2021 has been another successful year for our incentive portfolio. Customers are seeing real benefit from using our schemes, ensuring that mail remains a cost-effective communication tool in a challenging environment. We approved 235 applications, allocating £4.5 million in postage credits that customers offset against their postage.

As businesses continue to navigate the adverse impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as supply chain and logistics challenges, and an uncertain economic climate, our incentives continue to provide extra support to promote the growth and retention of letters.

We are pleased to announce that we will be renewing our incentives for 2022.  

Renewal of Incentives

Customers can apply for our available incentives until 31 December 2022.  Please note that from 4 January 2022 we are updating the postage credit rates for all incentives which you can find on our website at www.royalmailwholesale.com/incentives. 

Mailmark Economy Incentive Rates

This year saw the launch of our Mailmark Economy incentive, giving customers an opportunity to effectively sell more to their target audience by sending incremental Advertising Mail, Responsible Mail[1] and Partially Addressed Mail volume ??" with up to a generous 30% discount off the Access Mailmark Economy rates. The incentive has been well received and to date we have agreed to support 25m incremental items.

From 4 January 2022, we are implementing an improved 14.5% Mailmark Economy incentive rate for the Partially Addressed Mail service, increasing from the 9.3% discount which customers can enjoy up until 31 December 2021. We have published the new rates at www.royalmailwholesale.com/mailmark-economy-incentive-2021.

Additional option for receiving postage credits

Customers can currently opt to receive their earned postage credits for an incentive by having them paid directly into their own Royal Mail account, or in the form of a Postage Credit Voucher which is then redeemable directly with Royal Mail.

From 1 January 2022, customers will be able to choose a new option for receiving their earned credits efficiently, in addition to the current options. This new option will mean customers will be able to nominate the Royal Mail account of their mail service provider to receive the credits[2] into, if that provider has signed up to receive the credits on their behalf. If you are a mail service provider through which participating incentive customers post, you will need to sign a postage credit handling agreement which is available upon request from your Account Director.

To effect this change we have made some amendments to the Incentive Framework Terms, as specified in the annex to this letter. The annex also shows two further changes we are making as follows: 1) to enable changes to existing Participating Agreements where such changes are of benefit to the participating customers; and 2) to enable us to recover unredeemed postage credits in the event a participation agreement is terminated by Royal Mail under Clause 5.3. The changes will take effect from 4 January 2022.  You can find the revised full Incentive Framework Terms at www.royalmailwholesale.com/incentives. 

Partially Addressed

For customers who have not previously posted Partially Addressed and Advertising Mail during the last 24 months, we are pleased to be adding Partially Addressed mail to the First Time User incentive. Customers will be able to save 7% on Partially Addressed mailing items posted.

Additionally, existing Advertising Mail users that have not previously used Partially Addressed Mail, will be able to utilise the Advertising Mail Testing and Innovation Incentive to test up to 100k items and save up to 7%.

New incentives coming in 2022

We are excited to announce we are aiming to launch two brand new incentives in April 2022:

1. New User Incentive, targeting high-potential brands that have not used direct mail before, to rapidly upweight the number of new users into the channel.

2. An incentive for Programmatic Mail, with clear controls and objectives to prove the concept of sending this type of mail.

The detailed processes and proposition for both incentives will be developed over the coming months in collaboration with customers and key industry stakeholders. 

Lastly, we would like to thank you for the continued support from your business in helping us all to deliver these benefits for you and your customers. We look forward to working with you in 2022.

[1] Please note that the Responsible Mail service is being withdrawn on 4 January 2022.

[2] Unless the terms and conditions state otherwise, the credits received are for use towards the customer’s own future mailings with Royal Mail, posted via their nominated mail service provider.