Marketing Week Live 2011

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MRM visited Marketing Week Live 2011 yesterday at The Grand Hall, Olympia, London.  The day had a great atmosphere from start to finish with lots of fresh and innovative ideas and fantastic speakers including Matt Brittin, Managing Director, Google UK and Ireland, and Tom Rainsford, Head of Brand and Proposition, giffgaff.

Marketing Week live is still going on today and we highly recommend popping along if only for a few hours.  Our top tip would be get to the Centre Stage early if you want a chair as it was jam packed yesterday.

If you are inspired and want to discuss how MRM can support your ideas please contact us on 0844 99 12345.

Have fun!!

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Work Hard – Play Hard

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At MRM we all enjoyed the bank holidays this year, especially the sunny ones at the start of May, but the three and four day weeks have  meant we have had to work extra hard to prepare for all of the new fulfilment, competition and direct mail campaigns we are supporting.  Over these exceptionally busy weeks we have also had a big increase in the number of clients using our contact centre and e-commerce services.

To reward our hard work we will be having an MRM staff night out tonight in Market Harborough, so keep an eye out for us if you are in the area – we will be the ones dressed incredibly well sipping tea in the corner of Enigma!

We will be back in the office on Monday morning bright eyed and bushy tailed!  If you want to call us to make sure, or if you have a campaign that you would like to discuss with us please contact us on 0844 99 12345.

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Fulfilment services – ensuring resilience and stability

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Earlier this year, MRM’s IT Department started investigating options for upgrading our Internet connection.  After months of research and negotiations, we opted for a solution offered by Redstone Managed Solutions (RMS) that delivers:

  • A primary Internet connection through a 10Mbps Ethernet line
  • A secondary Internet connection through a 2Mbps SDSL line
  • Mirrored firewalls configured for high availability

 Although this solution does not allow us to use both lines concurrently, it does mean that if the primary Internet connection fails then the secondary connection will be automatically activated without any manual intervention or change to IP address.

The change to our external connection also gave us the opportunity to make some changes to our internal local area network (LAN) that our old firewall prevented us from doing.  This allows us to segregate our network traffic across virtual LANs in order to better manage performance and security.

As part of MRM’s investment in technology and business continuity, we believe that the long-term improvement in performance, resilience and security of our network delivers stability and demonstrates our commitment to business as usual for clients.

With the majority of our clients accessing reporting via our client portals it is critical that our systems are resilient, as we work with a range of clients from government departments through to FMCG brands, utility companies, non-departmental public bodies and agencies. As some of our clients use our services across the globe we must ensure the availability of order entry and live reporting, no matter what the time of day (or night).

To learn more about how your brand can enjoy live reporting at the touch of a button as part of our services – call Mel now on 0845 2011974 for an informal chat or send us an email with your needs.

MRM IT picture Fulfilment services   ensuring resilience and stability

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Fulfilment is…Turkey Curry

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No, no, NO! We’ve eaten enough pork pie and Stilton (well this IS Leicestershire) for one year, and now it’s almost time to say hello to the next…

It’s a funny old time between Xmas and the New Year. We’re hardly sitting idle though and we’re here today packing & despatching those all-important orders placed over the Xmas bank holiday.  We’re confident they’ll arrive on time too as the snow is beginning to thaw and the transport system is back on track. 

Here’s hoping you have a very Happy New Year..and if you’d like to start off the New Year on a positive note, why not give us a call to discuss your fulfilment needs for the coming year!

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Fulfilment services of final despatches for Christmas

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Well it’s finally Christmas Eve. I don’t know about everyone else but this week seems to have had so much fulfilment and despatch packed into it as we’ve been processing last minute orders (primarily from blokes it must be admitted) for Christmas presents.

Payment processing has been going non-stop…probably not at the same level as High Street retailers but nevertheless our banking and datacapture teams have been working flat out to ensure we finish off in time for Christmas.

It’s the last day for our carriers to collect today, so it’s all hands to the deck across the entire business – to ensure we can all get away early to start a well deserved break with our families and friends.

For those of you who are current clients we look forward to working with you in 2011 and hope the year is successful and prosperous. For anyone not yet a client of MRM – give us a call in the New Year and we’ll show you how cost effective and technology-led we are…as well as being lovely people.

Take care and Merry Christmas!

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Waiting for the snow

Posted in Promotional handling      Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here in Market Harborough, in the centre of the UK at the fabulous promotional handling house that is MRM, we were all very excited first thing as we got into the office nice and early in anticipation of the promised heavy snow.

It all started well, with red skies (the old ‘shepherd’s warning tale was being spoken across the building) and cold weather but now, less than 3 hours later we’ve got clear blue skies and sunshine and not a snowflake in sight.

However some of our clients are not so lucky…Forestry Commission based up in Edinburgh have sent us some amazing photos of what can only be described as the biggest blanket of snow we’ve ever seen.

With promotional campaigns and mail order incredibly busy for us at this time of year for our DVD and book retailers – we’re working hard to ensure all orders are despatched on time as we work through express delivery options and do our utmost to make sure all those present orders arrive in time for Christmas.

….but we’re still disappointed that we don’t even have enough snow to make a snowman like we did last year…

Have you got snow where you live? Tell us about it and we’ll be even more envious!

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How to handle Christmas

Posted in Industry News, MRM News, Uncategorized      Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

…by this we mean in terms of managing consumer expectations for mail order turkey How to handle Christmas processing rather than how to handle a turkey or your mother-in-law (not that we’re suggesting she looks like a turkey!).

Fast and accurate order processing of consumer orders is paramount at Christmas as last minute orders are placed across the UK and meeting consumer expectations for turnaround and delivery are critical.

With order volumes on mail order clients tripling during the final weeks before the Royal Mail cut off dates, MRM offers flexible delivery services such as Express over Standard allowing a consumer to pay a premium to guarantee delivery.

Behind the scenes planning starts in earnest around September as we look at last year’s forecast vs actual of orders and how this compares to current volumes. Peter Wood, MRM’s Operation Manager, works closely with clients to guide them through the planning phase – communication really is central to success to allow us to ensure we dedicate sufficient resources.

Of course, we are able to meet unexpected peaks in demand, such as last minute campaigns or special offers where products are advertised – this is what fulfilment is all about – but as they say in the army ‘prior planning prevents poor performance’ and we are the experts at consumer mail order fulfilment.

If you’re planning a Christmas campaign, it’s not too late to let MRM take care of your consumer expectations. Find out how we can make a difference – you won’t regret it!

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For All Your Mail Order Requirements

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MRM has made considerable investments in the facilities required to manage the complete mail order process from start to finish. Whatever your requirements, we have the knowledge and experience to guide you through this process with budget, quality and timescales at the forefront of our key objectives. We currently work with a number of large online retailers, managing the fulfilment of books and DVDs.

We have the capabilities to manage multi channel response handling including web, email, post, SMS and phone. The mail order service provision is located within our dedicated Business to Consumer operation with a purpose built storage and despatch area for the goods.

 We also offer: -

  • In-house bespoke system called Alchemy
  • Real time, online reporting
  • Full traceability of order process
  • On site website designers/integration
  • Data and payment processing
  • Returns handling
  • Customer services
  • Data management

 This makes us the one-stop solution for your mail order activities outside of your core business.

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