Tony Attwood's Blog

Results from Epsilon’s Email Study this month shows spam makes up most email messages, especially in North America, where consumers report receiving an average of 169 spam emails each week. Other major users are retail offers, business/work emails, personal emails, newsletters and account statements.

While this survey only covers consumer mailing and is US based, I think there are lessons to be learned for UK email and for B2B.

The report says that the “from” line is significantly more important than the subject line.

The importance of the “from” line has grown over time, from 60% saying it is important in 2002 to 68% in 2009. In contrast, the importance of the subject line has declined, from 35% in 2002 to only 26% in 2009.

The most common actions taken after receiving permission-based emails are clicking on a website, entering a sweepstakes or promotion, and watching a video clip.

About the survey: The research for the study was conducted in April 2009 by ROI Research, and compiles data from 4, 084 responding consumers in 13 countries: US, Canada, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, India, Malaysia, Japan, UK, France, Germany and Spain. The panel of participants includes consumers who have an active email account and receive permission-based email.

Tony

For more information please call me on 01536 399 000 or email Tony@hamilton-house.com

Email 10,000 potential customers for £20.

Sending an email to your potential customers is probably the lowest cost form of marketing that you can undertake.

But there’s a few technicalities on the way – which is why we have set up Hamilton House Email 10,000 as a way of overcoming all the problems.

All you have to do is supply us with the email, either in Word or in HTML and we send it out, for as little as £20 for up to 10,000 addresses.

Here’s the details of all the prices…

Initial set up of the system (including building an automatic unsubscribe option so that anyone who doesn’t want to receive emails from you again just clicks once and is removed from the list)… £100 one off payment

Set up a subscriber’s page so that people can join your list on line if they wish without any further action from you)… £50 one off payment

Add new subscribers from a spreadsheet provided by you… £30 for each spreadsheet

Provide you with a proof of an email ready to be sent… No charge

Transmit an email provided by you in the agreed format… £20 to 10,000 addresses

Supply report of number of statistics after each transmission… £5 per mailing

Monthly fee to maintain and backup the list… £10 per month

Setting emails not provided in the standard format, proofing etc…. Price on application

To talk this through, discuss the details, and find out more, please call 01536 399 000 and ask for Tony, Stephen, Laura or Sam. Or if you have specific enquiries please email Tony@hamilton-house.com

What addresses can I send to?

Email 10,000 can be used to send emails to a list of potential customers you have obtained, or a list of people who have enquired in the past. If you don’t have such a list we can help you locate and build the list.

A postscript.

Sometimes we hear people say “I could do this myself”. And of course you could, but just before you do, consider these points…

You will need some software that will handle bulk mailing, you need to be able to handle requests to come off the list automatically, and you need to be able to put new people on the list easily.

You’ll also need the software that allows you to control who the email appears to come from, and where the replies go to, as well as software to track how many people open the email, and how many click on the link in the email to your web site. And most important of all you need to ensure that your internet service provider isn’t going to shut you down when they see you sending out regular bulk emails!

Tony Attwood

01536 399 013

Over the years one or two people have been kind enough to suggest that my occasional ramblings about the mythical pub, the Toppled Bollard, should be recorded in some sort of book form.

And, always anxious to please, I have done it. I have written a novel which incorporates a variation on the Toppled Bollard – a sort of Toppled Bollard one hundred years ago.

The novel takes the form of a diary of a Fleet Street journalist 100 years ago, who while covering the demise of a small time football club, discovers that the government appears to be up to no good. He follows the trail that leads him to Winston Churchill (the Home Secretary), the head of the newly formed MI5, the mayor of Fulham, and a variety of other characters of the day.

If you would care to read the opening few pages I have posted them on http://blog.toppled.info/2009/10/27/the-toppled-bollard-100-years-ago/

And if you are totally smitten, there is an order form at the end of the piece, so you can buy multiple copies!!! You can even ask me to sign one if you like.

If you never enjoyed the Toppled Bollard stories this probably won’t appeal – but if you did, well, at least you will know I take notice of what people say when they comment on my work.

Tony Attwood

So, the postal strikes go ahead, and it looks as if the two sides are not going to be able to agree on anything. According to the CWU an agreement was reached on Tuesday night, but then vetoed by the top managers who have not attended any of the negotiation. If that is true, the outlook is bleak indeed.

The alternatives are emails and blogs – but although both look simpler than the post the reverse is true.

Just sending out emails using lists that can be bought off the shelf, often makes no odds. Likewise, writing the occasional blog without much sense of continuity and without much attempt to encourage a readership, does not do much good.

With emails the most effective list is the list of people who have, made a purchase, expressed an interest or made an enquiry. This list takes a while to make, and quite often I find myself talking with people who say, “I don’t have such a list,” and then go back to using off-the-shelf lists which they claim don’t work.

The fact is if you don’t have an email list of past customers etc then today is the day to start building it, either by recording addresses of enquirers now, or getting on the phone and going back over past enquirers and building the list that way. You’ll also need some software to handle the list if it over 100 addresses long.

Then there is the issue of what you send out. Repeated adverts will just bring a lot of requests to be taken off your list, so you need to communicate properly, to talk about issues of interest, and to keep their attention. As I said it is more complex than direct mail.

