Via its MarketReach initiative, launched today, Royal Mail plans to provide companies and their agencies with additional services, some of which will be provided directly by the mail company while others will be provided by its partner businesses.

MarketReach comprises six broad categories including creative, data, media planning, print, distribution and response evaluation.

The creative element will be provided by design company Clinic, Callcredit will supply data services while Incentivated will provide a mobile marketing platform.

Included in the MarketReach offer is a component, provided by Amstore-owned VideoPak, which enables advertisers to integrate moving image and sound into a mail pack.

According to Royal Mail, marketing mail and parcels account for 60% of its revenues, while targeted addressed and unaddressed marketing mail adds up to £1.1bn of its turnover.

Royal Mail’s media business managing director Frank Schinella said: "We know that in a competitive environment, getting your message across to customers in a planned, targeted and impactful way is integral to business success. Mail is a great way to complement and integrate digital advertising, adding a real element to a campaign.

"We want to help advertisers and agencies by providing the skills and expertise to make it even easier to add mail to their marketing activities. By working across the value chain, Royal Mail aims to increase its share of the £16 billion advertising market."

In an interview with PrintWeek Royal Mail’s marketing director Antony Miller said that the company had been beta-testing the MarketReach initiative and is currently working on 50 live briefs from clients.

"We want to shift from being an information business to becoming a media owner," he said.

"We are going to have a brand new in-house marketing team that can plan a campaign from beginning to end.

"The feedback we have had from clients so far has been very positive because what we are offering is more integrated."

Miller said that media planning will be offered free of charge to clients and that they will only be charged if they opt for additional services such as direct mail or response handling.

He added that the new initiative should be a positive development for mailing houses.

"We have a direct sales force which generally is speaking directly to marketing departments and agencies. It should lead to us doing more work with the existing mailing house that the client is using or with us helping clients to find a mailing house from the companies that sit on the Strategic Mailing Partnership," he said.