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Is Stannp.com secure for uploading and sending data?

The company is compliant with strict European GDPR data laws and all data is partitioned and not sold shared or pooled in any way.

The company holds ISO 27001: Information Security Management. This framework keeps our customer info secure including legal, physical and technical controls involved in Information Security Management Systems.

The company holds ISO 9001: Quality Assurance which ensures product quality.

The platform has a Secure FTP for passing any data files or documents to Stannp staff.

The production facilities are all HIPPA compliant with all mail pieces having full integrity matching.

The Stannp platform is on an SSL with PCI compliance for payment gateway.

External penetration testing is conducted monthly and we hold an A+ rating by Qualysis.

Is Stannp.com environmentally friendly?

We operate multiple production facilities in the US, Canada and UK ensuring that mail does not need to be flown to destinations and can be produced locally to reduce transport costs and carbon utilisation.

We are also a member of Forest Carbon. Forest Carbon pioneered the idea of carbon-financed woodland creation in the UK, building on best practice from elsewhere and striving to make a market for woodland carbon. Stannp.com plans to be Carbon Zero by 2023.

Can I send my mail first class?

Yes, we do offer first class mailing on both postcards and letters. The cost of this is slightly higher but it will arrive significantly quicker.

What happens to any letters that cannot be delivered?

Letters that cannot be delivered will be returned and will be recorded and tracked on the platform.

Can I view my mail before it gets posted?

Yes, you are to view a PDF proof of the mail piece before it is dispatched. This proof will create 10 sample mail pieces each one is personalised with the recipient data so you can see how the final mail piece will be rendered.

Can I top up my balance via the Stannp Platform?

Yes, you can add a card to your account and top up your balance. You can then book individual campaigns from this balance amount and saves you having to use your card for every campaign.

We can even set an email reminder to notify you when the balance falls below a specified level.

You can also set the system to automatically top up the balance by a set amount when the balance falls below a set level.

Direct Mail Marketing

Direct Mail Marketing is a way for companies to communicate with new and existing customers to increase sales. The basic premise of direct mail marketing is that the cost of the exercise is paid for by the incremental increase in sales and extra profit achieved. This is known as the “Return On Investment”.

It is therefore essential that the campaign is effectively tracked and that sales are attributed to the correct campaign. Digital advertising lures users to “Click” on a display advert and tracking is facilitated by a unique URL link behind the click. This “redirects” the user click through a tracking server onto the destination web site landing page. The user converts to the required goal and the ROI can be calculated instantly and an acquisition cost price is worked out. Each campaign can then be individually optimised, and media bid prices are changed accordingly.

Programmatic advertising takes hold of the complete process using complex algorithms and optimises the whole process from start to finish in real time. This is why programmatic advertising is controlling over 50% of the online digital ad spend in 2016.

Offline direct marketing was left by the roadside over the last 10 years, it was viewed as expensive and old school. Email marketing took massive chunks of offline marketing budgets with great success. Over the last 2-3 years email opening rates have declined so much that they are now below 20%. Customers who are not digitally savvy are being ignored by marketing communications. This is especially prevalent in the older generations (age 50-70).

Stannp.com is a crossover, it can be controlled programmatically so template messages can be generated dynamically and sent to users who are not responding to email or display campaigns.

The offline campaign can be tracked easily by analysing the data the campaign was sent to and the sales which are generated.

A daily print run is processed for letters and postcards and they are sent using specialist bulk discounts; using these discounts Stannp.com can send individual mail pieces for a great price. The company has hundreds of clients across all sectors sending hundreds of thousands of mail pieces a week.

For more information of how our platform works please watch our Direct Mail demo video or sign up for free.

Direct Mail Services

There are many different companies which offer direct mail services. Stannp.com for example is a web-to-print mail house which enables companies to send out their direct mail all from a simple web site. You can just upload your template creative and a set of data. You then review and approve the mail piece as a PDF document and then schedule, pay, and launch the campaign. Depending on where you are in the world, and where you're sending your mail pieces, the letter or postcard will hit the doormats of your recipients between 2 and 10 days later. You will be pleasantly surprised just how cost effective Stannp.com's prices are.

