Tony Attwood's Blog

EbaseMarketing is an approach to marketing that has been developed by Hamilton House Mailings (HHM) over the past eight years. For the first five years we tested it exclusively as a method of promoting our own businesses. In the past three years we’ve been testing it with a small number of other companies. Now we’re offering it on the open market.

It is very simple, and can be used to market almost any product or service.

Better still, it can deliver your message to each potential customer for as little as 3p each.

Part 1: EBaseMarketing – how it works

a) First, you need to collect together the email addresses of your customers and potential customers.

b) Second, these addresses are loaded into a bulk email program which allows the messages to be administered and transmitted very easily.

c) Finally you email these individuals every week with interesting information and thoughts, plus occasionally offers related to your product. But here’s the twist: you must not try and cut down on the “interesting information” in order to put in more emails that focus on selling. The “interesting information” emails are the key to the whole enterprise.

Part 2: Why does it work so effectively?

a) We all like to receive well-informed “inside” information that is relevant and helpful to our work, and when we receive it we build a bond with the people who send it to us. When looking for a product or service we turn to the source of the “inside information” first of all.

b) Most firms lose customers because they don’t stay in touch with them regularly enough. EBaseMarketing overcomes that problem, and helps you recruit your competitors’ customers, rather than allowing your competitors to steal your customers.

c) EBaseMarketing is very low cost. While a direct mail shot to 2000 customers and enquirers might cost you around £900, this promotion can be undertaken via EBaseMarketing for just £75 – that’s 3p per customer.

Part 3: If it’s that good, why don’t more firms do it?

a) There are a few technicalities to deal with (although we have the know-how and software and can overcome them quickly).

b) Some firms believe (without trying the system) that people won’t read the emails. Others argue that customers will be annoyed by getting the regular mailings. But all the evidence from eight years of research shows otherwise. Indeed just recently we did a mailing for one of our clients and 970 out of 1500 recipients of the email not only read the email but also clicked on a link at the foot of the email to reach a web page which contained more information.

c) We’ve spent most of our research period finding out exactly how best to write the “interesting information” in such a way that it generates sales. Some firms have tried to short-circuit this part of the project and have failed to hold the interest of their readers.

Part 4: How to get started

a) If you have a database we can help export it into our transmission program. If you don’t, we can help you put one together very quickly.

b) Where HHM is doing the email transmission we’ll give you as much free advice as you want on how to write the “interesting information” emails. Additionally if we are transmitting for you regularly, we will write four complete news and information pieces for you free of charge. After that we can continue to write for you for an extra fee, or you can write the pieces yourself.

c) Transmitting the emails. Normally we charge £75 to transmit a message to up to 2000 addresses. This price includes importing the database and giving advice on the text to use. Where extra work is needed, or where we do this for a one-off mailing, there may be additional costs, but we’ll always give you the exact cost prior to any work taking place.

If you would like to explore what I believe is the most cost effective method of marketing that I have seen in the past ten years, just call me or my colleagues on 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

About half of the companies which I’ve heard from this year that sell by email have told me that they are having a tough time of it.

The other half said that they were very happy with their response rates.

I’ve been trying to work out how it is that some companies are doing particularly well with emails while others are not.

I found four significant points, and these are outlined in the report below, and I hope you find them interesting. If anything is not clear please do give me a call on 01536 399 000, or else email me at Tony@hamilton-house.com

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First, not all email lists are equal. It is possible to buy email addresses for around half a penny per address, and basically as the price goes down, so does the quality. Regularly researched and updated lists cost a lot more – but it is worth checking who you are dealing with and what sort of written guarantees you are going to get.

Second, the way the email is written is hugely important – perhaps it is the most important factor of all. Many of the firms that are failing to get good sales out of emails are, in my opinion, using styles and approaches that are wholly inappropriate when writing to the people they are addressing, and this makes a huge difference. (If you would like to look into this issue, just forward me a piece you have produced, and I will call you back with my thoughts. No charge, no obligation).

Generally speaking I think many people see the bulk of spam emails that come through to them and then simply copy that style. It doesn’t work like that.

Third, the email should be primarily text. People look at emails in different ways – and almost certainly don’t look at the email initially on a full screen. They just see a part of the email – maybe next to the list of incoming emails.

So you need to make sure that they see something that makes sense and makes them want to read on. Lots of illustrations simply don’t work, because they take too long for the brain to log into. By that time the itchy finger hovering over “delete” has hit the key and your message has gone without even being properly looked at.

You need a solid clear headline which can be seen at once and which raises the interest of the reader. Without that the email fails.

Finally – but nevertheless very importantly – email works not just as a way of getting new customers, it is also great as a way of keeping present customers happy.

