Tony Attwood's Blog

In America they have this thing called Cyber Monday when half the retailers in the country email everyone to get them to go on line and buy. It was November 30

And now they have just discovered that around 25% of the messages did not hit the in boxes.

There was a massive wave of offers and specials sent out by firms. Delivery queues became packed, spam filters went on high alert thinking it was a world wide attack, and started deleting messages.

been disagreement over how much improvement there was vs. 2008, writes Retailer Daily.

On the Friday before (known as Black Friday, but I don’t know why), 69% of major retailers sent at least one promotional email, up from 59% in 2008. On the monday 71% sent at least one promotional email, making it both the most popular email day of all-time.

This is of course really silly.

Going out on the day everyone else goes into email does you no good at all.

Sending out the same sort of message as everyone else does you no good at all.

Mailing to everyone with the same message is silly – people need to be segmented.

Subscribers need to be offered content of use and interest to them. That is why a web site such as www.blog.schools.co.uk has built up a monthly audience of over 20,000 unique readers in just 2 months, and yet contains nothing other than adverts. The adverts are content that people search for, and the people who get on that site get as much value from the site as they do from their emails.

If you would like to talk about setting up blogs or writing emails – or come to that why it gets cold in December, give me a call on 01536 399 000. Always nice to hear from you.

Different people do different things on the first of the month – and indeed for many people it is just another day with no significance.

For me it is a moment of some excitement because I check the total number of hits that our various blogs and web sites have had that month.

I know that will seem strange, because it is something that many people would not think about – indeed it is clear when one looks at them that many web sites have never been changed in months, even years.

On the other hand I micro manage some of our web sites and blogs – not all of them I admit but some of them – and when I am doing that I study each day and each month’s figures with care to see the impact each story had.

Today is a good day chez Tony Attwood because my biggest blog (set up specifically to sell one book) has taken another step up and got 120,000 individual readers in November. (We classify an individual reader as a person who has been onto the site twice in the month but not stayed for more than an hour – that way we cut out all the auto processes that can artificially affect numbers).

That figure I can understand because the site deals with a popular everyday subject. More interesting are the figures on two smaller sites.

One deals with events in the world of one football club 100 years ago – and I have to say you can’t get much more obscure than that. After 3 months that has hit 20,000 readers in one month.

And lastly a site that just puts up copies of the email adverts we send out to schools. I only started this in September, just to see what happens, without any expectation. Again, after 2.5 months we have hit a readership of 20,000 individual readers in a month.

What does this show?

Certainly that if you want to reach a wide audience it can be done if you nuture and work on your blog. But even specialist areas can raise an audience on a blog.

I am more than happy to talk about what and how we have done at HHM in this regard – give me a call. 01536 399 000 or Tony@hamilton-house.com

Tony Attwood