11/07/2008 by Tony Attwood.

We are all used to getting junk emails. We can all recognise them a mile off. Bad grammar, every sentence ends with an exclamation mark, pictures that don’t load properly, crazy linguistic style, multiple colours and huge headlines that are almost bigger than the screen, use of certain set phrases that no one would ever say in a billion years, fake personalisation, broken links…

It’s a bit like describing a desk. Desks come in a million different shapes and sizes, but I know a desk when I trip over one. Same with junk emails - I know one when I see one.

Thus we look, and think - “junk”. Which is fine when it is junk - but not when it is a serious advert written by someone who does not know how to write adverts. Then the sender really goes down in our estimation.

About 50% of the email adverts that I am now sent to review, end up with my saying (in the nicest possible way) I am sorry, but I think you would be better off sending nothing - this could do you real damage.

Of course such ads can bring in one or two enquiries, but they will probably alienate many more people. Especially those who know a spot about the law - for example, that you are supposed to give the name and address of the company that is advertising, that you mustn’t send an advert for a private product to a person at work without their permission, and so on.

At the very least I would always say you should follow these four basic rules:

1. Collect half a dozen really good email adverts together and print them out, and ask, “why do I like these?”
2. Get a professional writer of email adverts to look at your piece before it goes out.
3. Test the email on a number of people who you can trust to give an honest opinion, and ask them questions including, did this look like junk?
4. If writing it yourself, only send out a small number at first.
5. Unless you are sure of your own skill get a pro to write it for you. It might seem a lot of money to pay, but it really can do a lot for your business.

Notice my slip - yup there were five points not four. Can’t win them all. (Now ask, have you ever seen a bit of total junk with a throw-away comment like this at the end? Just one of many ways of making your writing stand out from the rubbish).

Tony Attwood

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02/07/2008 by Tony Attwood.

There is a report doing the rounds at the moment, which has been commented on in several places, in which the following question is asked:

“What is your best performing mailer (postcard, voucher, 6×9 etc) and is the recent postage hike and weakened economy forcing you to re-adjust your direct mail strategy? If so, how and why?”

Apparently lots of people answered by saying that the postcard was best for retail, marketing, healthcare and software.

Which on the face of it, looks amazing. Except for one problem.

As a study of the psychology of perception shows, how a person reacts to a mailer depends very much on how well they know the sender. In one way this is obvious - I read postcards from my daughters word by word, I keep them, I read them again. I’m soppy that way.

A postcard from a firm I’ve never heard of selling something that I am not responsible for buying doesn’t get me going at all.

As I say, that’s obvious. But what is not so obvious is the fact that we make our decisions as to how to treat these item according to how we perceive the sender. That affects the amount of brain power we give to the piece. Then, whether we read the piece or not is further affected by how much brain power it demands (lots and lots for colour pictures, far less for text).

So without knowing whether the postcards were sent to customers in love with their suppliers or just to a cold list, and without knowing whether the postcard contained pictures and other high demanding things or not - we are not getting very far.

Likewise we don’t know if the people who said “postcards is best” actually tried testing against anything else - like A4 letters. And if they did, did they keep the content the same.

And then we don’t know if (perhaps by chance) they obeyed the rules of the psychology of perception on the postcards but not on the letter.

In short, we know nothing. It was, at least as reported, a wholly useless piece of research. There are snippets in there which are worthwhile but not enough to start giving us proper stats on which to make a judgement.

All this is bad enough - but the worst thing is that this piece of research is just how much people everywhere are repeating it without questioning it. No wonder quite a few firms in the US felt the rise in postage prices was affecting them if they really are following this type of generalised advice.

Tony Attwood

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21/06/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Getting leads via the internet and email is clearly on the up (there’s a link to a new report on this at the end).

The report shows that large numbers of companies don’t believe that they are particularly well set up to exploit these new approaches - in fact the number that do believe they are well set up to do this has declined from 44% in 2007 down to 41% in 2008. But 94% think that this is the big growth area.

The key areas of getting leads on line (not all of which are covered in the report) are

Generating your own email lists of customers and potential customers. This works well when you have something new to say all the time (rather than just “we’ve got a special discount this week”). Where you have got something to say, the ad becomes softened and people take more notice (just as you read all my chit chat - right?)

Search engines such as Google. Having a great website that attracts thousands of people, who then either buy on line or who call you or email you, is a terrific way forward - providing that the site really does work in this way (rather than just look pretty) and the sites rise up the Google rankings. This is an area of contention - web designers are really keen on look, and we have lots of them calling HHM to tell us how with extra design our sites could do much better. But all our results show that (at least for B2B) it is the text that does the work, not the various images all fighting each other. Simplicity in design is not sexy, but it seems to pull in bigger results.

Search engines - paid. When I asked for info on this before from readers I got a mixed answer - some made good money out of Google Adwords, some didn’t.

Blogs - this is what I have spent the last year working on, and finding that it is possible to get huge audiences quickly - 45,000 unique visitors a month each visiting at least twice, gained by one blog in 4 months. The cost of blogs per sale appears to be less than the cost of using google ad words - but it just seems a longer term project so people don’t do it.

Newsgroups - like this one. You provide information to people and attach your company name, the name gets associated with the news, and readers are more inclined to call. About 20% of all the calls from potential new customers that Hamilton House gets come from people who say, “I subscribe to your news service…”

Hamilton House runs four marketing news services described at http://www.hamilton-house.com/gateways/newsgroups.html

We also run nine similar services for teachers, which do take adverts, described at
http://www.yesmail.org.uk/emailteachersdirect.html

There are a whole series of experimental blogs running - you might like to read the one at www.blog.hamilton-house.com to get an idea.

Or call me, Tony Attwood, on 01536 399 013.

Link to the original research article:http://www.marketingvox.com/online-lead-generation-delivers-but-can-be-better-used-039266/?camp=newsletter&src=mv&type=textlink

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12/06/2008 by Tony Attwood.

The psychology of perception is the scientific study of the way in which people react to what they see. It tells us such things as where the eye goes when a reader first pick up your leaflet.

The approach also tells us exactly what effects illustrations have – and surprisingly the answer is that they are not always positive. Alarmingly, the same is true about the use of colour.

Because the psychology of perception offers a scientific approach to the writing and design of advertisements the predictions that it makes are subject to rigorous tests in academic studies in universities. Thus these are not personal opinion and assertion, but testable scientific facts.

You might wonder, therefore, that if the psychology of perception is this good at telling us which mailshot and which email will work, why more advertisers don’t use it.

The answer is simple: the predictions that the psychology of perception makes are often alarmingly different from those that common sense provides. And faced with an approach that goes against all they have done for years and years, many people simply back away.

There is also the problem that some of the answers the psychology of perception give us are just a bit more complex than the answers common sense gives us. Sometimes the scientific answers say, “in situation A, do X, but in situation B, do Z.” Common sense approaches generally give us one answer for all circumstances.

However there is a big benefit from using this approach. Not only do you get the advantage that the scientific approach gives (much higher response rates), you also have the benefit of producing advertisements that look different from those of the majority of companies. And that in itself can be a real benefit.

Tony Attwood

PS: If you would like to know what the psychology of perception has to say about your current leaflet, just email me a copy, with your phone number, and I’ll call you back with the details. Tony@hamilton-house.com works most of the time.

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