Tony Attwood's Blog

My morning radio station of choice was running a series of texts from listeners today (Thursday) pointing out how many people were rejoicing in having to go to work on only 3 days in the next 11.

I must admit I hadn’t quite worked it out like that, but with two weekends, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Wedding Day and May Day, that’s how we get to the number.

So what to do on those three days?

Here’s an idea…

The most cost effective way that I know of doing email advertising is also slightly complex.  Not massively so, but just a bit.  And for that reason most firms don’t do it.

But if you do the preparations over the Tuesday to Thursday (26 to 28 April), that could really result in benefits and savings that will last you for years to come.

Here’s the step by step approach:

1.  Start gathering together all the email addresses of people who have bought from you or expressed an interest in your product in the last couple of years.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t have all of them – anything you get helps.   Type them up into a database (a spreadsheet is fine).

2.  Think of ways in which you can get people to apply for something for free from you by email – a report is the most obvious.  If you can’t do that, think of something that you can offer at a huge discount – providing the ordering individual provides an email address.   Prepare to advertise this to people whose email address you don’t have on the list.  As they reply, add them to the list.

3.  Consider the research that could be done to get the email addresses of other people who might become your customers.  So if you sell to nurses in GP practices, consider (or talk to us) about how you could get their email addresses.

4.  Set up a system whereby you can email all these people whose email addresses you have on a regular basis, not just with special discounts and new products, but also some background information in your area of business.

5.  If you have your own software to do part 4, and you can write these pieces each week, then you are away, and you don’t need anyone else’s help.  If not, call Hamilton House, either today, or on the Tuesday to Thursday between the holidays, and we can talk to you about how it all works.

This process with Hamilton House is part of the Velocity programme – and you can read more about it at www.velocity.ac – but the main thing is that Velocity is flexible and we can do it however you wish to suit your needs.

Hamilton House is open 9 to 5 on each day that is not a bank holiday.  You can call us on 01536 399 000.   Our regular news items are on www.blog.hamilton-house.com and you can follow us on Twitter @HHMailings

Have a happy Easter.

Tony Attwood

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

Today I got a long and carefully worded promotion from a company.  It looked interesting so I clicked on the relevant link.

And I got this

Database Error: Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL

There were several links all leading to the same problem.  Maybe the problem only lasted a minute, but for me it was a blockage, and the end.

But I was interested, so I emailed back – only to see that the reply address on the email was fixed as “noreply”.

I think no reply emails are utterly daft.  I know people use them to stop junk arriving, but still, this firm (and many others that I see) have stopped me communicating with them when actually I was interested.

The fact is, web sites go down – which is why an email back up is helpful.  Take out that email backup by sending from a “no reply” address, and you have lost your communication.

My email address Tony@hamilton-house.com is all over the internet and yes I get a load of junk each day.  But I would sooner deal with that, (and it takes about 30 seconds to set up the program to get rid of emails with specific words in them, or on specific topics), than risk losing a communication from a single potential client.

You can follow us on Twitter @HHMailings, and on these blogs…

www.blog.hamilton-house.com

www.blog.educationmarketing.org.uk/

www.goodad.co.uk

Tony

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

The old (very old) joke is that 134% of all statistics on the internet are made up.

Here’s an email I got today that proves my case…

Did you know that up to 50% of all new patients are lost at the front desk because of poor call handling?

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix! Until midnight on Friday 4/8, you can get my entire video tutorial training on turning your Front Desk into a Marketing Machine.

Yes, well, up to a point, one might say.  Do people believe such stats any more?  I think there might have been a time when they did, but now?  I doubt it.

In my view, it is only possible to get away with this kind of thing if you say something like ”It is a truth universally acknowledged…”

Two weeks ago an acquaintance from one of the dance clubs I frequent (just my way of staying fit you understand) asked me if I could help her in a dispute with a garage.  Seems she had wanted to test drive a Jaguar she was looking to buy, but once the garage realised the applicant was female she was turned down, because (she felt) the garage didn’t believe a woman would buy this car.  “I don’t want to put the mileage up on the car” said the garage manager.

I wrote a letter on her behalf to the garage, complaining, and pointing out various issues, and suggesting that there were matters that would concern the Advertising Standards Authority.

