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Just when I had a clever idea…

Posted in Uncategorized by Tony on 28 Feb 2011

I‘ve mentioned content farms before – the sites that have millions of low grade articles on and which shoot up the rankings simply because they have so much content.

If you have never seen one, enter a question like “Who invented the cupboard?” on Google and you’ll find them.  Or at least you have been able to until now.

I’ve been adding my own answers to questions relating to products and services that my company (and client companies) have an interest in – promoting us and our clients along the way.   Not a major issue in the overall scheme of things, but it helps get the name about on high profile sites.

Anyway, Google, has now said it is cracking down on content farms because it is worried about how they skew search with low-quality results.  I think this is the first time that the quality of content (other than directly copied content – which I will come back to shortly in a note about scraper sites) has become an issue in where relation to where a site appears on Google.

In a blog Google said that this is a change that will impact 11.8% of its queries. Besides reducing rankings for  sites which give little additional information users, the change will also provide better rankings for high-quality sites. In short, some sites will go up and some will go down.

So Google didn’t exactly say it was targeting content farms, although that’s what most of us now guess.

If you would like to talk to us about ways of raising the profile of your web site through expanding the original content please do get in touch.  01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood – you can follow us @HHMailings on Twitter.

Hamilton House Mailings Ltd reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB.  Phone 01536 399 000.

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Write to one, not to many

Posted in Uncategorized by Tony on 24 Feb 2011

When writing an email, a brochure or a letter I believe one should always consider that you are writing to one person, not to hundreds or thousands.   Think about that individual – the background, interests, what he/she is doing on opening the mail, etc.

In my view the worst thing you can ever say in a direct mail letter is “some of you may know”.  You have to be saying to people – “I am writing to you personally about your interests and your views.”

Now of course you don’t know the individual you are writing to, so you have to make all sorts of assumptions – and these assumptions can be wrong.   For those people to whom you write and about whom you make the wrong assumptions, the letter is just another piece of junk.  But for the people to whom you write and for whom you get the assumptions just right, the piece is perfect – and you are highly likely to get a response.

Let us imagine you are writing to grandparents.   In terms of the relationship they have with their grandchildren you could assume

a) they only get to see them a couple of times a year

b) they see them very regularly

Your job is to sell gifts that grandparents can give to their 4 to 7 year old grandchildren.   You could write in any one of three ways:

First – you could say to yourself, “I don’t know how often they see them, so I will say, “Whether you see your grandchild once a week or once a year…”

Second you could say to yourself, “I will assume that a) above is true, so I am going to write about them from that point of view.  I will say, ‘when you only see your grandchild occasionally you want to make sure that the little gift you give really means something’…”

Third you could say to yourself, “I will assume b) is true, and so write ‘Even though you see your grandchild regularly, it is good on occasion to make your meeting that little bit extra special by taking along…”

My view is that a campaign using the first method will have lower success rate.  Although it meets all possibilities it doesn’t feel personal.  The second and third options will both be meaningless to many grandparents, but for those who do fall into the right category the power of the mailing will be overwhelming.

This approach applies to all email and direct mail – in my experience it is better to make an assumption than to hedge your bets.

If you would like to talk about copywriting, or any other aspect of direct mail do give me a call.  If you want to read about the overall marketing services we offer they are on www.velocity.ac

Tony Attwood

Hamilton House Mailings Ltd reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB.  Phone 01536 399 000.

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Royal Mail prices: what’s going on?

Posted in Uncategorized by Tony on 22 Feb 2011

You can follow us on Twitter @HHMailings

My colleagues on the postal mailing side at Hamilton House have looked at the indicative pricing from Royal Mail and they appear to be splitting bulk mail into two sectors, retail and advertising.

They have been trying to find out a little more about this, however details are vague and our rep has not had full information.  More details will be available mid March.

What we gather is that the advertising customer rate for bulk mail will increase by around 13% for first class and 5% for 2nd and mailsort postings.

The increase for retail bulk mail will be around 16% for first class, 10% for 2nd and 16% for mailsort postings.

There are no set details as to what qualifies as retail and what is advertising apart from the obvious, if you are sending out promotional literature then it advertising, if you are sending out a bank statement then it is retail.  But what happens if you put an advert in with the bank statement?

Tony Attwood

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Why catalogue mailing is still worthwhile

Posted in Uncategorized by Tony on 21 Feb 2011
In the last three years we’ve seen a number of companies abandon their catalogues and go over to on-line sales only, before coming back to the catalogue.

Some have tried the abolition of the catalogue in one big move with a big announcement, while others have experimented, delaying the distribution of the catalogue while pushing on line sales, just to see what happened.

None of the experiments that I have seen and for which I have been able to monitor the results, have been at all successful.

And yet there is a way forward that does work in terms of saving catalogue costs.  Here’s how it goes.

First you need a good list of all the people who have bought from you in the past three or four years, plus those who have made serious enquiries.   (The exact way you select companies will depend on your business – but in essence this is a list of serious possible clients for your next catalogue).   We’ll call this the “Verified list”.  If you haven’t got it, start work on it now – or bring in a company who can do it for you.

Second you need as good a list as you can get of everyone else who might buy your product because they are the right sort of person.  Such a list might be short (if you sell concrete mixers) or big (if you sell glasses to the over 50s).  If the list is huge, you’ll never complete it, but don’t worry about that – you just need some of it.  We’ll call this the “Unverified list”.

