Tony Attwood's Blog

Here’s a story that has recently emerged about HP (the printer company). They sent out two emails to subscribers who hadn’t opened or clicked through on recent marketing emails, in order to try and get them active again.

The subject line for each message was included the subscriber’s name (as in “Tony, are you still around?”)

The text itself was chatty, informal, no shouting with exclamation marks.

The design, font etc were different from other HP emails – something that I have recommended a few times – don’t keep churning out the same thing. Vary the text style, and if you have design, vary that too.

The opening email had a 5% discount offer with a deadline, which drove people to the website.

The second email offered a 10% discount and access to online classes and this linked to a relevant section on the HP website.

Both emails also included a headline at the top – again something we’ve been pushing from HHM – it certainly can work.

There was the usual privacy policy and unsubscribe button at the end.

And according to reports it worked.

It is in fact another case study that shows that your lists of old subscribers who simply don’t read or reply can be activated, providing you stop SHOUTING SALES MESSAGES at them (not that you personally would of course) and find other things to say to them.

In short: same old story. If you can start telling people interesting things in your email, they are likely to move away from ignoring you, and start becoming customers.

If you would like to know more about this approach in general, or would like to talk this through, give me a call on 01536 399 000.

Tony
This message first appeared on the DMS daily news service – if you would like to rececive daily emails on topics like this, free of charge, just send an email to direct-mail-secrets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

If you have a promotion that you want to send out to customers and potential customers, you are always very welcome to send it to me, and I will call you back with my thoughts.

And when that happens one thing I often find myself recommending is that you keep the leaflet you have produced exactly as it is, but add a sales letter over the top.

The reason is simple – sales letters can be changed readily, they don’t involve huge design costs, and they can have an enormous impact on the sales by setting the reader in the right frame of mind to take in the brochure or catalogue.

Of course not every sales letter works, and I often find myself having conversations with people who tell me that they have “tried the sales letter approach and it didn’t work”. I can well believe that because getting the sales letter right is an art form in itself and it took me several years to perfect.

If you would like to know how to write the perfect sales letter and how it can double the response rate of your next mailshot, please take a look at this link

If that link does not work, go to www.hamilton-house.com and click on the How To option on the left, and then scroll down the list of articles until you find “How to write the perfect sales letter.”

It will take about 10 minutes to read – and could indeed change your whole approach to marketing.

Hamilton House is offering a 20% discount on all its direct mail work to B2B and educational addresses – that’s 20% off the mailing list, envelopes, labels and labour.

The only condition is that we are able to complete the work by the end of August. As long as that is the case then the discount applies. We can then store your work until you want it dispatched – which can be as late as the end of September.

To talk through the details just call us on 01536 399 000.

Tony