04/04/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Below is a quote from the Email Marketing Journal, http://emailmarketingjournal.com I print quite a bit of it because it seems to represent where we are on the issue of using email as a marketing tool. It says that…

“More than 50% of internet surfers use email every single day, making this a very effective method of reaching them…. Email marketing is eco-friendly since there is no paper to waste….
Tracking is far easier with email marketing than it would be with direct mail. You can add special codes to let you know exactly which email is leading to which sales, even…. Even on a budget, email marketing can reach millions of people for a fraction of the price of direct mail.
With email marketing, your message gets to the potential client within seconds, rather than days or weeks.”

Now my problem with this is simple. There is not a single reference to response rates.

Email marketing response rates are the issue - who cares if half the planet reads what you write if no one buys anything. Who cares if you have saved a forest or two (given that the EU is self-sufficient in paper anyway). If you don’t sell nothing, nothing happens.

But somehow advertising like this does work, and does attract attention and does encourage people in to email marketing.

Now I am not saying that email marketing does not work - but I can say that it took me 18 months to move from getting a 0.2% response rate selling a £20 product to a generic list, up to 1.2%. Doing this I didn’t mail more people (obviously) - what I did was change the style and approach, modified the copy, and above all learned.

I am bemused as to why the message such as that put out above, continues to flourish, but it does.

If you would like to talk about raising response rates via email rather than just reaching more people, please do give me a call on 01536 399 000. There’s more about Hamilton House’s approach on www.yesmail.org.uk

Hamilton House Mailings plc reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB. Phone 01536 399 000.

Posted in Uncategorised | Print | Comments Off

19/03/2008 by Tony Attwood.

There’s a funny thing that goes on when people create adverts. They start to think in clichés. Want to show you are green? Put up a pic of a polar bear. And don’t worry if everyone else is using polar bears (Ariel, EDF Energy, HSBC, Philips and Ben & Jerry’s) - people will know with us its real.

But no, we want to show we care about the future. I know, let’s use children. I know Philips, B&Q, EDF, and Earthwatch do it, but still. Children is good.

Exotic animals (HSBC, Eon and GE) or green fields (Eon, EDF, B&Q and Anchor Butter). Must do it because environment is good.

So what is the thinking? Simple - its that old game, “let’s do what the other guy does.” We see it in direct marketing all the time - and I mean all the time. Want to sell to teachers? Let’s have a nice image of happy children (in case teachers don’t know what children are) or maybe a cartoon of a Will Hay type figure in a mortar board in front of a blackboard.

Does repeating tired old images work? No, I don’t think so. Better to risk getting it wrong than to hit the same old buttons over and over.

When I started writing nonsense statements on envelopes (”This package is not microwavable” was last week’s piece) the phone rang and rang with customers and potential customers commenting on the campaign. I haven’t seen it done before (although I am sure someone somewhere did it - but the point is it is not common.)

Thinking outside the box is one of the most awful phrases that is overused, but it does convey what needs to be done. Better still throw the box away.

Posted in Uncategorised | Print | Comments Off

17/03/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Normally I can smell a mistake at 100 paces - goodness knows I have made a few during my spell in direct mail. But the new Experian promotion has me stumped. Is it a disaster area, or a bit of post-modern irony or the cleverest campaign of all time?

If you’ve had a promotion from them - please do let me know. Here’s the details.

It is a big postcard. It reads…
——————————————

First impressions count.

Make a truly powerful impact every time.

As part of a successful agency, you understand the importance of checking the accuracy of your marketing data before committing valuable client budget….

Our FREE, no obligation Data Healthcheck will compare your marketing records with Experian’s expert business data sources… to give you a valuable view of your client’s data cleansing and enriching needs…

——————————-

All fine, except that we received 9 of these this morning. There were minor errors in the company name and address, but the most telling point was who these items were addressed to. Six of the nine people were no longer with us. One left in 1994, one in 1995, one in 1996, one in 1998 - the other two left in the early years of this century.

How could such a strategy make sense (given what is being sold)? And if it is a total utter mess, how come they kept on their database a person who left us 14 years ago? When someone leaves, surely they are deleted from the database? Because if not, well, then you could have a disaster.

But please do remember, I am not sniggering at Experian’s error, if so it is, and in a forthcoming mailing I’ll confess my greatest mistake. It is just the nature of the error that bemuses me.

To stay in touch with all the news in direct marketing, please email direct-mail-secrets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Tony

Hamilton House Mailings plc reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB. Phone 01536 399 000.

Posted in Uncategorised | Print | Comments Off

14/02/2008 by Tony Attwood.

The amount of mail being received by schools towards the end of last year was far less than most people imagine, according to a survey by Hamilton House Mailings plc.

Many heads of departments received at most one direct mail advertisement per week. The survey was conducted during the Autumn Term 2007 and analysed the direct mail received by both primary and secondary schools in England.

Most notable was the huge variation in the amount of mail received in different subject areas.

While some subject co-ordinators and heads of department could go for weeks without receiving any advertisements, a small number of teachers got 3 or more a week. Interestingly the teachers who received the most mail were not the same ones as received the most mail two or three years ago.

Music teachers, for example, are now among the most heavily mailed in schools, whereas three years ago they were receiving very little mail.

Despite the fact that Hamilton House has regularly warned about the fact that headteachers in secondary schools get large amounts of mail that is screened out by the school administrators or the Head’s PA, there has been no decline in this area, with heads getting 10 times or more as much direct mail as the most heavily mailed head of department.

While it is worth mailing headteachers on certain occasions, most of the time the mail is better directed elsewhere.

The Report Direct mail to schools – A survey of the mail reaching schools in the Autumn term 2007 is available as a download from the Library section of the Hamilton House website for £5.00 plus VAT at http://tinyurl.com/2dqunt A full list of all the articles on the site is shown at http://www.hamilton-house.com/gateways/articles.html

Posted in Uncategorised | Print | Comments Off