Finally there are the blogs. Blogs, carefully nurtured, can reach large numbers of people. The one I started two years ago now reaches 100,000 readers a month and has become a useful advertising tool.

If you would like to talk about any of these topics, do drop me an email Tony@hamilton-house.com or give me a call on 01536 399 013. Always happy to have a chat.

Tony Attwood

Just on two years ago I started writing a blog. I started with minimal knowledge and a huge amount of conflicting advice, most of which came from people who did not write successful blogs.

In September 2009 my blog was read by 108,425 different people, with each person looking at, at least two articles.

On that basis I think I can now say, I know how to do this. That’s not to say I can do that for anyone, but there’s a fair amount of information now available.

I’m happy to talk in general terms about blogging with you, and indeed to talk about working with any company that wants to get such an audience.

But of course the blog has to have a point. It might be to express your views, or it might be to sell some product. In my case I started with the idea of learning about how blogging worked and how one might get an audience. Then having got the audience up to around 30,000 a month my colleagues and I started exploring what we could sell via the blog.

In terms of link through advertising there is an income – although it is more of a “helpful addition” rather than “shout it from the rooftop” level of income. So, we decided on something else – to try and develop our own product to sell on our blog.

This is of course backwards – what we all normally do is start with the product, not the market. But backwards or not, we have now got our product and in 3 weeks time we launch it through our web site. I’ll let you know how it goes – but as I say if you want to talk about blogs and how to make them work, then do give me a call. At least I can now boast that I have done it.

Tony
01536 399 013

s it possible to combine a shared mailing and an email campaign?

We think so, and so to demonstrate this, in October we are offering a free Personal email promotion with each secondary shared mailing.

It is simple: you book into a shared mailing and then also send us your advert as a word document (straight text, no illustrations, with a link to your web site). We’ll send out the email within a couple of weeks of the shared mailing going out.

You can see the full list of personal email lists and the number of teachers you will reach free of charge at http://www.emails.gs/PersPrefLists.html

The offer is available on all of these lists except Deputy Head and Modern Languages.

There’s details of the shared mailing programme on www.shared.org.uk - or you can talk through the details with Chris, Stephen or myself on 01536 399 000.

Tony

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

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

and why the common sense approach to direct advertising doesn’t work.

That is the title of the latest of the free “how to” guides to direct marketing. You can get a copy on the Hamilton House web site – just click on the How To link on the left hand side and you can see it as the first on the list of guides.

Hope you find it helpful.

Tony

If you want to write a really brilliant mailshot forget you are writing to lots of people. Instead write just to one. It takes practice, but when you can do it you will find your response rates shoot up.

If you have read the basic factors that underlie all success in direct mail you will know that the key factors are all psychological – they are to do with the individual.

Yet in direct mail we always think about groups of people – we select our lists by grouping people and businesses together. And so we get tempted to think about groups of people, rather than individuals. But what we must always do is take a step back from the group and think of the individual.

Let’s imagine you have decided to write to the Head of Finance in companies with 20 to 50 staff. Think about one such person. Imagine that person at work, opening the mail. You will be imagining factors such as:

* Male or female
* In an open plan office or in a personal office or in a financial office with 2 or 3 others
* Dressed “professionally” or casually
* Ordered, with a tidy desk, or in a muddle
* Having control over the environment or interrupted by colleagues, emails, phones, the MD…

Now we begin to get a picture, and holding that picture in your mind you write to that individual.

Of course, you can object that your audience is diverse – and indeed most audiences are diverse. So you must compromise a bit – since some of your recipients will be male even if you think most are female, you won’t want to talk about handbags and make-up (even if tempted!) – but you must be sure you don’t compromise too much. If you head totally for the middle ground you will end up with an utterly bland piece.

Writing to my target individual

In this case I am going to imagine an ordered and organised female, aged 40, who focuses and concentrates on the figures, and who has her department well ordered. The VAT is not only always on time, it is right. As are the PAYE and corporation tax. As are the invoices, payments etc etc.

I now imagine that such a person is not one who openly loves change. She has her department organised, and does not want to change it much. She also does not welcome interruption – interrupt the running of PAYE and you can make a mistake, and she does not tolerate errors.

So now in constructing a mailshot for this lady I work within this invented personna. I know I have to grab her attention – but I also know that just shouting NEW!!! is not going to do anything for her, because she does not like NEW. But she does like organisation and efficiency, so that is where I start.

And I write to her.

This does not mean I have to use her name and mailmerge the letter – in fact as you will see in the section on Mailmerge, I don’t recommend this at all. It means that the nature of my text is put together so that it relates to this lady.

Different personalities

But what about all those other people in the same position with different personalities? No problem. If I feel that I am not getting the response rate I need, or if my response rate starts to fail, my profile can be changed, and so the style of my writing changes. No longer will I be appealing to the same people – I will start to appeal to another group.

So, the final objection says, why not go down the middle and appeal to everyone at once? The answer is that it does not work. We all of us get so much direct mail that one of the first things we scan out is direct mail that does not appeal to us – and we have all become experts at seeing how closely to our image of ourselves and our world the advertiser is.

Most direct mail is written from a middle of the road perspective. Most of it gets a far lower response rate than it could do.

For more information call 01536 399 000 or visit www.hamilton-house.com