JICMail and SMP reveal awards winners

JICMail, the joint industry planning currency for mail, has announced the winners of its inaugural Platinum Awards, which have been given to 10 companies for their “outstanding expertise and practice in planning, measuring and evaluating mail campaigns with JICMail data”.

It said the Platinum Organisational Accreditation is the highest accolade given by JICMail and that it has been awarded to businesses who have demonstrated a level of proficiency with JICMail beyond its basic application.

This includes evidence of JICMail data being embedded into the subscriber’s L&D programs, routinely applied across the planning, sales and data ecosystems, and together with case study evidence that JICMail is being systematically used to retain or grow business.

The 10 winners were Citipost Mail, Edit, Marketreach, PSE Offline Marketing, The Dragonfly Agency, The Kite Factory, The Letterbox Consultancy, The Lettershop Group, Webmart, and Whistl Doordrop Media.

For agencies, intermediaries, and sell-side organisations to be awarded platinum accreditation, JICMail said they will have gone beyond a specific set of tasks as agreed in their adoption plans which need to be completed to maintain their accredited status. These included meeting their targets for individual training across the relevant team members.

Following the introduction of the JICMail Levy in spring 2021, JICMail now has over 120 accredited subscribers.

JICMail director of data leadership and learning Ian Gibbs said: “Today represents a real milestone for JICMail and cements our position as a fully-fledged independent mail planning and measurement tool embedded into all corners of the mail ecosystem – a journey that we have made in the space of just four years.

“It has been heartening to see some of our most engaged users embrace the platinum challenge – a challenge that we hope our other hundred plus subscribers are themselves keen to embark on over the coming years.”

Platinum submissions are set to be evaluated twice a year with the next evaluation due in Spring 2022.

Separately, earlier this month the SMP also revealed the winners of its inaugural Mail Performance Awards, which recognise the outstanding results the UK’s mailing houses have achieved for their clients.

Eight Days A Week Print Solutions, The Lettershop Group, and Communisis were selected as the best in the industry, taking away five Golden Envelope Awards between them. Eight Days a Week was also crowned overall Platinum Envelope Winner for the demonstrable innovation and results it achieved across several client campaigns.

The SMP said the aim of the awards was not to showcase clever creative or big ideas on data; the judges wanted to see what mail producers have done over the past 12 months that has made a difference to a client’s mailing or campaign. Size and volume were not important, only evidenced performance.

The judging panel included Edwina Dunn, co-founder of Dunnhumby; Mike Colling, founder of The Kite Factory; John Watson, the founder of Rapp and chairman and CEO of WNPC; Phil Ricketts of Royal Mail Wholesale; and Judith Donovan, chair of the SMP.

Donovan said: “The awards attracted a great deal of interest with entries from mailing houses across the UK. Across the board, the entrants showed real innovation and results, demonstrating that mailing houses can originate award-winning campaigns as well as deliver them.

“We asked entrants to evidence the mail performance and all our winners surpassed our expectations.”