06/04/2008 by Tony Attwood.

In early 2001 a small group of direct mailers began contributing to a unique project which aimed to reform the way in which direct mail was understood.

The group’s aim was to turn direct mail into a science – a science which would allow users both to make much more accurate predictions as to which mailshot would have the best results than had hitherto been the case.

Up to this point most writers on direct mail had adopted a “common sense” approach – indeed one of the most popular books on direct mail at the time was called Commonsense Direct Marketing by Drayton Bird.  There was nothing new in this: the phrase “common sense” was also used by marketing writers such as Stefan Engeseth, Brenda Adbilla,  Steve W. Martin, Dave Majure and others.  In fact it is one of the most common phrases to be found in marketing books of all types.

Many of those of us who formed the Creative Direct group in 2001 had two worries about this approach.  One was that common sense arguments are in some circumstances unhelpful – as in the fact that common sense tells us that the earth is flat and that sun goes round the earth.  It takes scientific method and analysis to show us that this is untrue.

The other was that the common sense approach leaves no room for those areas of direct marketing that have already been explored by science – most notably the psychology of perception.   Common sense gives instant answers – leaving the scientist struggling in the wake as he/she laboriously makes predictions and follows the scientific method.

We therefore started on a long journey, pulling together such scientific study as there had been, testing the claims of gurus and experts, and basically looking for the science in direct marketing, rather than the common sense in direct marketing.

Many of our results have been written up on the theory of direct mail web site www.theory.bz and I am glad to say that almost at the work started to produce results.  Here’s just one (very much abbreviated) example of how the scientific approach takes on the common sense approach.

Two leaflets were produced advertising a book and were mailed through random mailings on the same day to the target audience.   Mailing A contained a colourful leaflet that had colour images of the cover next to the text.   Mailing B consisted of a simple A4 sheet of text in black, on yellow paper with no colour illustration.   The text of mailings A and B was identical in each case.  (Numerous other tests were carried out to ensure we were isolating individual criteria – I won’t bore you with all the details here).

The “common sense” prediction was that mailing with the colour would get a better response rate, on the grounds that colour looks better, gives a more professional feel and more confidence to the reader that the person selling the book is more reliable.

The scientific evidence drawn from studies in the psychology of perception suggested that the non-colour piece would do better on the grounds that colour can interfere with the way the brain of these particular readers would handle the message being put across.

Now of course the scientific argument here is much more complex than that – and even the detailed review of the science written up on the Theory website is itself just a summary.  As a result many “common sense” writers have just shrugged off the scientific approach, deliberately or accidentally being highly selective in the way they report the experiments, and dismissing what was months of work in a sentence.  It’s unfortunate that this has happened, but there’s not too much we can do about that.

However for those who are interested, the fact is that the common sense predictions that colour would work better were proven wrong, and the scientific prediction was proven to be right.    The same has happened over and over again.  It doesn’t happen in every case – there are exceptions, and the theory successfully predicts what those exceptions are – and why they are exceptions.

In doing this work what we have found is that on occasion by moving from the common sense to the scientific approach it is possible to double response rates – quite often it is possible to do far more than that.

The attempt to develop a theory of direct mail is on-going, and if you know of scientific experimental research that is relevant, please do drop me a line (tony@hamilton-house.com). In the meanwhile I hope you find the information on the Theory site (www.theory.bz) of interest.

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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.

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21/03/2008 by Tony Attwood.

I had an email from Drayton Bird recently which really had me worried    Here is the opening

Do you recall an old TV campaign for Barclays? It must have cost millions, and featured Samuel L. Jackson walking though the country accompanied by a most appealing pig.

Being a bit thick, I didn’t see what this had to do with banking.

So I asked an audience of 1,500 salespeople if they thought it would persuade a single person to switch to Barclays. One person did. Most of the rest thought it would do nothing - or actually lose customers.

Then I asked a class of marketing students what they thought. Not one could even understand it - and even if they had, the most lucrative customers for any bank are middle-aged or older.

Now I remember seeing the ads, and particularly remember the first time I saw final one in that series, in the cinema.  Samuel L Jackson says to his wife, “Honey its your birthday.  What do you want.  Name it you can have it.  Do you want a diamond ring?”  She says no.  “Do you want a gold necklace?”  She says, no.  “Well how about a world cruise?”  She says, no.  “So what do you want?”   She says, “A Divorce.”  He says, “Hell I wasn’t thinking of spending that much.”

Half the cinema audience collapsed on the floor - hoots of laughter.  Cheers, clapping.   the other half sat stony faced. 

So what does that tell us?   That Drayton Bird and I have a different sense of humour?   Yes, but more than that.  No advert appeals to everyone.  Although Drayton Bird and the other gurus love to give long chats and analogies about ads, it always seems to come down  to the same thing - “these are the golden rules of marketing”.

I admit I have done the same on the site www.theory.bz - but the first rule that we came up with was that you have to get inside the head of the audience you want to communicate with.   Barclays clearly has customers from all walks of life, and those cinema / TV adverts were aimed at one group.  Maybe they had done some work and found that they were under-reaching people with a sense of humour.   Or people who had been divorced.  Or even people with quite a bit of money.  Whatever it was, they made those ads to reach one group, and that means that other groups would not get the ad.

It’s an area I feel quite strongly about because I use a direct mail technique which does make some people send me anonymous letters saying that they will never ever use my company, and that I am a total idiot, and that no one will ever buy anything from me because I don’t know how to sell.    Fortunately for me I have not aimed my adverts at people who would send anonymous letters.

I don’t think Barclays are the idiots Drayton Bird thinks they are.   I would suggest no ad appeals to everyone, and the prime rule of advertising is, know what your audience wants to see and read.  You have to get inside the head of your intended audience.

Which leads me back to the most worrying thing in Drayton Bird’s piece: Then I asked a class of marketing students what they thought. Not one could even understand it - and even if they had, the most lucrative customers for any bank are middle-aged or older.

What the hell does that mean?  The middle aged or older people don’t have a sense of humour?  Or that we don’t have the intellect to understand a piece of surreal advertising?

I am starting to get very insulted here.

If you’d like to discuss the point, call me on 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

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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.

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