Tony Attwood's Blog

Research recently published by Marketscan confirms the view that I have been suggesting for some time – that direct mail is on the way back after its decline a couple of years ago.

60% of respondents to their survey said they are using direct mail in isolation or as part of an integrated campaign.

More of a surprise is that 57% of respondents using telemarketing either on its own are as part of an integrated programme.  I find that a surprise unless the majority of those involved are using telephone work as part of the research (getting the right person’s name, email address etc).

Email was only used by 33% of respondents.

I would suspect the latter low figure comes from two problems: one being the fact that in most areas it is now necessary to go out and reserach one’s own lists – the email lists that can be bought off the shelf are really quite poor.  (We are just doing an experiment with one such list and I’ll report our findings shortly).

The other is that writing good email copy is not common sense or intuitive.  It can be done, but it is not that easy.

If you would like to talk about the mix, the lists, the creative or the price of a cup of tea in Trafalgar Square do give me a call.  I always like a chat.

Tony Attwood

01536 399 000

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An email list of your customers and potential customers is one of the most valuable things you can have.  In almost every case companies with such a list generate far more sales at far lower cost per sale, than those without such a list.

And yet most companies don’t have such a list – or if they do have it, they don’t keep it up to date, and don’t use it.

The reason why many firms don’t have such a list is that they are not sure how to put one together.  The reason why they don’t use the list when they have it is because a) they think it is not complete and b) they don’t have the technology to send out the emails.

So, I am going to try and answer both points in this, and my next email.

First, how to put such a list together:

There are five ways of doing it.

1: Go to your existing customers and potential customers and tell them that there is a free newsletter available from you.  Tell them what the newsletter contains (in some detail – not just generalities), extol the benefits, remind them that it is free, and confirm the basics (that they can leave at any time, and that their email address will never be given to any one else.

2: Make the sign up easy.  I mean really easy.  If you want to see an example of a dead easy sign-up go to www.schools.co.uk/subscribe.html and you’ll see approach that we have set up.

3: Write to potential customers and offer them something free – such as a report or article that will be of great interest to them.  But point out that to get it they have to email you.  Then add each of these people to your email list of subscribers.

4: Go through your customer and enquirers list and extract all the email addresses that you can from that.  Ask all your new customers to give you their email address as part of the order process so you can get back to them quickly if there is any problem with the order.  If orders come through a central ordering department ask for the email of the originator, in case there is a question about the detail of the product.

5: Advertise the newsletter on your web site – on virtually every page.

You might feel that one or two of these approaches are not appropriate for you – fair enough – but I really don’t know any companies for whom none  of the approaches is any good.

Companies that are part of our Velocity programme can have the building of such a mailing list as part of the work we do for them each month.  There’s details on www.velocity.ac – but you can of course do it yourself.

Coming up next: how to run the newsletter.  But if you would like to talk to me, do give me a call on 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

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

One of the things that many firms ought to do but don’t do (in my opinion) is check what the competition is doing in terms of their advertising.

At the very least I feel all companies should visit their rivals’ web sites, look at prices, look at the layout, check ease of use, and then (if possible) sign up for any newsletters etc, using an email address that doesn’t immediately identify the requester as you.  (Indeed I would suggest you set up a couple of email addresses specifically for this purpose.  You might also want to find an alternative address for receiving postal mail from competitors – either your home address, or that of a friend or relative).

Having gained such information there is then the question of what you do with this analysis: do you copy the competitor or do you do something quite different?

My view is that latter – do something different, although I often hear people say the opposite – especially when the rival is a bigger company than yours.

Unfortunately I have never seen this technique of trying to look bigger than you are by looking like a big competitor, actually work.  All that seems to happen is that people recognise you look like a rival, and continue to work with a rival.

Having a different approach to your marketing however can really bring in customers who are looking for an alternative.  The chances are, if the competition is bigger than you, they won’t think of moving to you unless you offer something different – so you might as well show your difference through the marketing.

This difference can be expressed through your means of marketing (if the rivals announce their products, push the benefits. If they use benefit marketing, move over to price or “interesting questions” and so on).

Likewise if they have a vibrant newsletter, don’t try and copy that – but if they don’t have one, or if they have one but nothing much happens on it, set up your own.   If their web site is strong on pictures but low on technical information, background,support etc, go down that route.