This means that as well as emailing all potential customers you should take all the people who have purchased from you of late, and email them every week or two, with new offers, new ideas, new concepts, new thoughts.

The key thing here is that you can’t just have a “discount of the week” or write “NEW!” all over the email. You have to be communicating in a way that makes the reader think, “This is written for me, by someone who understands my thoughts, my outlook, my needs, my vision of the world. Even if there is nothing here this week that I want, I’ll read their next email because there’s generally something here for me.”

In other words the email is a communication mechanism as much as a way of selling – and it needs to be used in both ways.

As it happens we are feeling rather buoyant at this end about email because we just got our highest ever open rate on an email of 54.7% with a click through rate of 39.8%. So (at least this week) I am feeling that we are getting this right.

This is of course just a general introduction – if you would like to take this further do…

· Phone my colleagues and myself on 01536 399 000

· Email Tony@hamilton-house.com

A piece in the Guardian today suggesting that the part privatisation of Royal Mail could lead to a rise in the price of the PAF File that is used for data checking of addresses is unlikely to be true according to other reports.

A lot of parts of Royal Mail are regulated by Postcomm – the regulator – and at the moment the PAF File is part of that regulation – meaning in fact that the price is controlled.

Other areas might be changed however if RM is part privatised – and one that must come under consideration is the question of VAT on postage. The current situation is very confused – whether you pay VAT on postage is dependent on which carrier you choose to use, and exactly how the mailing house handles the mail.

Tony

Lake Superior State University produces a list each year of words that annoy people. For an advertiser it is interesting, since it gives a strong hint about which words are being overused, and are likely to do more harm than good if used in an advert.

The ubiquitous ‘Green’ and all of its variables, such as ‘going green,’ ‘building green,’ ‘greening,’ ‘green technology,’ ‘green solutions’ etc, was top of the list of annoying words and phrases.

Maverick was another word that was much overused and disliked, at least in the United States, most particularly in relation to the presidential campaign.

Bailout was also thought to have been overused in relation to every aspect of the economy, as suffered from being incredibly vague as to its meaning (“Is it a loan? Is it a purchase of assets by the government? Is it a gift made by the taxpayers?”)

“Wall Street / Main Street” was another economic phrase that annoyed – and indeed it becomes even more meaningless when repeated (as it has been) on UK radio stations.

And there is the use of the word “Monkey”. Anything on the internet now seems to have the word “Monkey” put at the end of it, for not apparent reason. Although I must say I do like the use of the word to signify a person who writes one line rebuttals to complex arguments posted on a blog. This use comes, I believe, from the tale that a bunch of the animals working on typewriters will eventually produce the work of Shakespeare. The link isn’t accurate or even correct, but still makes me smile.

Icon and iconic were reported for being horribly overused with the complaint that “every actor, actress and entertainment magazine show overuses this.” And that’s the point. Not everyone and everything can be iconic. As one person writing to the university said, “It’s becoming the new ‘awesome’ – overused to the point where everything from a fast-food restaurant chain to celebrities is ‘iconic.’”

Staycation is a much hated new word (meaning having a holiday at home).

Desperate search is something the media reports when anything goes missing, and on the day when another set of people won another set of awards, there was annoyance at the reporting of “the winner of five nominations.” Such a person has won nothing – he/she has just been nominated.

It’s that time of year again, was also much disliked, and I agree totally with that – every other email advert I see seems to start with it.

Maybe we should start a list in this country, rather than just leave it to the Americans. Do let me know if you have any suggestions, and I will create a list.

Opposition from backbench Labour MPs is likely to stop the part-privatisation of Royal Mail, according to The Sunday Telegraph.

Labour could still push this through with the support of the Conservatives, but the newspaper claims that the prime minister does not want to rely on the opposition.

The newspaper quotes a “leading government source” as saying: “There needs to be a major rethink. The sell-off as it currently stands is dead in the water and what we are trying to do now is spare [business secretary Peter] Mandelson’s blushes.”

Dutch postal operator TNT and private equity firm CVC have been mentioned as to investors in Royal Mail if the government is able to make the plans a reality.

The Communications Workers Union has threatened to cut its ties to the Labour Party if the government goes ahead with its privatisation plans.

According to The Guardian on Saturday, ministers are suggesting that concessions could be made if the MPs and the union abandon their campaign.

The newspaper reported that post office minister Pat McFadden told the rebels that Royal Mail’s business was in severe decline and it needed private investment.
McFadden said: “I do not think there is a full appreciation of the problems being faced by Royal Mail. Its pension deficit is 75 times its profits. Mail volumes are falling by 7 or 8% a year, and it has not automated or modernised as much as other companies. We cannot just hope it all goes away.”

Separately, TNT Post has said it may be viable for it to establish its own force of postmen in London by 2011 because of the volume of mail it is currently handling in the capital.

