Spring was originally founded in 2001 through a joint venture between Royal Mail, SingPost and PostNL. The company is now a wholly owned subsidiary of PostNL, along with Postcon and Italian postal operator Nexive. Spring handles international deliveries across 190 countries and has offices in 13 countries, connecting three continents.
Why did Spring Global Mail decide to rebrand to Spring Global Delivery Solutions?
Spring Global Delivery Solutions better describes what we do now. To take advantage of globalization and the increase in online shopping, Spring, like many other postal organizations has diversified to offer different solutions including e-commerce delivery. As a consequence we have seen substantial growth over the last three to four years. We believe that our cost effective and high quality global network is a great solution for our customers who are looking to develop into new cross-border markets.
In the past few years we have moved from being a mail-only provider to a full mail, parcel and returns solutions provider. The words ‘Global Delivery Solutions’ make it clear what Spring has to offer – excellent cross-border delivery solutions. The rebranding also allows us to visually bring the Spring brand closer to our parent company, PostNL.
How has the market changed since Spring was first established in 2001?
Several big market-changing factors have occurred since we were first established back in 2001. The traditional postal market has been liberalized, many post offices have been privatized and the majority of posts have significantly redesigned their business models. Add to this the substitution and digitalization of traditional mail, as well as the enormous growth of e-commerce volumes, and we have a list of events that has required Spring to adapt and change constantly. As such, the business is now split evenly between parcels and mail, although e-commerce is likely to become the larger proportion in 2016.
Despite all of these changes it is interesting to see that physical direct mail still has an important role to play in our customers marketing mix. Many are moving away from online marketing and back to direct mail to drive consumers to their websites. It is important therefore for Spring to offer all solutions in one place to help our customers grow.
What technological developments have had the biggest impact on the way Spring operates its business?
The obvious ones are email and online marketing playing their part in the reduction of mail volumes, and online shopping creating greater parcel volumes. However as mentioned, we have seen a reverse in trends as marketing departments are seeing that direct mail as opposed to email is having a greater impact on their clients and prospects.
Our own technological developments have kept us closely aligned with what our retail customers require to succeed in the market. We have introduced a smart e-commerce service called Forward Logistics, which is an all-in-one delivery platform, giving e-retailers access to key markets such as France, Germany, the USA and Australia. As such, Spring is seeing a very positive impact from the substantial growth in online shopping.
How does Spring
cope with the challenges of cross-border deliveries and returns?
Because of our global reach, we are in a
unique position to take advantage of local delivery and return developments in key destinations around the world. This includes an increase in the number
of drop-off points for returns, and more options for consumers to pay for returns. We also recognize that e-tailers want their items treated differently to traditional mail – they need to manage orders and stock so they can restock and resell, and they need information to do this. We make that transparent via our Forward Logistics platform and our returns portal RADAR.
You recently announced your new mail service for Germany in partnership with Postcon, why was it necessary to create this service?
The new service was an opportunity we identified to give our UK customers an alternative to using Deutsche Post DHL. It offers a fast and efficient daily and nationwide delivery service of letters, invoices, direct mail, customer magazines, catalogues and press services straight into German homes for UK businesses. Customers can have the service customized, and there are a variety of different delivery options.
To read more about Spring’s rebranding exercise and its new ‘Destination Germany’ mail service, click here.
November 26, 2015