You might want to send an email campaign and there are many companies which will either send a campaign to your own data (like Sendgrid or Mailchimp) or they will send a campaign for you to their own data and attempt to drive new customers towards you (like web clubs, offerX and Submission technologies). To send an email to your own data you are looking at a cost of about $0.70(US) / 50p(UK) per thousand emails dispatched. If you are looking for an external company to drive customers to you then they will charge about $7 / £5 per thousand emails depending on the recipient profile.

You could be looking at sending a text message and there are many suppliers who will either send the campaign for you (so they are a gateway) or other companies who will send your campaign to their data and drive you customers. The cost of this is about $0.025/ 1.8p per text sent and the data will cost about $7 / £5 per thousand records.

Direct Mail Response Rates

You might be thinking of running a direct mail exercise and unsure about how to work out what sort of response rates you are likely to receive. There are many variables when considering this but there are some good rules of thumb you can work to.

If we assume that your product is competitively priced, is in demand and the customer does not have a bad experience when they attempt to purchase then we can start to put some numbers to the type of direct mail you are attempting.

You need to choose the format of the mail piece which you are sending and there are 2 main product types. A closed mail piece which needs opening like a letter or an open mail piece which does not need opening like a postcard or a small brochure.

Typically, you will see response rates for a postcard between 4-7% and for letters it is slightly lower at 3.5-5%. So which format should I use? We at Stannp.com advise that the most cost effective medium is a postcard.

Closed mail pieces are appropriate if you have a sensitive product you are selling which might have something to do with the recipient's health or financial situation. The fact that the recipient has to open the letter is a natural barrier and there will be some people who don't. It could end up on the microwave or stored with an old stack of letters on their desk. By the time they get round to opening it the offer might have expired.

Open mail pieces make an impact as soon as they hit the doormat. As the recipient picks it up they are forced to look at it and make a decision whether they bin it or put it on the fridge.

The other factor you need to consider is the data you are sending the offer to. It might be your best customers or it might be lapsed customers from 5 years ago or it could be data you downloaded from a dodgy site on the internet. The great example is when insurance companies try to sell a new quote. If the insurance company does not have the renewal date of the recipients, they are going to have a 1/12 chance of contacting the prospect at the right time!

What happens to any letters that cannot be delivered?

Letters that cannot be delivered will be returned and will be recorded and tacked on the platform.

Can I send my mail first class?

Yes, we do offer first class mailing on both postcards and letters. The cost of this is slightly higher but it will arrive significantly quicker.

What do I need to use Stannp.com?

You will only need a name and email address to sign up on the platform!

Once you are registered, you can upload a PDF or an image to create and design your mail piece. To create a mailing list, you upload your data using a CSV to then send to a recipient list.

How long will it take for my letters to arrive?

Once you have approved and scheduled your campaign, the platform will present you with an expected delivery date

We will print and hand over the mail within 24 hours and then the arrival of items may vary based on mailing class.

We see first class mail arriving within 1 working day and standard class will take between 2-3 working days.

Rolling Mail Campaigns

Rolling Mail Campaigns, also known as Triggered Campaigns, are a great way to produce highly relevant, timely, automated mailings for your customers, prospects and interested contacts.

Rolling Campaigns allow you to have pre-setup mailings on the Stannp system, that you can trigger from specific events or behaviours by your customers.

Rolling Campaigns help improve customer engagement, loyalty and boost brand awareness, by delivering mailings at the right time for the specific customer or prospect, based on how they have interacted with your company.

Rolling Campaign Examples

Welcome Messages

When a customer first signs up with your company, send them a welcome pack, letter or postcard. This is also a perfect opportunity to let them know about all your other wonderful products and services that they don't know about yet.

