Royal Mail announced a new service last month that lets small businesses develop direct mail pieces online.
DM Online services include list purchase, direct mail design, production, mailing and fulfillment, according to the British postal service. Offline activities such as printing and mailing also can be tracked for progress online.
Here's how it works: When customers log onto the site at www.dm-online.co.uk/, they assess what size of mailing they want and establish the likely cost. Then, customers can buy data from more than 100 databases in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors, or clean their own existing data, and build a mailing list to their targeting requirements.
Customers then create a mail piece using templates based around different business sectors (such as retail or restaurants), generic applications (such as customer offers or loyalty mailings) and different mailing formats.
The artwork is output as a PDF file and sent to the customer for approval electronically. All work produced is quality checked by Royal Mail's customer service team prior to being sent for approval.
Once approved, customers choose a quantity to be printed and mailed.
