One third of UK Plc outsource their direct marketing Research by CDMS and Marketing UK, conducted amongst senior marketers within the UK top 1000 companies, has found that well over a third (38.7%) currently outsource their entire direct marketing campaign management process (except creative concept and design). By 2007, the figure will rise by ten percentage points, to almost half of business (48.6%). The CDMS research canvassed the opinions of senior marketers within the Banking, Utility, Insurance, Leisure & Travel and Retail industries in order to quantify the penetration of campaign management outsourcing by industry, and to reveal the various motivating factors that drive companies to outsource. Overall, marketers citied the following benefits of outsourcing, in descending order of importance: 1. Highly skilled personnel 2. Access to the latest technology 3. Large technical and human resources 4. Rapid campaign turnaround 5. Compliance of opt-in/opt-out regulations 6. No capital Investment required 7. Reduced headcount 8. Remote access to industrial strength resource 9. Scalability The research revealed that banks and retailers are the highest users of outsourced campaign management, with 44%-45% of them taking advantage of the services offered by third parties. Lowest users of outsourced campaign management are utilities, at 31%. Ian Hubbard, Director, comments, “With successive reports signalling a downturn in brand advertising, direct marketing expenditure has increased significantly in the last few years –which means that there is now increased pressure to produce tangible ROI for any direct marketing campaign. Consequently, effective campaign management is more necessary than ever. The factors that lie behind the decision to outsource point to the fact that most companies do not have the skills and experience in-house to ensure that their technology investments deliver an appropriate level of return on investment. In general, sectors that have invested heavily in CRM and loyalty schemes, and who were thus more mature direct marketers, tended to outsource more of their campaign management process.”
Source:  CDMS is a data management and document services specialist, with a 45-year pedigree in the direct marketing industry. CDMS is committed to helping businesses extract maximum value from their direct marketing communication: from data cleansing and enhancement to hosted campaign management; from billing and statementing to fulfilment, CDMS provides the whole range of direct marketing services to ensure maximum campaign return on investment .CDMS’s DataHealth software, and the company’s position as sole European MSP for Unica’s Affinium campaign management software further supports the outstanding client value delivered by CDMS’s expert staff. CDMS has a diverse client base spanning many industry sectors. Clients include: Lloyds TSB, Royal Mail, British Gas and the Daily Telegraph.