Comments on: SurpriseMail from Royal Mail? http://www.glasshousepartnership.com/blog/surprisemail-from-royal-mail/ Glasshouse Partnership provides online and offline reputation management and social communication services. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:37:38 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Iain Henderson http://www.glasshousepartnership.com/blog/surprisemail-from-royal-mail/comment-page-1/#comment-24181 Iain Henderson Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:42:37 +0000 http://www.glasshousepartnership.com/?p=1625#comment-24181 <p>Hi Tim, I agree it is an interesting development - but I think it's more Direct Mail 1.4'ish rather than the 2.0 that could be achieved by taking a more bold approach. Having been through the questions, they seem to be a weird mix of direct mail standards and strange requests like 'How many friends and contacts do you try to keep in regular contact with (e.g. how many christmas cards / emails do you typically send?)'.</p> <p>Also, i'm not sure I agree that this is genuine volunteered personal information - not in the 'under development' VRM version anyway; that would require RM signing my terms and conditions, not the usual 'tick this box after not having bothered to read the privacy policy/ terms and conditions' we have here.</p> <p>But - in overall terms it's nice to see Royal Mail finally taking some steps in the data services market and using their brand/ reach to better effect. Whether Matterbox succeeds or not, I think, will be based on thinking 'out of the box' so to speak and not just incremental tinkering with tired old database marketing services behind the scenes.</p> <p>Cheers</p> <p>Iain</p> Hi Tim, I agree it is an interesting development – but I think it’s more Direct Mail 1.4′ish rather than the 2.0 that could be achieved by taking a more bold approach. Having been through the questions, they seem to be a weird mix of direct mail standards and strange requests like ‘How many friends and contacts do you try to keep in regular contact with (e.g. how many christmas cards / emails do you typically send?)’.

Also, i’m not sure I agree that this is genuine volunteered personal information – not in the ‘under development’ VRM version anyway; that would require RM signing my terms and conditions, not the usual ‘tick this box after not having bothered to read the privacy policy/ terms and conditions’ we have here.

But – in overall terms it’s nice to see Royal Mail finally taking some steps in the data services market and using their brand/ reach to better effect. Whether Matterbox succeeds or not, I think, will be based on thinking ‘out of the box’ so to speak and not just incremental tinkering with tired old database marketing services behind the scenes.

Cheers

Iain

]]>