Reminders

Depending on your business this might be appointment reminders, MOT reminders, birthdays, anniversaries, insurance or membership renewal reminders… Any scheduled or annual activity or event can be promoted a few days or weeks before the due date with a timely reminder mailing.

Abandoned Cart

If your company runs a website that includes ecommerce (online shopping) you will undoubtedly be familiar with abandoned carts /abandoned baskets. If a customer has shown some interest in a product but hasn't completed the purchase, you can use our API or integrations to send a targeted, personalised mailing with an incentive to encourage them to complete the purchase.

Action Based

A customer performs an action either on your website or by interacting with your staff, which you can then use as a trigger to send them targeted information which is relevant to their action or interest.

How To Guides

Setting up Rolling Campaigns through the Stannp platform is easy, and we've got some helpful documents to guide you through the process too;

Triggered Campaigns Guide: Would you like to set up your campaign in advance, but send to each recipient on different specific dates in the future? Triggered Campaigns are what you need. Great for customers birthdays, anniversaries, renewal reminders...

Dynamic Content Guide: Direct Mail is at it's most effective when the content of the mailing is personalised and tailored to the person receiving it. Dynamic content allows you to automate this process so everyone you send to receives a personalised mailing.

Payment Features

We know from your feedback that some new customers wonder about how paying for campaigns works with rolling campaigns.

We've built several payment features that allow you to setup your campaigns quickly and easily, while remaining in full control of your account and your finances

1) Balance Notifications

Your Account billing page allows you to set an automatic low balance reminder, at any account balance value you choose, which will be emailed to the email address of your choice.

This really useful feature helps you manage your account, by notifying you that your account balance has fallen below the 'trigger balance' you have set.

If you carry on sending Direct Mail after this point our system will email you again every time your balance reduces.

To set up your reminder, simply click the 'Enable low balance reminder' slider, it will go blue and display a tick. Enter the value you want to trigger notifications at in the 'trigger balance' field, and the email address you would like the reminder sent to in the 'reminder email' box. You can add more than one email if you wish, separated with a comma.

Click the yellow 'Save Details' button and you are all set up.

If you want to turn off the reminder emails at a later date, simply click the 'Enable Low balance reminder' slider again (it will go grey and remove the tick), and click the yellow 'Save Details' button.

2) Save Card Details

Our payment system allows you to save your payment details, making future payments easier.

This is a secure, PCI compliant system delivered through SagePay, which allows you to make further payments to the same supplier on the same transaction ID, without Stannp retaining your card details.

Once you've saved your details, the next time you make a payment you will be offered the option of either using the existing payment method, or adding new card details.

Saving your card details enable us to offer you another useful feature, automatic top-ups.

3) Automatic Top-up

Your Account billing page allows you to enable automatic top-up for any amount of your choice, triggered at any balance value.

To set up your top-up, slide the 'Enable automatic top-up' slider to the right, it will go blue and display a tick.

Click to select the saved card you want to use for the top-ups, enter the value you want to trigger it at in the 'Trigger balance' field, and enter the amount you want to top-up by in the 'Top-up amount' box.

Click the yellow 'Save Details' button and you are all set up. When your balance falls to the trigger you have set, the Stannp system will bill the amount you have specified to the card you selected.

The system also sends you an email notifying you of the transaction, with an attached PDF receipt for your records.

If you want to turn off the automatic top-ups at a later date, simply slide the 'Enable automatic topup' slider again (it will go grey and remove the tick), and click the yellow 'Save Details' button.

We hope you find our Rolling Mail Campaigns Guide helpful.

For more hints, tips, guides and info you can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or feel free to speak to your account manager if you have any questions or need any help.

Stannp.com #WeKeepYouPosted

What is Hybrid Mail?

Hybrid Mail simply means posted mail (letters, postcards, leaflets, brochures etc...), delivered using a combination of electronic production and physical delivery.

Hybrid Mail is Stannp's speciality, in fact it's the reason we exist. Stannp was incorporated in June 2014, with the purpose of offering SaaS mail solutions; offering companies fully digital, integrated solutions to their direct mail needs.

