforms including Windows, Unix/Linux, AS400 and Mainframe.

• (Windows “off the shelf” version, C API available for simple flexible integrated development on Unix/Linux, Cobol solution for Mainframe & Unix)

• Modular structure – only pay for the services you require.

• Full support for OCR and CBC mailing

Supported Services

Similar products are available supporting our selected Downstream Access partner services. Please contact Hopewiser if you wish to use a Downstream Access services provided by another mail carrier other than the Royal Mail.

Hopewiser Limited is an accredited supplier of sortation software.

Unless your Address List data has been cleansed by a Royal Mail approved supplier of Address Management software your data will need to be quality checked by Royal Mail.

 

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