Royal Mail boosts MarketReach team

Royal Mail has made three senior appointments to its MarketReach team – the division which promotes direct mail to business customers and agencies – to bolster its fight to win back share from digital channels.
Former Mindshare chief Diana Rhodes joins as mail strategy and planning director with a brief to lead the planning and data teams and work across the business to ensure a focus on the needs of mail practitioners.
She brings over 25 years’ experience in media and direct planning, and is a former managing partner at Proximity London and deputy MD at WWAV Rapp Media. Rhodes went on to launch Starcom Direct and was most recently at Mindshare Worldwide, running digital hub integration.
Meanwhile Anthony Jones has been appointed head of insight, with responsibility for developing and embedding insight programmes to help mail users optimise their returns. Jones was formally global research director at Aegis Media (Carat) and worldwide research director at Zenith Optimedia.
Finally, Kathryn McNamara has been recruited as head of communications and channels with a remit to ensure that mail users and their agencies are equipped with the relevant information to optimise the ROI from mail.
McNamara has 20 years’ brand and communications experience and has moved over from the main Royal Mail business, where she was head of brand and customer communications.
All three will report directly to MarketReach managing director Jonathan Harman, who said: “As a 21st century media owner we want to actively partner with mail users and their agencies to improve the returns they get from mail. Our rationale is simple: when mail users win, we win. In Diana, Anthony and Kathryn we have three outstanding professionals to help lead us on this mission.”
The appointments come as Royal Mail embarks on a major recruitment blitz for data experts to support its £70m investment in barcode technology. The scheme, dubbed Mailmark, is set to pave the way for what Harman has described as “Google Analytics for direct mail”.

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