Category: Mailing

There is nothing more frustrating than getting spam emails. It may be that you have had your email address for years with no issues then all of a sudden you start getting spam. You can sometimes receive 50-100 spam emails a day making it very hard to find the genuine ones and often meaning you miss out on replying to something that may be important.

Often people wonder where the spammers have had their email address from, but this is often very hard to trace. It may be a website that you have registered an account on or a form you have completed and not seen that they will share your details with third parties unless you opt out. If the emails are genuine then you should be able to unsubscribe as this is a legal requirement, but unfortunately, many spam emails do not allow you to do this and you end up spreading your email further.

You can often set up spam filters which should stop most of the spam coming through, but sometimes these don’t always work as they should.

Shopping and ordering items online can often save you a lot of money compared to buying directly from a shop but there are some things that you need to bear in mind when you do this.

If you are buying items for a specific date, allow plenty of time for them to arrive, be checked and returned / re-posted if necessary. This is especially true if you are ordering Christmas presents for example that often can get caught up in the Christmas rush and be delayed. If ordering for Christmas you may want to order as much as two months in advance, or even longer if the item is coming from overseas. When ordering items that are coming from overseas, be sure to check if you will be charged an import tax as this can very quickly bump the price up.

If you have ordered something and it has not arrived when it should, chase up the company as soon as possible rather than leaving it until the last minute as it may be that the items are out of stock and not due in until after your desired date, in which case you can cancel your order and still have time to order from elsewhere.

When it comes to marketing your business, it can be very tricky to know how and where you should invest your marketing budget. What marketing works for one business may not work as well for another, and if you only have a very limited budget then you will need to ensure that you invest wisely.

You may consider direct mailing as part of your marketing strategy. Although this may be seen as old hat now, it still works very well for a number of companies. Some people will not be tempted by an advert they see online but will be if they see it in a leaflet that has come through their door. Personalised adverts or letters often work better than generic ones, especially if they are tailored towards the recipient. For example, many car garages send out personalised letters to their customers informing them of new deals they have on cars. These letters are often not only addresses to the person but also talk about the car they already have and recommending similar cars that may be of interest to them. Sometimes they even go so far as to give them an example as to what they would get part exchange for their car and therefore what the monthly payments would be on a new car.

If you want to run a mass mail out to companies to promote a product or service you are offering then you will need to spend a bit of time researching email addresses to make sure you get the best response to your mail out. You can often buy lists of email addresses but this is illegal unless you have permission to email them and also many mail out companies will not allow you to upload such lists and send out using their servers.

If you are going to be using your own servers o send the mail out from, then firstly check with your hosting company as to how many emails you can send out at one time and also check that the data you have is genuine and does not contain spam email address that may end up blacklisting your server IP address.

The best way to get good data to email to is to call up companies and ask who you should email details through to. Also try and get a contact name so you can personalise the emails to an individual rather than just sending a generic one as this have proven to get better results in terms of open rates etc.

Many of us are really bad at remembering birthdays, it often springs to mind the day or two before leaving us little time to get cards and presents in the post. Being organised can help save money as postage costs rise year upon year. A first class stamp now costs 64 pence and a second class is 55 pence. This may only seem like a small amount but very quickly adds up over the year. Id you are organised then you would be able to send all your items via second class post leaving enough time for it go safely get there but saving you a small amount of money.

This is especially the case with parcels where a 2 Kg parcel costs four pounds more to send by first class post than second class! This adds a lot on to the cost of the present.

If you are sending items of value through the post then you may wish to send them by special delivery. Special Delivery costs are worked out based on the weight and the amount you want to value the package at. The higher of the two, the more you will pay in postage costs.