Not yet a Stannp customer? simply register for a FREE account and you can get started straight away. Once you've registered, our friendly customer service team will get in touch to help you find your way around the Stannp platform.

The Advantages of Hybrid Mail

Is your team spending time and money preparing, printing and posting mail? Switching to Hybrid Mail saves your business both time and money;

Using Stannp's Hybrid Mail platform your team can do all of this without leaving their desks, and our solution includes printing and posting, all for less than the cost of a 2nd class stamp!

Other advantages of Hybrid Mail;

How Does it Work?

Stannp's Hybrid Mail solution is fully digital up to the point of print;

Simply register for your FREE Stannp account, upload your document and data, create you design in a few simple clicks, approve the PDF proof, book your dispatch date and pay.

We merge, sort, print, finish, envelope and dispatch via DSA into the Royal Mail network for onward delivery. 2-3 days later your letters, postcards and other mailings are in the hands of your recipients.

Our platform dashboard and reporting pages provide you with status information about all of your campaigns, allowing you to see where your campaigns are in the process and when they are dispatched.

Different Types of Hybrid Mail

Hybrid Mail is sometimes referred to by other names;

We hope you find our Hybrid Mail Guide helpful. For more hints, tips, guides and info you can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or feel free to speak to your account manager if you have any questions or need any help.

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How to Brief a Designer

One of the keys to a successful direct mail campaign is a strong creative design. Whether you have an in house design team, use an external creative agency, or are producing the design yourself, a succinct effective design brief helps ensure that the design produced fits the goals of your campaign.

If you would like help, Stannp can put you in touch with a number of designers who are experienced at creating effective Direct Mail campaigns, simply contact your account manager who will be happy to help, or call our friendly team on 012171 344507.

What's A Design Brief?

A Design Brief is simply a written explanation outlining the aims, objectives and milestones of a design project. Depending on your business sector and organisation, they can vary wildly from the ludicrously brief to the ridiculously verbose!

We recommend you write a succinct brief covering the topics below; not so large that it becomes an overbearing task for your designer to read, but with enough detail that it serves as a useful reference for everyone involved and ensures that the key questions have been answered before the designer starts work.

Design Brief Topics

Company Intro: Don't assume the designer knows your company or your industry. Describe your business in 1 or 2 paragraphs; what do you do, what is your niche, where do you fit in your sector?

Note, this is useful even if you are producing the design yourself in house. It's a great way to make you think about the key features of your company, what is your 'elevator pitch'?

Competitors: Who are your competitors? How are you similar? How are you different? What do you like or dislike?

Campaign Goal(s): What are you trying to achieve with the campaign? What problem are you trying to solve? What action do you want the recipients to take? Are there any key details to include? (offer codes etc.).

Audience: Who is the mailing aimed at? Existing customers, prospects, cold customers, top users, a purchased data set, radius search data, consumers, business owners, decision makers, a specific demographic /age group /income bracket etc.

Timescale and Lifespan: How soon do you need it? How long is the 'design life'? Does it need to be contemporary and current but will only be used for a short time, or a long lived 'classic' that will be used repeatedly?

Design Examples: Have you done something similar in the past that went well (or badly)? Has something you've seen inspired you? Do you have current marketing materials the design needs to be similar to (or different from)?

Look and Feel: What do you want the mailing to say about you? What is your Brand 'personality' (Down to earth, honest, sophisticated, rugged, daring, inspiring, imaginative, cheerful, fun, successful, etc...)? Is there an aesthetic position your brand aspires to (modern, traditional, minimalist, zany, grungy...)?

Definite Dos (or Do Nots): Anything the designer absolutely must (or definitely must not) do? for example 'It must be an A5 portrait postcard',

Other Campaign Details: Make sure you include any other details that are important to this specific campaign in particular, for example 'its going to eight countries and needs to be translated into German, French and Spanish' or 'the images must feel Caribbean not European as its a Jamaican holiday campaign', or 'We are running a split test across 3 groups of recipients so need 3 alternative designs' etc.