When you bring out a new catalogue you send it to your Verified List.   You can also write to your Verified List by email every week or so with new items of information about your industry.  Don’t make each one a sales piece – just give people information that you think might be helpful.  (I’d suggest that this note is an example of this approach – hopefully helpful to anyone contemplating their direct promotions, without forcing a sales notice down the reader’s throat).  It makes people think about you – it is in fact the cheapest way to build a brand ever invented.

Next you have to try to get people from the Unverified List (non-buyers) onto the Verified List.  You can do this in several ways.

One is by sending out very low price offers – so that you can send them your catalogue back with the goods.   Another is by offering a report free of charge which you can email to them (so you can collect their email address).

Don’t try and get straight sales from these people at normal prices – or at least don’t try and do it very often.  Mostly try and get them to respond (even if it is just to a free gift) so you can move them onto the Verified List.

The point is that the only people getting the catalogue through the post are those on the verified list – generally a much smaller and controllable list.   You contact the rest, but you do it in a way that entices them to get back to you, so you can collect their data and add them to your list.

For many firms this reduces the catalogue distribution by about 80% without reducing sales at all.  In fact for most firms sales go up over time because they are constantly moving new people from the unverified list to the verified list.

If you would like to talk about this approach to Verified and Unverified lists, do call 01536 399 000.   You can follow us on Twitter @HHMailings


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Should you use Twitter?

Posted in Uncategorized by Tony on 17 Feb 2011

During the past few months we’ve set up a number of Twitter accounts, with varying degrees of success.   One has 711 followers as of today, but another is still lurking at under 100.

The question is, are they doing any good?

In terms of the way we use them – occasional notes, and reports of updates now available on the web sites – they only take a moment to set up, so even the conversion of one reader into a client every couple of months would be a cost effective way of using Twitter.

The people who are getting worked up about Twitter however are the big players who are now saying that if you really want to get something talked about a lot on Twitter then a well placed article in the traditional media will do far more for you than a huge amount of Twitting.

But on the other hand, doing a few tweets a day and getting people to follow you can help remind them all the time you are there.  Providing of course that you are coming up with something new to say each time.   (If you have not used twitter – it is at www.twitter.com – and if you want to find someone to follow without getting swamped follow @HHMailings.   You can always cancel when you have had enough.)

If you are playing big time with Twitter the you will know it includes within it “Trends” – issues that suddenly everyone is tweeting about – and what makes a trend is a matter for debate.   If you are getting huge numbers of followers and think you might be able to start one, the key fact to remember is that just sending out lots of Tweets doesn’t actually achieve very much.

If you want to know more, call us on 01536 399 000.  We’re now making Twitter part of the Velocity programme (www.Velocity.ac) at no extra charge.

Tony Attwood

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Royal Mail extra discounts

Posted in Uncategorized by Tony on 16 Feb 2011

If you have not used postal direct mail for the past two years, or if you have and you are looking to increase your volume of mailing, then you can qualify for an extra discount with Royal Mail.

If you would like to know more about this (and in passing find out what wonderful people we are at Hamilton House) you can call 01536 399 000 and talk to Steve Mister.   He’s got it all at his fingertips.

Tony Attwood

Hamilton House Mailings Ltd reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB.  Phone 01536 399 000.

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Grab attention Grab attention Grab attention

Posted in Uncategorized by Tony on 7 Feb 2011

For me it doesn’t matter too much whether one is selling via email or postal mail, using a shared mail service or a solo service, the biggest issue is always the same.

You have to grab attention.

And yet despite the fact that I keep on saying this, not everyone does it.  Clearly my attempts to say “Grab attention” don’t in themselves actually grab attention.

Grabbing attention is something of an art form, and it is often counter intuitive too.  Saying “Free sex and chocolate” hits all the buttons with the three big buzz words in advertising, but it is a useless headline in terms of grabbing attention, unless you really are offering free sex and chocolate (which doesn’t happen very often – or at least not in the accounts I see).

Likewise “special offer” and “discount!” (don’t forget the !) don’t work any more because we see special offers and discounts every day, everywhere we go.  Even my lunchtime sandwich at Subway is on special offer.

The point about grabbing attention is that without grabbing attention everything else falls.  We know that the average reader gives an incoming email about 1 second to grab attention before it gets deleted.  With direct mail it is 4 seconds (which is part of the reason why direct mail can get much bigger response rates than email.)

Bold and CAPITALS don’t work – nor does colour (at least not in the way you might expect).  Indeed bold and CAPITALS can have the opposite effect too.   Loads of companies write their names within the text in bold – and generally that reduces response rates.    Exclamation marks can have a negative effect as well!

Of course there is one way around this, which is to give the problem to Hamilton House.  Customers on the Velocity programme do this either by having ourselves write the copy for each advert, or by having us advise on each advert and re-write the headline.   (www.velocity.ac)

Obviously I do hope you will decide to use one of our services, but whether you do or not, I also hope you will take this one simple message on board.  Grabbing Attention is the process that opens the door.  Without it, everything fails.

If you want to grab our attention try 01536 399 000 or send an email – both approaches usually work quite well.

You can also follow us on Twitter @HHMailings

Tony Attwood

Hamilton House Mailings Ltd reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB.  Phone 01536 399 000.

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