Tony Attwood's Blog

Following the last round of upgrades and changes by Google, experts in the field of search engine optimisation have been mulling over the effect of the changes.

One of the main areas of interest has been that sites that have a more diversified pattern of high ranking links from other sites to their own site are doing better.

The feeling is that Google is that if you have links coming in from specific pages of a web site, they are more likely to be real, (rather than people just saying “hey can I swap page links with you) if they come from a specific page.

So if I writing about different styles of dancing and I link from my article to a specific page on someone else’s site which exemplifies the point I am making, then that link in to that site is of extra value.

Now if I am writing for a page with a page ranking of four (which is good and means you are probably getting 200,000 visits or more in a month) that is going to help the site I link to.

There’s a further point – sites that regularly produce new content and then receive links from other sites turn out to be the most successful.

So it is good to be in touch with people who might link to your site, and encourage them to do so – especially if they will directly link into a page.

Work of this nature is part of the Velocity programme within Hamilton House.  If you would like to know more please visit www.velocity.ac or call me on 01536 399 013.

I wrote the other day about the fact that many of the people who talk to me about marketing don’t have an overall plan.   Their focus is entirely on one element of the issue: the media.

This is, I believe due to the fact that many companies that sell mailing lists push their mailing and email lists to the exclusion of the rest of marketing – leading to a view that if you just get the medium right, everything else will be fine.

To my mind marketing is not complex, but it does consist of three inter-connected sections, and if one ignores any of these sections the resultant marketing is far less effective than it might otherwise be.

To make this dead simple the three part approach can be seen as

1,  Making the product’s benefits plain, and making it easy to understand and easy to get going

2.  Taking the message to potential customers in a way that makes them read your message and instantly understand what you are talking about.

3.  Staying in touch with existing clients, ensuring they are happy with you, getting them to pass the message on to others, and encouraging them to return to you to buy more.

This is what we set out to do with Velocity – the programme where we work with clients on a month by month basis.    We would never claim that this is some form of incredibly complex marketing – it is not.  But because of the pressures of everyday work it is easy to forget the three stages and just focus on one of them.   If you find this approach interesting do have a look at http://www.velocity.ac/business.html which sets out some of our ideas – or give me a call on 01536 399 013 and I’ll be happy to talk this through.  No obligation, no charge – always happy to chat.

Establish a plan.

That sounds stupid and obvious, but it is the one thing that (in my experience) many companies that are struggling a little at the moment, don’t do.

I am not a believer in a detailed plan stretching on for the rest of the year which can only be changed in the case of emergencies, but I do believe in knowing the sort of approach one is adopting.

So, for example, here’s a simple plan (it doesn’t apply to everyone but it is an example of the sort of thing that I mean).

1. Send out emails to get people to request a free sample, a trial run, a catalogue, a report, or anything else free.
   
2. Take those people’s email addresses and drop them into a program that does bulk emailing.
3. Email those people every week with more information, advice, guidance, tips, and of course adverts relating to your product.
4. Based on the success of a), do further promotions of free materials in order to get success.

That’s a very simple plan, and obviously not one that is viable for every business, but it is a plan that can work, and work very well. Of course, make sure that your data you collect is secure with a quick download of a suitable antivirus and installing it on your work computer. It would really put a stop in the works of instigating your marketing plan if your potential customers'/advocates' personal emails are hacked. If in doubt, get more advice on building an email list from as many different sources as possible.

There are hundreds of variations, and hundreds of different types of plans, but in my view the key issue is often not a case of which plan, but the fact that there is no consistent marketing plan at all.

But here’s a challenge – if you would like to talk about developing a marketing plan, and if you have a spare 15 minutes, give me a call. In complete confidence we can have a chat and I’ll give you my thoughts. Consider it a free consultancy offer. (I regret to say that sometimes I am out of the office or in meetings, but if I am not here I will call you back – promise!)