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Very interesting piece in Marketing Week about selling to a certain age group, bringing the clear message, “sell on interest not on age”.

Just because you are at a certain age, does not mean that you behave in a stereotypical way. Indeed as a person of a certain age, I know that I have some friends who have adopted retirement complete with gardening and garden slippers, while I have others who go out jiving four nights a week. I have some acquaintances who quite like a saunter through Readers Digest and others who are perfecting their collection of Bob Dylan posters.

Treating to treat people by age is fraught with dangers.

Here’s the piece http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=64233&d=254&h=5&f=3&nl=BN&ln=11020901

Age, and the perception of illustrations in advertising.
It is a central part of the research from the psychology of perception that the placement of images on an advertising page needs to be handled with great care. While text is generally perceived by the left hemisphere of the brain, the image is generally seen on the right, and given the limited amount of interaction that there is between the two halves of the brain, putting text and pictures next to each other can put off all but the most committed reader.
Now there is new evidence that the unwillingness to give time to adverts where images and text knock up against each other is related to age.
Let me add another caveat first, however. We are talking here about the readership of advertising material by people who are not immediately drawn to the subject matter. Consider the advert you receive which maybe relates to you in general – but is not of instant specific interest. (For example, you are interested in gardening, but you are not thinking of buying a new lawn mower. You receive an ad for a lawn mower. It is not wholly inappropriate, but it is not top of your list of interests at this time.) This is the sort of situation we are talking about.
It seems that people of more mature years find the close juxtaposition of image and text even more off putting than those of younger years – and they find it hard enough to focus with ads of this type.
Older consumers prefer single-image advertisements over ads with multi-image collages by a margin of 66% to 34%, according to a recent image-preference survey by Creating Results (http://www.creatingresults.com/) .

Their Photo Finish study set out to look at which type of photography is most effective when advertising to Baby Boomers and older generations. What they discovered was not just the expected difference in preference of photographs, but in the responsiveness to pictures overall – a finding that fits totally with the earlier findings from the psychology perception.
Interestingly older people preferred
• Vibrant pictures featuring brighter colours and expressive models rather than cooler colours and contemplative models, 65% to 35%.
• 65% of respondents preferred images in which the model’s face was clearly identifiable vs. cropped photographs.
• The older a consumer, the stronger his or her positive feelings for identifiable photos. 76% of those over age 75 preferred recognizable photos, as well as 75% of 65-74-year-olds and 62% of those ages 55-64.
• Lifestyle photography was preferred to product photos by all respondents (59%) and was most effective with those designated by Creating Results as Caregivers (71%), Gardeners (78%) and Volunteers (75%).

This is one of a series of articles on the ways in which we see adverts affects response rates. The full series is avialable on www.theory.bz

Postcomm have agreed to most of the basic points raised by Royal Mail’s request to offer discounts to mail that meets certain environmental criteria.

The discount level should be between 0.3p and 0.7p per envelope posted which meets the right standards – not much in itself – £3 to £7 per thousand against a total mailing bill of around £400 to £450 per thousand.

But it is a start. Whether it is enough of a discount to make companies become more environmentally positive is unlikely however. Those who are already using the right sort of paper will just pick up their discount, while I suspect the rest will simply ignore what they will see as a trivial discount.

Every year I dispair at the way people writing copy will send out billions of letters with the opening line

With Christmas fast appraoching…

or

With summer fast approaching.

But now the BBC (who really ought to know better) has come up with

As February is fast approaching we’ve added even more great products to our BBC Shop Sale. Check out our wide range of some of your favourite BBC products at even lower prices. You’ll be guranteed to find a great bargain at BBC Shop. Happy Shopping!

Really – surely someone in that august organisation could do better. Not least because

a) the second half of the opening sentence is a non-sequita

b) BBC Shop is generally more expensive than Play.com and Amazon.co.uk

c) “As February is fast approaching” is just, well, daft.

d) The opening of any communication needs to be penetrating, to the point, exciting, full of voom, and above all with something that makes you want to read on.

If you disagree with me, or indeed if you would like me to have a look at your promotions (in private of course – the only communications I make public are the ones that I just get sent or see each day) just forward to tony@hamilton-house.com or call me on 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

The Government is now suggesting that it won’t after all introduce environmental laws covering the DM industry, providing DM backs the BSI standard for green direct marketing, according to reports.

The new regulations in the accreditation process PAS 2020 advocates f recycle messages, and no use of paper with recycled fibre.

A website supporting PAS 2020 www.greendm.co.uk has been launched.

The approach makes no attempt to increase the amount of polythene recycling available in the UK. As the New Scientist review of the subject last year showed, using paper envelopes instead of polythene is much more unfriendly to the environment, although the paper lobby has successfully made many people think the opposite.

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Tony