The BBS Story
Over 40 years BBS has built pioneering address management solutions and used our expertise in data optimisation to deliver bespoke direct marketing campaigns. We have helped thousands of clients to reach more customers.
It all started with Sunday lunch. In 1976, campaigners aiming to win a referendum to lift the ban on Welsh pubs opening on Sundays sought to identify and target supporters of a change in the law. Partnering with Bob Carter, then at Liverpool University, they used emerging computer technology and the new concept of postcodes to pinpoint voters most likely to back liberalisation. The result was a triumph: voters overwhelmingly rejected the restrictions and campaigners could toast the first known success of postcode-based targeting.
In 1980, Bob teamed up with Shirley Carter to found BBS, with the mission to use newly available micro-computers for the strategic management of data. Shirley had been working at Leeds University, and was a founding member of an international software library of numerical algorithms.
During the following decade, our BBS engineers developed the most sophisticated systems in the UK for the processing of names and addresses, including the now ubiquitous ability to look up your address from just your postcode and vice versa, to apply a postcode on an address.
In the 1990s, Curtis Morgan joined, and BBS expanded into direct marketing, building data optimisation techniques and delivering fulfilment services to sit alongside pioneering software solutions for the sortation of direct mail.
In the 2010s, BBS introduced omni-channel direct marketing in addition to direct mail, and in the 2020s, we built cutting-edge new systems to track the timing of mail delivery. We have refined our in-house data optimisation method to turn raw customer information into actionable insights to help our clients grow their businesses.
Today, BBS remains family owned, and we pride ourselves in a high quality, personal service.
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