We are pleased to announce that we will be renewing our investment in incentives for 2023.

The current year has been challenging for many businesses, and we will exit the year in an uncertain economic climate. During these difficult times, our incentive portfolio has continued to provide extra support to promote the mail channel to posting brands.  We have approved 207 applications so far in 2022, allocating £4.4 million in postage credits as brands continue to learn how best to find, keep and grow customers through mail as part of an integrated media mix, and are keen to build on this as the UK economy navigates the latest headwinds.

Our 2023 incentives seek to provide an additional stimulus for brands to invest in mail against such headwinds.

Renewal of Incentives

Customers can continue to apply for our available incentives until 31 December 2023.  Please note that from 3 January 2023 we are updating the postage credit rates for all incentives which can be found on our website at www.royalmailwholesale.com/incentives. 

Growth Incentive Baseline flexibility

Under the Advertising Growth Incentive, customers earn postage credits for incremental volume.  Postage credits are awarded for incremental volume posted above a "baseline", determined by Royal Mail on customers' historic volumes and trend.

Reflecting the economic climate, and to enable more brands to benefit from our Advertising Growth incentive, we are introducing an, up to 10% tolerance to baselines for brands with a forecast reduction in volume, meaning, for example, that a customer historically posting 1 million items and forecasting a volume decline of 10% would have their baseline set at 900,000 items for the year ahead.

Find out more about the incentive and the baseline methodology here.

Increasing the Advertising Volume Commitment Incentive rate and reducing the Matched Volume target

Customers who have been on the Advertising Growth Incentive above have the option of moving on to the Advertising Volume Commitment Incentive in Year 2, which rewards customers maintaining the growth volume from the previous 12-month period.

In 2023, customers who match their growth volume from the previous 12 months will benefit from an increased incentive rate of 8%, up from 7.5% in 2022.  Additionally, customers will gain this benefit once they achieve 95% of their matched volume commitment.

Find out more about the Advertising Volume Commitment incentive here.

Incentivising reactivation mailings

We appreciate that in the current economic climate, some customers have paused or switched off some uses of mail. In 2023, we want to encourage such customers to re-engage and reactivate mail, and under the Advertising Mail Testing and Innovation incentive we are doubling the maximum available volume for such reactivation from 100,000 to 200,000 mailing items.

Find out more about the Advertising Mail Testing and Innovation incentive here.

Take advantage of other great incentives

We recently launched two great incentives which we invite customers to take advantage of:

Try Mail Incentive is targeted at large advertisers who do not currently use Direct Mail and offers the potential for brands to test the channel at no cost and experience the benefits it can bring.  The incentive is running for the next 12 months.

Programmatic Mail Incentive, which enables participants to post programmatic mailings at the Advertising Mail rate.  Programmatic advertising is a rapidly growing way for brands to serve highly targeted adverts at the right time to customers.  The incentive is open for application until February 2023.

We also have our Case Study Incentive which gives an opportunity for mail providers and their end brands to demonstrate the value of mail in real life scenarios. 

To find out more about any of the above incentives contact your Account Director.

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 2023.