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| Meridian Delta has been the online identity for the
fax
marketing bureau services of Fairlie Communications
Limited since January 2005. When
it comes to
fax marketing for other companies, we
genuinely believe that we can't be beaten on service,
price or commitment to our valued customers.
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"I'm
not really on the sales front, I'll tell you that now!
Mark, the director of FCL, and I go back a long way.
He's the type of man who develops trust in someone and
it takes a lot to shake that. I was the first person to
join his organisation (then a sole tradership) way back
in 1998! I was only 22 then!
Mark is genuinely and passionately committed to what he
calls the 'customer experience'. In other words, he says
to me and the rest of us, 'how are we different from
everyone else?' and 'what makes us better?'. He prides
himself on keeping customers loyal, keeping customer
coming back month after month. Through his and the sales
team's effort, 600+ businesses a month trust us with
their marketing (both fax and email).
Working for Mark is challenging. The reason for that is
that we're actually working for our customers, and Mark
makes us do our best for you lot.
I have committed my future to this company, as have 600+
companies. Try us out, see what you think." |
Ben Myers
Chief Product Developer
Fairlie Communications Limited
t/a Meridian Delta. |
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For the last ten years, we've pioneered some of the
services and products
fax marketing
and
email marketing customers take for
granted, and we intend to keep on doing so for many
years to come. Here's a quick look at our history, and
how we've moved the industry forward by continually
innovating and putting the customer first. |
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July 1998
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Launching out of a tiny office in Jarrow, Tyne and Wear, with a
grand total of 4 outgoing lines, Endeverus
Fax Broadcasting
launches. There's just one person in the office!
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November 1998
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Reaching the huge(!!!) turnover of £4,000 per month, Endeverus
Fax
Broadcasting takes on its first member of staff as business
grows. Our first member of staff is hired to help co-ordinate
the fax broadcasting and handle the data. We're now up to 12
lines.
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September 1999
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Fairlie Communications Limited is incorporated to assume the
turnover and assets of the sole trader Endeverus
Fax
Broadcasting. This transition would not be totally complete
until late 2001.
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February 2000
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The company gets its own mail-order credit and debit card
terminal direct from Barclays. Turnover surges as we're able to
take payments from customers straight away. Up to 30 lines and
now in Newburn, Tyne and Wear. Now 3 members of staff.
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September 2001
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Endeverus moves to Newcastle city centre. Now up to 90 lines and
4 members of staff. In a move that would be later followed by
most other broadcasters, we cease
fax
advertising out of office
hours to improve our service to customers.
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July 2002
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Our database jumps from 160,000 to over 350,000 with our first
large-scale outright purchase of another company's
fax
marketing database,
customers and goodwill.
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September 2002
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In a move that shocked the competition but was later followed,
we began hiring servers and connections from telcos to hugely
increase our
fax marketing capacity. Whereas it used to take up to 3 hours to
send 10,000 faxes, Endeverus could now send out 10,000
fax
adverts in 8
minutes by using rented spare capacity over other networks.
Initially sending just 400,000 faxes a month, this has increased
to more than 5 million faxes a month at time of writing.
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March 2003
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Endeverus
Fax Broadcasting launches its first software product,
the 'UK Fax Disc', for companies wishing to send out campaigns
from their own offices and bypass a
faxing
service. Sales are
brisk, and top 3,000 at time of writing.
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May 2003
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After thoroughly testing a
business-to-business email marketing
service, we launch this new product to our customer database,
seeing almost universal patronage. The
fax broadcasting business
slides as email takes off, and we see monthly fax pages down
from 3.5 million to just over 1.2 million in just 4 months.
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December 2003
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Email responses, although impressive, begin to fall. In the
early days, responses to emails were 5 times that of fax
marketing.
Fax marketing looks as if it is at the doors of
death, but we continue offering our world-class service to our
remaining 80 customers as our competitors exit the market.
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December 2003
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Also in this month, the government pass into law an important
piece of UK legislation. The government legislated that
business-to-business email marketing was fine and to be
encouraged as a leveller between large and small companies.
Email marketing continues to soar.
Fax marketing holds the same
level.
