Royal Mail actually did us a huge favour with their big strike in 2009. Prior to this, we’d post out hundreds of invoices by 1st class post every month, followed by statements of account. You can imagine the cost of each invoice…1 letterhead, 1 envelope plus postage, probably equates to about £0.80.

I was faced with a huge dilemma during the strike because it straddled the end of one month and the beginning of the next, so not only could I get my ‘month end’ statements out, I also couldn’t raise my invoices and post them on the 1st of the month.

The answer to this problem was quite simple…to start emailing invoices and statements at ZERO COST! We use Sage Accounts, so after updating our systems with billing email addresses, the rest was simple. We simply output to email instead of printing everything off, saving us around £5,000 per annum.

A few weeks ago I received a flyer through the post from my opticians, informing me of a ‘2 for 1’ special offer, printed in colour onto plain paper, posted in a branded envelope by 1st class mail.

I was due a check-up, so when I went in to see them, I found that they not only have email addresses for about 90% of their clients, they also have the mobile telephone numbers for a large majority as well.

They invited me to have a quick look at their systems, where I found they only use a few of the modules of their very expensive CRM. 10 minutes later, I’d showed them how to export the email addresses into a file, and created a template for them in readiness for their next marketing campaign.

I also recommended a text messaging service to send text (SMS) appointment reminders directly from their existing database. OK, this carries a cost of 6.5p per text, but this far outweighs the cost of sending a postal reminder at 80p!

We worked out a potential cost saving of about £8,000 per year, so I suggested I get free eye tests and contact lenses for life…if you don’t ask, you don’t get!

As a telephone answering service, the majority of our messages are sent out by SMS to our clients, directly and immediately to their mobile phones.

In my humble opinion, Royal Mail shot themselves in the foot with the strike, and those of us who found alternatives methods definitely came out on top 🙂