Right First Time Design

A great way to help your designer to get it right first time is to make sure you've given them links to all all of the resources on our website. In particular we recommend;

Don't forget you also need to make sure you've given the designer your brand resources as well as the design brief.

This might for example include things like your company logo, brand colours, allowable fonts, branding guidelines, product or service images, and of course any details that you need included in the design (website URL(s), phone number(s), company reg. number, address etc.)

We hope you find our How To Guide on Briefing a Designer helpful. For more hints, tips, guides and info you can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or feel free to speak to your account manager if you have any questions or need any help.

Stannp.com #WeKeepYouPosted

Transactional Mail

Broadly speaking Transactional Mail is any mailing that is sent to a customer with details of their specific transactions, i.e. their financial interactions with your organisation.

This differs from Direct Mail marketing in that the primary purpose of the Transactional mailing is providing information to existing customers, rather than sending an offer or promoting a commercial message.

Like Direct Mail, Transactional Mail is built on the data you have about your customers. However, rather than delivering a marketing message driven from the data, it communicates some or all of the data directly to the customer, for example, their outstanding balance.

It is a one-to-one communication with an individual, communicating personal information about their purchases, preferences, legal information, membership details, changes and updates to the services they use, etc.

Transactional Mail Recommendations

When you use Stannp for your mailings your company is the Data Controller, with Stannp being the Data Processor and acting on your behalf.

Ultimately it is up to you to choose whether or not any particular mailing is transactional, however we recommend you use our Transactional Mail service for these types of mailings;

Send Transactional Mail with Stannp

When you send Transactional Mail with Stannp our systems separate your mail from any other mailings, producing a dedicated Transactional mailing job.

Every mail campaign that Stannp produces is quality checked throughout all of our processes, in line with our ISO9001 & ISO27001 accredited Quality Management System (QMS).

Our QMS also specifies additional quality checking processes for Transactional Mail that ensure your mailings are 100% right first time, every time.

Most of our Transactional customers use our API to integrate Stannp with their CRM processes, triggering individual mailings from specific customer actions over API

However, it is also possible to send an uploaded or triggered campaign as Transactional Mail; please contact your account manager before booking your campaign if you wish to send Transactional Mail this way rather than over API.

Transactional Mailings incur a small additional charge (as detailed on our pricing page ) to cover the costs of these additional measures. Royal Mail doesn't classify Transactional Mail as Addressed Advertising Mail, and it therefore doesn't qualify for Admail postage discounts.

How Do I Get Started?

If you are new to Stannp simply register for a FREE account, and our friendly customer service team will get in touch to help you find your way around the Stannp platform.

Alternatively if you would like to have a chat with our team before you sign up, you can call us on 01271 320 863 or via the 'web-chat' on this website.

If you are an existing customer, simply contact your account manager who will happily talk you through the process.

We hope you find our Transactional Mail Guide helpful. For more hints, tips, guides and info you can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or feel free to speak to your account manager if you have any questions or need any help.

Stannp.com #WeKeepYouPosted

Using InDesign with Stannp

The team at Stannp like to help our customers wherever we can. We've recently had a number of queries about using Adobe InDesign with the Stannp platform, so we've produced this handy blog post as a reference to make life as easy as possible for our inDesign users.

Design Tips

If you need some tips on the content of your design, we have some really useful blog posts you might like to read;

When designing your campaigns you may also like to refer to these other helpful posts;

Exporting from Indesign

When you have completed your design(s) and you are ready to export them from InDesign, simply copy the settings in the screenshots below.

Your PDF should now be perfectly formatted to upload straight into the Stannp platform, ready for your next Direct Mail campaign.

We hope you find our InDesign Guide helpful. For more helpful hints, tips, guides and info you can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or feel free to speak to your account manager if you have any questions or need any help.

Stannp.com#WeKeepYouPosted

Dependable Data Drives Delivery

Here at Stannp we like to make it as easy as possible for our customers to send Direct Mail campaigns, and the Stannp platform will do it's best to interpret your data in whatever format you upload it.

