November 8, 2012
There is often the presumption that the Postcodes in the UK do not change, however when you take a step back to think about the practicality of a rigid Postcode system then it becomes quickly apparent that they need to change. For example, how many new commercial district developments or large scale housing developments have you been aware of in the last 10 years. Each of these new developments will need a new set of Postcodes. This puts added strain on the nearest Royal Mail delivery office, so it might be the case that some Postcodes on the fringe of one delivery office area must be transferred to maintain operational efficiency.
There are also constant operational improvements made within the Royal Mail which can affect what delivery offices are capable of handling and which areas each should cover.
Some changes to the Postcodes can be moderately small such as changing the name of the street if it has been updated by local council but sometimes the change can be fairly major such as breaking apart an existing Postcode to accommodate for large scale changes. One such example is in Cambridge in 2006 where many new Postcodes were added to the network.
What does this mean for franchisors and franchisees?
As a franchisor, you may have awarded Postcodes within your franchise agreement. If one of your agreements is in a location that has new Postcodes then there is a chance that within the agreement there is some geography now missing. This can also affect the head office team’s ability to distribute customer enquiries to franchisees. If there are now unassigned new Postcodes then as far as the head office team is concerned these Postcodes do not belong to a franchisee and therefore enquiries are not allocated. These are all now wasted opportunities that could have been serviced.
As a franchisee, up-to-date granular demographic data can massively help with marketing and business activities. Rather than leaflet drop to 10,000 households where 8,000 of which might not be interested in your services, target the 2,000 that are interested but do it 5 times, vastly increasing your marketing effectiveness and return on investment.
More information about Postcode updates can be found here http://www.poweredbypaf.com.
Alternatively feel free to give us a call and one of our team would be more than happy to talk things through.
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