13/02/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Each day I take a small number of calls from people who tell me about their marketing, and who ask me to suggest what else they might do, or how they might change what they are doing in order to up their profits.

It’s part of the work I really enjoy, because each company is, of course, unique. There’s no charge for the service and there’s no obligation on the caller to become a customer of ours, nor for them to take any notice of my comments (although fortunately for me some of them do become clients as a result of the chat.)

Anyway, since the start of the year I have been recording the subjects we have talked about - and three topics come up over and over again. I thought I’d break away from the daily round of comments about how the industry is growing and what Postcomm are doing, and look instead at these three areas. Here’s the first one….

….which is database.

Databases are considered rather dull by many firms. They are there, but not really used - very few people who call me actually handle the wretched thing themselves.

But tweaking the database can, in many cases raise profits considerably. For a small investment many firms have been able to double their response rates.

What happens is that someone (we offer to do it, but the company can do it themselves if they wish) needs to analyse the mailing list that has been used against the orders coming in.

So, to take a simple example - imagine you are selling to accountants. You have a list of 10,000 accountants who you mail from time to time. 1% of them reply each time. An analysis of the master list and the buyers might turn up this interesting stat: 10% of accountancy firms on the list have over 10 staff, but 50% of the purchases are made by firms with over 10 staff.

This can have all sorts of implications. It can mean that one has to send something different to the little firms. It can mean that one needs to mail the smaller firms less, and the bigger firms more. Whatever it means, it is true that the mailer could cut the mailing costs by 90% but still retain 50% of the sales - which would mean a huge hike in profits although a downturn in turnover.

Another interesting approach with a database is to analyse it against a recognised master list. Again taking accountants, this could be put against the standard Thompson list, and the results might show that 30% of the addresses are wrong (that is they have gone away and are perhaps being forwarded from a previous address), 10% are duplicated, 15% have the wrong postcode (and so are not getting full mailsort discount), 5% of which are not accountancy firms at all. 40% might have phone numbers of faxes missing, 30% might have the wrong employee size, and so on and on.

The implication is that if one can sort all this out, the cost of each mailing is going to go down. There is actually no cost for doing this sort of analysis - although there is a charge for making the corrections.

What is so interesting is that most firms that use databases do so without undertaking any of these analysis - the lists just get older and no one really checks how good the lists are, or whether it is necessary to change the list, or just mail part of it. I guess because it all seems to be too much of a difficult task to look at - and there is always something else to do!

I’ll move on to the second topic shortly - but in the meantime if you want to have a chat about any aspect of your direct marketing, do give me a call on 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

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

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11/02/2008 by Tony Attwood.

The Business List Audit which was created by the DMA to try and overcome the high levels of “gone aways” found in B2B lists, has collapsed.

The DMA claimed that only 12 out of 250 firms joined the scheme after it was launched 5 years ago. The scheme included the need for list companies to provide samples of their list to the DMA compliance team for verification.

A significant part of the problem - and one that the DMA was warned about when it launched the scheme - was that just checking the accuracy of a list was only one tiny part of the B2B direct mail issue. There is certainly an argument to be made that proper guarantees by the list supplier is a big issue. Further there is the question as to whether an individual list is really right for the promotion.

Hardly any companies that sell lists offer to look at the promotion that is going out, in order to see that it makes sense when used against the list. Thus the postal system is filled with badly written and/or wrongly targeted pieces - and the DMA Audit system said nothing on these issues.

To blow a trumpet I have sitting next to me as I write this, Hamilton House always offers to take a look at promotional copy and comment on it in terms of its impact to the chosen market, and the chance of success with the selected list. Most of our clients express surprise at this extra free service - which is very much not the norm across the DMA. If you want to use the service do give us a call on 01536 399 000 - or just email me the piece with details of the list you are thinking of using and your phone number, and I will call you back.

Tony Attwood

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04/02/2008 by Tony Attwood.

The most effective medium I have ever found for cold approaches is phone-mail-phone. You phone the person you want to get, check the name and tell him/her that you are going to send a piece in. No long chat, no detail, no questions other than checking the name and postcode. Use a native English speaker who knows enough about the UK to know how to pronounce such words as “Bicester” and “Leicester”.

Then send the direct mail, with its really exciting headline that forces everyone to read on.

Then phone up and say, “hope you got it - it had the headline xxxx”. (Don’t say, “did you get…” because the person will not remember that way - but if your headline is wonderful it will work.)

That works - but the problems are

a) it is expensive

b) it can slow you down, because you are sending out only as fast as you can do two phone calls.

I mention this because the National Client Email Marketing Survey has reported that 39% of firms think direct mail and telemarketing the most successful campaign media that can work alongside email marketing. 34% putting integrated email and telemarketing (without direct mail) in second place.

However, the DMA claim that on average companies only had email addresses for 50% of their database.

The DMA study also found email delivery rates were “slightly down” from last year, which it said was due to increased volumes and heightened competition in the sector. (Personally I think it is down to the fact that 98% of email is spam, and so the amount of stuff going straight to the junk box is rising).

There’s more about direct marketing on www.hamilton-house.com -

Tony Attwood

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30/01/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Being a fair minded and reasoned sort of bloke I tend to have some sympathy for Royal Mail in December, what with all these people living in Northumbria, Tyrone and the Scilly Isles posting Christmas cards to their long lost friends in Northumbria, Tyrone and the Scilly Isles. Tricky business this postal delivery.

But then I thought, surely by now they have had enough time to get the postal service at Christmas right - what with technology and everything. I thought this particularly when I saw the Royal Mail delivery report for December 2007. It reads like this

First class delivered next day 36.6%
First class delivered two days after posting 26.8%
First class delivered three days after posting 26.8%
First class delivered four days after posting 9.8%

And I thought, that’s not really on - not after 100 years or more or Christmas cards and the like.

But then I thought - what about Amazon? Just before Christmas there was a big news story about how 133% of all people who had ordered stuff from web sites were not getting it by Christmas. Oh no, said Amazon, 99.5% of our stuff has arrived on time.

I asked some friends and they said, “no we ain’t had our stuff” - and I looked a bit further. One friend really looked into this, trying to get the delivery sorted. Day after day, before and after Xmas, the courier promised delivery, and day after day it never arrived. But when Amazon were phoned the answer was, “it has been delivered”.

“Oh no it hasn’t” said my friend
“Oh yes it has” said Amazon

I was expecting them to say “It’s behind you” but they missed that one. But in this case, in my tiny sample, Amazon helped up its delivery figures by taking the fact that the delivery firm SAID that they were delivering, as a statement of delivery.

So, just to give plenty of warning, here’s my January suggestion: We will have Christmas this December. People will post stuff. It is possible to prepare for this, now that I have told you in advance. Can the couriers get ready and continue with a normal service this year?

You can keep up to date with direct marketing information by reading the daily DMS news service. It is free and you can leave at any time. Send an email to direct-mail-secrets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

You can find out a lot more about making direct marketing work for you on www.hamilton-house.com

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

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