However, one sure fire way to speed up the process of creating a campaign is to maximise the number of addresses that verify first time. (If you want to find out more about address verification you can read all about it in our 'Why are My Addresses not Verified' blog post.)

Example Data File

When you upload data to the Stannp platform it remains your data, you are the 'data controller' and Stannp is the 'data processor'. This unfortunately means that the Stannp team are unable to edit or reformat data on your behalf.

One great way to get your data structure right first time is to download our Example Data File and use it as a template for the headings and content of your data before you upload.

6 Top Tips for Dependable Data

Your friendly Stannp team have put together some top tips to help you get your data right first time, every time. In all of the examples below, green text shows the right way to do things, and red text shows errors and things to avoid.

1) Field Order

Make sure the address fields are separated correctly, and are in the correct order;

2) Duplicate Entries

Make sure there are no duplicate entries in a row, or duplicate numbers in a field;

3) Postcodes

Make sure all addresses have a postcode, and the postcode is in the 'postcode' column;

4)International Addresses

If there are international addresses in your data, make sure you include a 'country' column in your data and indicate the country using 2 letter country codes (also know as 'Alpha-2' codes in the ISO 3166 international standard.);

The Stannp platform is happy to handle sending to multiple countries from the same data set as long as you include the country code.

Some of our customers find it easier for their teams to manage if they upload data for each country as a separate data file.

Don't forget you can also set a Default country when you upload your data; the Stannp platform will use this where your data doesn't include a country code.

5) Personalisation Fields (name etc)

Where you are using personalised data in your campaign, (for example 'Dear {firstname}'), make sure you have an entry in every row (i.e. no blanks in the data).

Having blanks in your data won't prevent the addresses from verifying, but it will look strange to your (un-named) recipients to receive post addressed to 'Dear '.

6) No Special Characters

Make sure that there are no special characters in the data or column headers;

2 Bonus Tips!

We hope you find our Dependable Data Guide helpful. For more helpful hints, tips, guides and info you can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or feel free to speak to your account manager if you have any questions or need any help.

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Why Are My Addresses Not Verified?

So, you're ready to send your first campaign, you've uploaded your creative design, written some fantastic text to engage recipients with your call to action, and uploaded your customer data, only to find that some of your addresses are not verified?

Don't panic! The Stannp team are here to help, with some top tips to ensure your campaign reaches its intended recipients.

What is Address Verification?

The Stannp platform produces machine readable addresses to the requirements of national mail carriers (principally Royal Mail and USPS).

Because the addresses are machine readable and the mail is inserted into the delivery network through Downstream Access (DSA), Stannp's customers receive the fastest possible mail service.

When you upload address data to the Stannp platform it automatically compares the data to the information held by Royal Mail (for UK addresses) and /or USPS (for US addresses), and sorts the data into three categories; 'Verified', 'Not Verified', and 'Other International'.

Why do Addresses Fail Verification?

A non-verified address means the data you have for that address is not 100% the same as the data for that address in Royal Mail /USPS records.

Common reasons for verification failures include;

As a minimum to verify correctly, address data must have a correct first line of the address and Postcode. Royal Mail strongly recommend that the data includes the post Town as well for a better chance of verification.

But I Know My Addresses Are Correct...

Don't forget, in most cases mail will still be deliverable to unverified addresses.

Unverified simply means that your address can't be put into a machine readable format, and will therefore have to be hand sorted (which incurs additional cost).

Many Stannp customers who are confident in the source(s) of their data will send to both verified and non verified recipients, and receive great response rates to their campaigns.

We hope you find our Address Verification Guide helpful. For more helpful hints, tips, guides and info you can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or feel free to speak to your account manager if you have any questions or need any help.

Stannp.com#WeKeepYouPosted

Business Letters Guide

Are you running a business?

Did you know you are required by law to include certain details in both your business letters and other business documents and correspondence?

