Tony Attwood's Blog

One of the facts that is sometimes forgotten about sending out emails is that service providers through whose systems emails pass, rate senders by how likely they are to be sending out junk.

In other words they allocate the sender a ’reputation’ mark.  The more they think you are sending out a load of tosh, to lots of people who maybe don’t want it, the more they are likely to block what you send out.

What they also do is check the content, looking for words which are directly associated with those sending out unwanted emails.  Get too many of those and again you could be in trouble.

As I have written before this can land everyone in difficulty – for as matters stand, a long piece which frequently gives the name of one of the people who is standing for leadership of the Labour Party, and who was previously Secretary of State for Education, and whose name has five words in it, could well result in you being given a bad mark and put on the naughty step (as it were).

ISPs are quite secretive about exactly how they handle such issues, so if you are sending out emails from your own email address over and over you need to take care.

The problem is that when there is a problem, it can escalate.  If you get caught out by filters on individual’s computers you can find that you end up in their non-read boxes.  And if that happens a lot, then it happens more.  The system spirals out of control – and all because you wanted to talk about the Labour leadership contest!

One of the other problems is that different organisations are using different systems, so there is no telling quite what is going to happen anywhere at any time.

The fact is that the best way to overcome these problems is to send out really engaging text that is not full of exclamation marks, capital letters and the email equivalent of shouting.  The more you are writing as a conversation the more you are likely to get the email through and into the inbox you want to reach.

The best group to reach are subscribers – people who have genuinely opted into your emails, rather than failed to opt out.

If you are using your own list, do everything you can to get as many people engaged with you as possible.   Stop giving people instant and immediate offers and instead try talking with them.  And best of all get rid of the people who have never opened an email you have sent and never clicked through.

If you would like to consider sending out emails to your own list via Hamilton House’s system, we’re happy to talk about this.  Not only can we send out the emails but we can also advise on the best way to write the emails, to maximise their chances of getting through.

There is more about this on http://www.emails.gs/ownlists.html or call 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

Occasionally I get calls asking how to run a viral campaign, and I do my best to explain, not just how to do it, but the problems that can arise.

“Viral” itself just means that lots of people look at your advert, video, site, article or whatever, and are so taken by it they pass it on to others.   Many virals are on You Tube – a film clip which is something that might not be allowable on TV is put up and everyone sends the link to everyone else, and everyone has a good laugh.

But firms are finding that such ads often fail to get any sort of leap in sales – billions of people watch the ad, but nothing much happens.

Old Spice and Evian have both had huge hits with their viral ads (reaching over 100 million views) only to find that they then lose market share!  Quite how or why is unknown (at least to me) but it happens.

Hamilton House doesn’t do TV, but we produce a lot of written material, and that is just as capable of being forwarded as a link to a video.  The number of hits might have quite a few noughts deleted from the end of what you get on a video campaign, but if you get the right piece on the web, and the word starts to flow, then you can get a lot of hits, and some good sales too.

Virals, be they articles, or videos generally have these factors in common.

1. The content unusual, or hard to find

2. In video the situation is normally funny, and surprising, sometimes shocking.  In writing it can be the same, or it can be highly informative for the minority at whom it is targeted.

3. Overall the message makes an impact and makes people want to send it on.  This can be the same as people sharing a joke (the joke teller goes up in the estimation of the listeners for knowing and telling such a good joke) or it can be that the information really empowers the reader who wants to pass it on.

You can see that doing a serious viral is hard – not least because of point 3 – people have to want to pass it on.

For example, if you read a free article on the internet that told you how to increase your profits in your particular industry, would you pass it on to your competitors?  Probably not – that’s the problem.

Thus just knowing that text virals can work is one thing – but making all three parts of the viral message work is another.

I’ve been working on it in two ways.  One is with humorous adverts and blogs (you might have seen www.blog.toppled.info which is a site containing a few of the humorous ads Hamilton House has done – many of which have become viral, although in a small way).  The other involves working with emotions.

As an example of the emotion approach, I experimented on one of my football blog sites.  The site relates to Arsenal football club, and a moment in its history which is seen by many fans of rival clubs as being a perfect example of this club’s cheating behaviour.  My article says, actually it was the other way round – Arsenal was behaving perfectly, while everyone else was cheating.

That may seem highly esoteric, but the short piece I have written has been downloaded and copied among the supporters time and again, because these arguments are important to such supporters.  It has worked, and it helps sell copies of a novel I published last year.

Convoluted yes, but it proves the point – it is not just humour but also emotion that can drive virals.

If you want to see the article I have referred to here it is at http://www.blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk/2010/02/02/the-fixed-promotion-the-corruption-and-the-match-fixing-how-the-football-league-does-business/ Remember it is written for an emotional and biased audience – but that’s the point!

If you want to know more, call me on 01536 399 013.

Tony Attwood

Following the last round of upgrades and changes by Google, experts in the field of search engine optimisation have been mulling over the effect of the changes.

One of the main areas of interest has been that sites that have a more diversified pattern of high ranking links from other sites to their own site are doing better.

