Waitrose has launched a direct marketing campaign to promote ‘Essential Waitrose‘, its new range of more than 1,400 competitively priced everyday products.

‘Essential Waitrose’ will cover a selection of everyday grocery, bakery, fresh, frozen, dry ambient and non-food line at affordable prices.

At Eclipse Marketing we were stunned to hear of the contact centre response times quoted by the BBC One Watchdog programme recently.

Watchdog made 100 calls to each of five companies – Sky, 3, BT, Vodafone and Tiscali – timing the calls from finishing dialling, to when a human voice was heard. The fastest by far was 3, with an average of one minute 39 seconds before they got through. The quickest single call of all was to Vodafone, who put them through to a human in 50 seconds.

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has unveiled a new online tool to help companies create an environmental policy for their operations.

The application, named the Environmental Planning Tool, takes growing businesses through a step-by-step process to highlight the environment goals of a firm and the impact of their commercial activities.

The Institute of Fundraising (IoF) is urging its members to report direct mail campaigns that go against the body’s code of practice.

The move follows a meeting between IoF leaders and charities minister Kevin Brennan, who told the institute he was concerned that “poor” direct mail could erode public confidence in charities.

According to Marketing Donut, growing businesses can gain an improved response from their direct marketing by trying to understand their clients better.

The website, launched by Google and Royal Mail, has claimed that firms often “waste time” by sending generic messages to people without taking into account their needs or interests.