Don't worry, the team at Stannp are here to help with a simple summary of the requirements, and a few 'best practice' tips along the way.

The Legal Framework

The requirements we are talking about are given in the 'Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015'. You can read the full text of the legislation on legisation.gov.uk, but in brief the requirements are;

Legal Name

The company's full legal name (registered name) must be stated legibly on all correspondence and official documents.

This is why you will sometimes see 'trading as' or 'T/A' on business letters; the company is trading under one or more names or brands, but is legally registered as something else.

Sometimes the difference between a trading name and a legal name is relatively minor, for example 'McDonald's' is a trading name, The company's legal name is 'McDonald's Corporation'.

On other occasions, especially with consumer facing products, what you think of as the company name is actually a brand belonging to a company with a completely different legal name.

For example, Hellmann's (mayonnaise), Lipton (tea), Knorr (sauces, stock cubes, ready-meals), Cif (cleaning products) and Magnum (ice-cream) are all Brands of Unilever PLC.

The requirement to include your legal name doesn't just apply to letters, it applies to all correspondence and official documents. For example this would include invoices, order forms, receipts and websites. It also applies to emails 'where the paper equivalent to the email would be included in the requirements.'

The legal name also has to be legible, which is usually interpreted as being displayed in a way that is visible and readable to the naked eye.

Country Of Registration

For UK companies the country of registration is the part of the United Kingdom in which the company is registered.

Companies House is the Registrar of Companies for England and Wales and assigns Company registration numbers. For Companies registered in England and Wales acceptable wording is one of the following:

Alternatively companies registered in the other countries of the UK may also be listed as;

Company Registration Number

A Company Registration Number (CRN, also known as 'company number') is a unique number to identify your company, automatically assigned by Companies House when a company is formed.

A CRN only applies to businesses registered with Companies House, therefore sole traders do not have a company registration number.

Company Registered Office

The registered office address is the official address of the company registered with Companies House. The Companies Act 2006 means that every company trading in the UK must always have a registered UK office, even if it is actually fulfilling its business services from outside the UK or selling products online.

The registered office is the address that any government department will use to send any communications to your company, and it is automatically assumed that any official notice sent to the company's registered office address has been received by the company, so make sure you have access to your registered address and are able to receive any documents that are sent to that address!

Organisation Specific Requirements

Depending on your organisation structure there are some other specific requirements that you also need to include, for example;

Best Practice Tips

Over and above just meeting your legal requirements, you probably also want your letter to be effective and eye catching! Here are a few top tips from Stannp to make your business letters as effective as possible.

Consistent Branding

Carry through your logo and brand colours in your letter, website and social media, etc. This helps to ensure the recipients of your letter have a consistent experience of your brand.

Tone of Voice

Think about how you want to come across to the reader, what impression do you want to give them? What is the 'personality' of your organisation or brand?

Write with your chosen 'personality' in mind, and tailor your tone of voice to fit the personality you want to convey.

Readability

If you are aiming for clear, concise communication with your recipients, font choice can have a big impact on readability and 'cognitive load' (the amount of effort required to process and understand the text).

We recommend using Sans-Serif fonts; research shows that Cursive and Serif fonts are less readable and hold attention for less time than Sans-Serif fonts.

Keep it simple; use as few words as possible to convey your message. Avoiding unnecessarily complicated language increases the likelihood of your message being read and acted on.

Call to Action

The key to effective design is simplicity; the easier it is for recipients to understand your message, the more likely they are to respond.

A key part of this effective design is a clear call to action; think about what you want the recipient to do when they get the mailing, what action you want them to take, and then tell them!

Final Tip; Don't forget to make use of Stannp's personalisation features to make your letter as personal as possible for your recipients, it's a great way to encourage your recipients to read and respond to your letters.

We hope you find our Business Letters Guide helpful for your Direct Mail Campaigns (and other business correspondence too).

For more helpful hints, tips, guides and info you can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or feel free to speak to your account manager if you have any questions or need any help.

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