A note came back saying that they had done nothing wrong, and that they had checked with the ASA, and their advert was fine.

I immediately upped the tempo, for two reasons.  First, I know from experience that it is very hard to get a clear answer like that on a complex issue from the ASA within a day, so I didn’t believe their response.  Second, the garage immediately changed its web site to remove the area that had caused my acquaintance to make the complaint. In other words they were trying to fob me off and cover their tracks.

We are now plotting the next move – and it might well cause a fair amount of harm to this garage.  I’m doing it because my friend was genuinely upset by the experience, (not out of vindictiveness or because I have nothing better to do with my time).

But also I am doing it because the garage did not have the decency to admit an error, and (in my personal view) started treating me like an idiot.  (If there’s one thing I can’t stand it is being treated like an idiot).

Now I come to my point.  As I immediately realised, it has never before been so easy for customers (or in our case a would-be customer) to fight back.

Indeed there are so many options for the customer who wants to make life tough for the errant retailer, it is hard to know where to start.  If you are really angry you can set up a web site just exposing what the company did to you.  Or you can go onto a message board and leave messages about the company.   I could write about the company here (although I am not going to mention them by name – at least not at the moment, since I want to see what the ASA says first).

You might argue that no one is going to see or notice any of these things - except that if the person who is doing the attacking knows how to get a web site up the Google rankings, and if that person is angered enough, it could happen.   Besides which, dealing with the ASA does take time.  Three minutes to make a complaint, three hours at the very least to answer it.  Sometimes more like three days.

(In this case the situation is likely to be even more annoying for the firm, because it is part of a franchise, with each franchised car dealership sharing the franchise name.  The rest of the dealers are going to get so angry if they feel they are being tarred with the same brush!)

Of course the above is a private affair – I am helping a friend who was genuinely upset.   But it can happen to any of us – sometimes through the crass stupidity of an employee, sometimes through an error.

So in my view all companies need to stay alert.

The first way to do this is through using Google Alerts to monitor every mention of your company on the internet day by day.

Monitoring any mention of your name is the first step towards recognizing when someone you have irritated  is getting worked up.

What’s more you can often have the chance to respond.  If someone says on a blog, “I tried Hamilton House and they were terrible, didn’t answer the phone, never called back, took a week to respond to an email…” then at least I can get in there and say, “I really can’t understand how that happened – but I want to start by apologising.  I’m the chairman and….”

There’s a lot more that can be done and I will come back to this shortly, but I would say everyone should monitor their brand names on Google Alerts.

If you have not used the service and don’t know the ins and outs, give me a call on 01536 399 000 and I will talk you through it.

Tony Attwood

You can follow us on Twitter @HHMailings

Picking up the email addresses of people who visit your web site is certainly possible when you run an email campaign with a link to the site in it.

But there are a couple of issues that arise if you are going to do this.

The first is – what are you going to say?

In my view if you say anything along the lines, “I see you have been on our web site” then you are liable to see sales drop rather than rise, simply because no one likes to think that someone else knows where they have been browsing.   Even people who are fully aware that such actions can happen, don’t like to be reminded.

Once one has got the message right, then one is sitting on a hugely valuable resource.   An email campaign might just produce a modest number of people who have clicked through to your web site, but each campaign will produce more and more such people – and after a short while you will have an incredibly valuable email list.  This list will be made up of people who are interested enough in your product to go to your web site – and that means they are really positive prospects.

There’s a second benefit that this list brings.  It is possible to analyse all the people who have come to the site in this way, and through this pick up a really good profile of your potential customers.

If they are for the most part in a particular type of organisation, then you know that you should angle at least part of your web site to these people.

What’s more you will have a much clearer idea of which businesses or consumer groups you should be advertising to in the future – something that is very helpful if you are running a postal direct mail campaign as well as an email campaign.

If you would like to know more about how to pick up the email addresses of people who have visited your web site, and how to write to them – and indeed how to analyse their interests or the places in which they are working, please do get in touch.

You can follow us on Twitter@HHMailings and by email by emailing direct-mail-secrets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Tony Attwood

01536 399 000

Hamilton House Mailings.