You never know – it might result in you getting one little nugget of information that really could change the way you see marketing.

And if not, you’ve only lost 15 minutes.

A set of studies examined by the web site Marketing Vox has revealed that the prime reason that people stop reading and ultimately unsubscribe from email lists has little to do with concerns about privacy but a lot to do with a thorough dislike of irrelevant emails.

While it might be amusing to receive the occasional piece (as I did today) that says:

Forgive my indignation if this message comes to you as a surprise and may offend your personality for contacting you without your prior consent and writing through this channel. I got your contact from a professional database found on the internet while searching for a reliable and honest person that will assist me to safeguard fund into an account. I was divinely inspired to pick your name among all other names found in the database.

in the end such rubbish becomes a bit dull, and one tries to get rid of it.

So once again we can see that the key is how one writes – make it interesting so that people want to read it – even occasionally – and they will stay on your email list. But if you become tedious or repetitive they won’t.

It is not the case that each and every email has to appeal to the reader – but the following rules really do seem to apply…

1. Some of the emails really do have to appeal to the readers.
   
2. All of the emails need to be written in a way that makes the reader feel interested in staying on the list – even if this email is not really relevant.
   
3. There needs to be a personal element in the emails – and that does not mean using mechanical personalisation systems. It means recognising the interest of the people on your list.

As always if you want to talk about this, do give me a call on 01536 399 013 or drop me an email at Tony@hamilton-house.com

Issues at the recipient’s end

1. All Internet Service Providers have some filtering going on and they will handle incoming emails in their own way.  Emails caught by such a system will either never be delivered to the individual, or will be put in a spam box on the server.   The settings of these filtering systems can be affected by the recipient organisation, and so an administrator may well change the settings for the whole school or company, if he or she feels that there is too much spam around.   Since no one sees the results of these changes they can be fairly destructive for incoming emails, and are generally the source of the problem where someone says, “I never get your emails”.

1. Many spam boxes learn from the action of the email account holder.  Thus if the recipient moves a number of items into a spam box the system can “learn” about these items, and automatically look for words, phrases, addresses, links etc and put these in the spam box.  Generally you should never drop something into a spam box unless you know you don’t want anything else from that address, or with those words in it.  It is much safer to hit delete.  For emails with an unsubscribe button, hitting the unsub button is usually the most effective way forward.

1. Most email programs (Outlook etc) have message rules sub-programs which allow the user to build in rules about certain emails.  A typical rule might be “if the email contains a particular phrase, put it into the spam box”.  The problem with this is twofold.  One is that it is easy to forget rules that one built a year ago.  The other is that the spam box can start learning and expanding the rules.

1. Grey listing is used by many systems.  This means that if the system does not recognise an address, it rejects the email and puts it in spam.  It will then recognise the address if several more emails from the same address arrive – and eventually it stops blocking and allows the email through.  Quite why grey listing exists is beyond me, but it does.

1. Anti-virus programs do contain their own email checking programs, although generally these are hidden away in the “advanced” settings, and few people change them from the standard settings.  Many of these programs use “Heuristics” (experience-based techniques that mean that as the system learns what emails are not wanted, and which emails have dangerous attachments), so it tends to block them or push them into spam boxes without the user every knowing why.

Issues at the sender’s end.

1. Speed.  The speed at which emails are sent out can affect the delivery rate, and for this reason some senders (such as Hamilton House) run their systems at a very slow speed.

1. Bounce rate.   Companies that clean up their lists very regularly have a greater chance of getting their emails through.  This affects people who buy in lists and then just use them over and over again.  Gradually servers to which their emails are directed become resistant to all email from that source and will block it.  This can particularly affect schools, where their servers are run via individual local authorities which monitor all the mail going into all the schools in the area.

As we can see from this, the cause of emails not arriving or being put into a spam box, are mostly with the recipient.  There are things that the sender can do, but much of the time it is a recipient issue.