Tony Attwood's Blog

There’s an interesting article on Brand Republic’s web site which takes up the notion that I’ve been kicking around for a while that the way in which people read advertisements has changed dramatically recently. As such we need to change the way we write ads, if we want to keep up our response rates.
In the article they quote Marco Bertini, professor of marketing at London Business School, as saying ‘Consumers are getting more creative in finding value-for-money solutions to problems and are looking at alternative categories.’

They also quote Chris Sanderson, director of strategy and insight at trend analysts The Future Laboratory, describes the current economy as being in a state of ‘cataclysmic change,’ adding ‘Once we are through this recession, things will never go back to how they were,’ warns Sanderson.

They also quote Malcolm McDonald, emeritus professor of marketing at Cranfield University School of Management, saying that ‘The best companies are focusing on core markets and doing genuine 80/20 segmentation, not just slashing and burning. They are spending less, but more effectively, and will get a higher share and stronger brand.’

All this is interesting, but none of it goes into the issue of exactly how the language of advertising has changed in these changed times, and that’s a shame, because to me that is the key issue. The old notion of shouting 70% OFF!!! just doesn’t work in this climate. Instead people who buy, whether it is as consumers or within their employment expect to have discussions and debate with those who wish to sell to them. They want to be treated as adults not as little children who will be impressed by the word NEW!!!!!!!!

They do not, and will not, do as they are told. And why should they? Doing as they are told resulted in the biggest economic collapse since the 1920s, so they have learned the lesson. The man or woman buying for his company has more sense than the average financial adviser.

This is why it is vital to write advertisement in a new way – a way that treats the reader as a sensible person with whom one can have a decent discussion. Anything less results in the direct mail and email dropping straight into the bin.

This article first appeared on Creative Direct. If you would like to receive one or two emails from this news service each week, free of charge, just send an email to CreativeDirect-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and then reply to the return email. You can leave at any time by just sending a second email

Source of quote article:

http://www.brandrepublic.com/BrandRepublicNews/News/901388/Marketers-react-era-austerity-takes-hold/?DCMP=EMC-DailyNewsBulletin

According to Nielsons, the average American visited 111 internet domains in March. He/she also went to 2,554 web pages in and spent an average of 56 seconds, on each page.

The problem is that the activity of each individual is very different – from the guy in the basement who is on the internet all day every day to the person up in the hills who doesn’t have mains electricity What’s more, the type of site varies deeply from (for example) The Guardian to pornographic sites (not that I have any knowledge of the latter you understand).

But, it is interesting – this 56 seconds. What the figures suggest is that people move around at high speed from place to place – and we still have that age old problem not only of getting them to the site, but also getting them to stay there.

There are all sorts of ways of doing this, and it does very much depend on the type of product you have and the type of audience you attract. One way that works for my company involves the in-depth article written with a bit of personal input – but this is not relevant for everyone.

What does strike me as important however is that one should focus on the issue in relation to one’s web site. I get the feeling that for many web sites no one has bothered to focus on them at all – that somehow they have evolved on the basis that “we must tell the reader this” – multipled by ten.

So my suggestion is that one looks at the web site and says:

What are we doing to grab the reader’s attention?

What are we doing to keep the reader here once he/she has arrived?

At least by asking the questions one starts to take a step forward.

Tony
01536 399 000

The factor that marks the current market place is that some firms are finding their advertising is becoming less and less productive, while other firms are finding that they are getting better and better response rates from each advert.

I’ve been looking into this, and have reached the conclusion that companies that change their style of advertising to overcome growing customer resistance are doing well.

The whole argument is set out in a short report which is part of the new “How To” series of reports being prepared by Hamilton House Mailings. You can read the report by clicking here.

Tony

I don’t think there has ever been a moment like this. Within the space of a year, direct adverts (both mail and email) which worked, now not only don’t work, they also turn the reader off.

This has occurred because of the overproduction of mail and email by the finance industry – people quite naturally resent what the bankers have done to them, and so anything that seems to use the same style of advertising as they saw for years on end from Capital One and the rest is now a big turn off.

In fact if you send out an advert in the old style not only do you not get sales, you actually get annoyance. In short, the world of commonsense advertising is dead.

To help overcome this problem I’ve produced a brief report which highlights ten factors that were at the heart of the old form of advertising, and ten factors that represent the new approach to advertising.

The article is one of a number that are being published free of charge in the Hamilton House “How To” series. You can read this article “How to write advertising that works today” by going to the How To site.

Hope you find it interesting – and if you have any comments do drop me an email – Tony at Hamilton-house.com or phone 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

OPEN RATES

These are the most widely quoted of all e-mail statistics, and yet they can present rather unreliable figures. To give but one example, consider the person who receives emails via Outlook Express, and who has the system set so that he/she can read the email without clicking on it. This person might well read the whole email, and yet not be recorded as having “opened” the email.

Thus open rates always under-estimate the number of people who have read all or part of the email. Unfortunately different open rate programs tends to handle this sort of anomaly in different ways.

In the chart below we give some figures from campaigns recently run that use our software – but beware of anyone who says, “we get much higher than this” – they might be using software that measures something else.

If you would like to read more on open rates, including a full analysis of how and why they can give misleading results please do take a look at http://www.hamilton-house.com/free%20reports/OpenRates.htm

CLICK THROUGHS

The click through rates (the measurement of the number of people who click on a link to a web site) are more reliable.

Click through figures are given as a percentage of those who received the mailing, not a percentage of those who are shown in the Open Rate

THE RESULTS

Using general email addresses into organisations (in our case schools) the best open rate we got as 20.3% and the best click through was 1.6%.

However the average click through was only 0.4% – and we believe this change reflects not primarily on the product on offer, but rather the way the email was written.

But when we started to use genuine opt-in lists (ie not those where people just gave permission for their email address to be on a list, but people who themselves sent in an email and said “put me on your list” the results shot up.

The top open rate was a staggering 86% and the top click through rate was 40%.

Of course every list is different and every campaign is different – but if nothing else this shows the incredible difference between serious “opt in” lists, and those where general addresses are mailed. It also shows what is possible, if the way the email is presented is changed.

If you would like to know more about our email services please click here. Or call Hamilton House on 01536 399 000.