The feeling is that Google is that if you have links coming in from specific pages of a web site, they are more likely to be real, (rather than people just saying “hey can I swap page links with you) if they come from a specific page.

So if I writing about different styles of dancing and I link from my article to a specific page on someone else’s site which exemplifies the point I am making, then that link in to that site is of extra value.

Now if I am writing for a page with a page ranking of four (which is good and means you are probably getting 200,000 visits or more in a month) that is going to help the site I link to.

There’s a further point – sites that regularly produce new content and then receive links from other sites turn out to be the most successful.

So it is good to be in touch with people who might link to your site, and encourage them to do so – especially if they will directly link into a page.

Work of this nature is part of the Velocity programme within Hamilton House.  If you would like to know more please visit www.velocity.ac or call me on 01536 399 013.

I wrote the other day about the fact that many of the people who talk to me about marketing don’t have an overall plan.   Their focus is entirely on one element of the issue: the media.

This is, I believe due to the fact that many companies that sell mailing lists push their mailing and email lists to the exclusion of the rest of marketing – leading to a view that if you just get the medium right, everything else will be fine.

To my mind marketing is not complex, but it does consist of three inter-connected sections, and if one ignores any of these sections the resultant marketing is far less effective than it might otherwise be.

To make this dead simple the three part approach can be seen as

1,  Making the product’s benefits plain, and making it easy to understand and easy to get going

2.  Taking the message to potential customers in a way that makes them read your message and instantly understand what you are talking about.

3.  Staying in touch with existing clients, ensuring they are happy with you, getting them to pass the message on to others, and encouraging them to return to you to buy more.

This is what we set out to do with Velocity – the programme where we work with clients on a month by month basis.    We would never claim that this is some form of incredibly complex marketing – it is not.  But because of the pressures of everyday work it is easy to forget the three stages and just focus on one of them.   If you find this approach interesting do have a look at http://www.velocity.ac/business.html which sets out some of our ideas – or give me a call on 01536 399 013 and I’ll be happy to talk this through.  No obligation, no charge – always happy to chat.

Establish a plan.

That sounds stupid and obvious, but it is the one thing that (in my experience) many companies that are struggling a little at the moment, don’t do.

I am not a believer in a detailed plan stretching on for the rest of the year which can only be changed in the case of emergencies, but I do believe in knowing the sort of approach one is adopting.

So, for example, here’s a simple plan (it doesn’t apply to everyone but it is an example of the sort of thing that I mean).

1. Send out emails to get people to request a free sample, a trial run, a catalogue, a report, or anything else free.
   
2. Take those people’s email addresses and drop them into a program that does bulk emailing.
3. Email those people every week with more information, advice, guidance, tips, and of course adverts relating to your product.
4. Based on the success of a), do further promotions of free materials in order to get success.

That’s a very simple plan, and obviously not one that is viable for every business, but it is a plan that can work, and work very well. Of course, make sure that your data you collect is secure with a quick download of a suitable antivirus and installing it on your work computer. It would really put a stop in the works of instigating your marketing plan if your potential customers'/advocates' personal emails are hacked. If in doubt, get more advice on building an email list from as many different sources as possible.

There are hundreds of variations, and hundreds of different types of plans, but in my view the key issue is often not a case of which plan, but the fact that there is no consistent marketing plan at all.

But here’s a challenge – if you would like to talk about developing a marketing plan, and if you have a spare 15 minutes, give me a call. In complete confidence we can have a chat and I’ll give you my thoughts. Consider it a free consultancy offer. (I regret to say that sometimes I am out of the office or in meetings, but if I am not here I will call you back – promise!)

You never know – it might result in you getting one little nugget of information that really could change the way you see marketing.

And if not, you’ve only lost 15 minutes.

A set of studies examined by the web site Marketing Vox has revealed that the prime reason that people stop reading and ultimately unsubscribe from email lists has little to do with concerns about privacy but a lot to do with a thorough dislike of irrelevant emails.

While it might be amusing to receive the occasional piece (as I did today) that says:

Forgive my indignation if this message comes to you as a surprise and may offend your personality for contacting you without your prior consent and writing through this channel. I got your contact from a professional database found on the internet while searching for a reliable and honest person that will assist me to safeguard fund into an account. I was divinely inspired to pick your name among all other names found in the database.

in the end such rubbish becomes a bit dull, and one tries to get rid of it.

So once again we can see that the key is how one writes – make it interesting so that people want to read it – even occasionally – and they will stay on your email list. But if you become tedious or repetitive they won’t.

It is not the case that each and every email has to appeal to the reader – but the following rules really do seem to apply…

1. Some of the emails really do have to appeal to the readers.
   
2. All of the emails need to be written in a way that makes the reader feel interested in staying on the list – even if this email is not really relevant.
   
3. There needs to be a personal element in the emails – and that does not mean using mechanical personalisation systems. It means recognising the interest of the people on your list.

As always if you want to talk about this, do give me a call on 01536 399 013 or drop me an email at Tony@hamilton-house.com