So it is always a good idea to call and ask for a brochure, and see how quickly it arrives, and what the quality is.  You might be up against a multi-national – but if they are just trading on their name and reputation but are very slow at sending out brochures etc, that might be your way in.

Checking on what the competition is doing is part of what we do for our Velocity clients, and we’re always happy to talk such approaches through, and indeed do a little research for you before you sign up.   There’s details of Velocity on www.velocity.ac – or call 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

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

Some firms are telling me that their sales through the post and email are poor.  Others are reporting that things are working well.

So what makes the difference?

One particular point (and one I have mentioned a few times of late) is that direct mail is increasingly playing a part here.  Some products will sell through email, but for some this is the time to go back to postal mail.  The cost is higher of course but the results can clearly overcome the costs and make a profit.  (And as I always point out, one can always test small numbers to prove the point).

Many other points have come out of our discussions on why some things are selling at the moment and others not.  Of course as a writer I would always say “it is the copy” – but even I would admit it is also the essence of the product and the offer.

Here’s one example: take the question of the “unique selling point”.  Everyone knows that one is needed, and most firms claim to have one.  But as we have looked into the results of some companies that are not doing so well at present, one big reason seems to be that the USP is not unique at all.

Consider a USP that relates to the quality of the service that the company gives, getting the job done quickly, efficiently and politely on time every time.  That’s good, there is no denying that, and past customers will recognise this and remember it.

But it is not unique and as such it is not a USP.  It is a reputation – and we have found that it is very hard at the moment to sell on reputation.

The fact is that in each product area there are always companies that share a reputation for quality, reliability and so forth.  Having such a reputation is good – but it cannot be used with success as a USP.

Which leads on to this point: to sell well you need to be supplying what the customer wants.  Your reputation can help, and a USP is certainly good, but giving the customer what he/she wants at this moment is essential too.

Now that may sound so utterly obvious that you are tempted to delete this file at once on the grounds that I have finally slipped over the edge, but please give me another second.

I appreciate the argument that “my product is what it is.  I can’t change it.”  Yet in a way I think this can be done – through changing what the product is seen as.

In short, the product can be just the product (it is a chair, it is an accounting system, it is a computer…) or it can be seen as something more than this.

Imagine you are selling a product that does a good job and is well liked, but is in a very crowded market.  You can claim your product does the business – that’s its benefit.  But everyone else claims that too.   What to do?

Our suggestion is that instead of focussing just on the benefits of the product, you also focus on the feature that makes your product different.

Now that seems like a reversal of everything that is ever written in any marketing book, where it always says, “sell benefits not features”.  But there are times (especially in highly competitive markets) where pointing out your product’s unique features, and linking this with the benefits, can work a treat.

So the benefit is still that this is a sturdy piece of furniture, or a great accountancy program, but now you are also telling the customer that the key is your use of one particular factor, or approach, or glue, or insight or anything else.  In fact you cite the PRODUCT X that makes your product or service different.

(Now at this point some people tell me that they don’t have product X, but I have invariably found that we can find one – if we look hard enough).

It is a difficult issue to talk through without examples, and I cannot (for confidentiality reasons) give you details of how we have used this approach with other products.  But if you would like to call me to talk about your product I will try and give you an example of how it might work for you.

The fact is that some firms are getting really good results with our marketing services, and these are often ones that have changed their approach recently – especially where they have difficulty in not having a unique selling point that is truly unique.

If you would like to explore this further, please do give my colleagues or I a call on 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

Time and again I say to clients and potential clients – send out text only emails when advertising – they are more likely to get through.

And quite often I get a look, or a sound down the phone, that suggests I am from the planet Zonk – a being with no knowledge of such matters.who ought to be put out to grass with the other water buffalos.

But I know what our response rates show – text only works, pictures cause problems.

And now a report on emailing from Marsys confirms that others are getting the message too.  The report says, and I quote, “The number of HTML emails sent by B2B companies has reduced slightly, while the amount of emails in the Text-only format has significantly risen.” This probably indicates that HTML emails are jumping over the hurdles better than those emails with pictures. Some key hurdles being: getting the email into the inbox, rather than being unduly caught by Norton antivirus/antispam; encouraging the reader to scroll past the first line, and, most importantly, engaging with content. You can find the full original report here.

Of course what I really want is for people to do the test – send half their list a text only email and the other half an HTML and see which list gets the most click throughs, the most emails back, the least unsubscribes and so on.