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October 2004
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Most marketing companies, including Fairlie Communications
Limited, suffer from a sudden downturn in responsiveness of
email marketing. It buries many of our competitors, and a major
re-think is required for us to stay in electronic direct
marketing. Our turnover decreases by nearly 60% and, in common
with other, we incur heavy losses. A sudden upturn in the last
half of the year in
fax broadcasting, plus years of retained
profit and investment in the company, acts as our lifelines -
most competitors had deserted the market and suffered
accordingly. We go into deep consultation with our customers to
find out what they want, and we get some interesting and
revealing answers.
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January 2005
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Fairlie Communications splits into two distinct marketing
entities - Meridian Delta for
fax
marketing, and Endeverus for
email marketing. After consulting with customers, we come to the
conclusion that we can not charge what we used to charge - we
needed to lower our rates dramatically on both
fax
marketing and
email marketing to steal a march on the remaining competition and
increase our customers' profits on jobs we do for them. The
results are immediate.
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March 2005
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Our
fax marketing traffic jumps in the space of 12 months to 5m+
pages, a record. For the last twelve months, our monthly
customer base leaps from 200 to 500. Responses to
fax marketing
goes back to the highs seen between 1998-2003.
Email marketing
begins to recover its responsiveness too. The company lands huge
orders, from firms as diverse as Dutton Forshaw to Nova
International, the organisers of the Great North Run.
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July 2005
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7 years in business. Who would believe it? Well, here we are.
Meridian Delta becomes the main trading name, and endeverus.com
becomes a pointer method to the main site. Endeverus is dead,
long live Meridian Delta. On behalf of myself, my brother and my
team members, thanks for sticking with us through this time,
especially Jason, Iain, Martin and Paul - you know who you are!
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November 2005
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The
UK Education Disc is launched and is an immediate smash hit
for the company. With limited marketing, over 30 customers buy
the product every week.
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July 2006
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8 years and counting! Thanks again to all our brilliant
customers, friends and suppliers. This year will prove exciting
as we're planning to open a 12-seat call centre in January.
Watch this space for me. Thanks again, everybody.
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August 2006
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The UK Charity Disc launches and is an immediate hit. Containing
180,000 UK charities' contact information (including a whopping
near 60,000 email addresses), this is another product that puts
the power of marketing at rock-bottom prices to our valued
customers.
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September 2006
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We move into prestigious offices in Newcastle City Centre, a
short walk away from the historic tourist-traps of the Quayside
and Graingertown!
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September 2007
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We're on the move again! We relocate to offices on Newcastle's
Quayside. |
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January 2008
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Meridian Delta is resting its B2B email marketing service for 3
months as customer returns have reached a low. We're always keen
to market services that produce a very high chance of profit for
customers and email marketing does not currently meet that
requirement. Fax marketing is still producing good returns for
customers. We'll review the situation with email marketing in
April 2008. |
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January 2008
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65 Quayside LLP is formed to take over some of the marketing
assets currently used by Fairlie Communications Limited (FCL). |
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February 2008
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Following a testing period of three months with existing
datadisc customers, Meridian Delta launches its dedicated email
marketing services to schools and charities. We're now expecting
to launch a service from October 2008 onwards |
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February 2008
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Following a testing period of three months with existing
datadisc customers, Meridian Delta launches its dedicated email
marketing services to schools and charities. |
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April 2008
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Our biggest website relaunch since early 2002 brings even more
detail to you about our services. At launch, the site is a
massive 138 pages and we think it will get to over 210 by the
end of the year. That's just the public area though - when you
add all the client areas, draft and designs on top of that,
Meridian Delta's website is over 8,000 pages long! |
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April 2008
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We're currently working with a new data partner to test out a
new email marketing to business service. Since we closed it
temporarily in January, it has had quite a big effect on the
company (turnover up to 35% down each month on where it would be
normally). However, it's crucial we get it right because we're
all about delivering results. We hope to restart the email
service in the second or third week of May |
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May 2008
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All change back! Fax marketing currently accounts for around 90%
of our business during the time our email service is being
revamped and new customers just didn't like the redesigned
website. The number of people enquiring dived by nearly 75% in
the days the new website was up. We thought it was great but the
market told us otherwise. That's the wonderful world of
marketing - always test your message and see the response it
gets. If it doesn't work, change it! |
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May 2008
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All change back! Fax marketing currently accounts for around 90%
of our business during the time our email service is being
revamped and new customers just didn't like the redesigned
website. The number of people enquiring dived by nearly 75% in
the days the new website was up. We thought it was great but the
market told us otherwise. That's the wonderful world of
marketing - always test your message and see the response it
gets. If it doesn't work, change it! |
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