17/04/2008 by Tony Attwood.

According to the IPA’s Bellwether Report, direct marketing is showing its biggest decline in eight years. 

Budgets for catalogues and direct mail dropped 6.3% in the last quarter. 

But this does not actually spell new disasters.  The biggest cut-backs, not surprisingly, are in the financial sector.   And as a result everyone - consumers and businesses - will be getting less mail.

Since the higher the volume of advertising the lower the response rates (something that is true in DM, TV, posters, radio, magazines and anything else you can think of) this must mean that for everyone left in the business, response rates will go up.

And that makes this exactly the right time to mail.

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10/04/2008 by Tony Attwood.

We know that 98% of emails are spam.  A couple of months back some of our machines got a virus which meant that when we did a google search instead of getting the full range of google listings we just got highly selected ones - mostly those with malware on them.    

Now it seems spammers are using emails that include a link that appears to point to a Google page, but instead directs users to a site that then tries to install malware on their computer.   The URL begins with www.google.com - so we tend not to look.  Apparently the same thing happens with MSN and Yahoo sites.  The only way to check seems to be to point the mouse at the URL and look at the long link behind it, and then avoid it.

But of course most of us don’t even check who we are sending our emails to - we just click reply, press the button…

In short, we’ve been trapped. 

Just thought you would like to know.  Normal chirpy happy service resumes shortly.  In the meanwhile you can stay up to date with the latest on direct marketing by joining our news group.  Just email Direct-mail-secrets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

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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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