“At least,” I say, “give it a try,” but time and again my words are ignored.  “Woe, woe, and thrice woe,” as Frankie Howerd used to say.

Tony Attwood

01536 399 000.

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

I love that headline – “despatches from the war on error”.  It was in the Observer last week.  The book review it related to wasn’t of great interest to me, but the headline was.

So I write a farewell note (farewell for just a week that is) with my eternal thought… get the headline right and you have a chance of getting readership.  If the headline is bland, nothing much is going to happen.

With email you have around a second to grab the customer’s attention, so that he/she will read on.  With postal direct mail you have maybe four seconds.  Either way you have to intrigue and encourage the reader to set aside what she/he was going to do, and instead read your advert.

It is a tough call, which is why headlines are so important.

If you would like Hamilton House to create a few headlines for you, please do get in touch.

In the meanwhile I am going away for the next week so you won’t be bothered with my communications for a while – back on 18 June.  But you can still talk to my colleagues on 01536 399 000.   And you might like to have a look at one or more of these in the interim – in case there is anything you missed.

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

Metaphor: the new approach to increasing response ratesI’ve been writing for a while about the fact that in recent years successful advertising has become more gentle, more like a friendly conversation, and less like a shouting match.

Now it seems that there’s an extra twist that you can add to good written copy: the good metaphor.

My point overall is that advertising is not what one does with the product on offer: it is the product.  How we write about the product is part of what the product is.

And the way to manage this notion is through metaphor.

The point about metaphor is that is allows us access to the unconscious and if you can get inside your readership’s mind and make them think about your product even when you are not pushing an advert at them, then you are probably home and dry.

Let me give an example.  When George Osborne said that he would tackle Britain’s “addiction to debt” he not only got a lot of mentions on the media he also gave us an image of ourselves.  That image stays much longer in the mind than would anything more literal.  If he had said, “I want us to reduce our debt” nothing would have been remembered.  Accusing citizens of the UK of being addicted to something which it is by and large impossible to be addicted to, is memorable.

Try this one: “Email is the motorway of marketing”.   Not the greatest metaphor of all time, but I quite like it.  Motorways can be fast, and can deliver you from a to b.  But they can be clogged up so you don’t get there – and that means you need to be clever.  With a motorway an intelligent smart nav system will warn you of problems ahead and get you where you want to go.  With email, the way you write gets you around the fact that there are billions of other email ads doing the rounds at the same time as yours.

But metaphors have to be used carefully – because they can quickly become tedious.  I wouldn’t ratchet anything up at the moment, nor would I talk to much about a surge in sales.

If you are not convinced, let me try one more thing.  The Office of Incisive Analysis in the US (and yes it is real, not a joke) is running computer programs that analyse the metaphors used in emails, because they give a real insight into the writer’s frame of mind.  Which takes us back to the subconscious.  The American military really do see the metaphor as a signpost to the mind.  So do I as well as being a way to enliven text and be remembered by the readership.

With metaphors you can have fun, as in “If we can hit that bull’s-eye then the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards… Checkmate.”  Or you can be more serious, as with my email example above.

Either way they remind us that advertising is not just a bowl of cherries.

If you would like to explore new ways of direct advertising please do get in touch.  Hamilton House Mailings.  01536 399 000.    And there’s more thoughts on www.goodad.co.uk

Tony Attwood

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

The average click through rates in email campaigns have been released by EMarsys in its Email Benchmark Report 2011.

The bad news is that overall email click throughs are declining. The current (2010) click through average is 11.08% across all emails, rising to 13% when one just looks at B2B emails.

In reading these figures it is important to remember that they can be taken from all sorts of campaigns – including quite often campaigns to regular subscribers to a newsletter such as this one.

Likewise there are industries where the receipt of a particular email each day is key to the working of that industry.  For example, imagine a travel agency that puts up in its window each day various last minute deals at discount prices.  Knowing each day’s offers is the life blood of the agency, and so the emails bringing in the news will be read avidly.

Compare that with an company whose work does not rely on daily new information – they will treat news emails in a totally different way.

The task therefore is always to get industries and companies where the receipt of news is not considered vital, and get them to change their attitude towards the email, so that their opening and click through rate rises.   It is, in the end, a matter of content.

If you would like to talk this through, please do give me a call on 01536 399 000.  There’s also details of the various ways in which we help companies with their email marketing on www.velocity.ac – just click on the Business option.

Tony Attwood

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