Tony Attwood's Blog

“Email Marketing, where’s the innovation” is a headline from a report that landed on my desk recently, and I have to say, it is a question well worth asking.

The overwhelming majority of emails that I see (and I really do mean over 95%) are copycat emails – each looking much the same as the other.

OK there may be a few design differences in there, but nothing is different in terms of the message.

There’s an overwhelming reliance on announcements (“We have this, buy it”), background (“We’ve been in business for 30 years selling….”) and closed questions, (“Are you looking to gain new customers in the new year?”)

As a result it is all so dull, so repetitive, and so unreadable.

If there is one message I would give to anyone writing an email is, Do Something Different.

There’s many ways of doing this, but perhaps the easiest route is to note that there are five ways of advertising that avoid the announcement route.  Any of those is preferable to the approach followed by 95% of emails.

The five routes are

1: Sell on price (this too is overdone, but not as much as the announcement and closed question approach).

2: Use humour (as in tell a funny story.  www.blog.toppled.info is one example)

3: Ask an interesting open question.  “What is the most effective way of…”

4.  Sell on emotion

5.  Sell on benefit.

Any of those will lead you away from the habits of the overwhelming majority.

Tony Attwood

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

There’s no doubt that many types of organisation cannot easily be reached via email, unless you set up your own research programme to get the email addresses.

Which is why postal marketing is still so important in the B2B world, and that is also why we’ve been busy updating our business, clubs, society and religious mailing lists.  The latest updated list is now on…

http://www.hamilton-house.com/gateways/mailing%20lists.html

If there is anything there that you are interested in, please do call 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

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

What’s the biggest problem facing Business to Business companies today?

 It appears that virtually everyone recognises the need to stay in touch with existing customers while seeking out prospects.  And when it comes to direct marketing this invariably means producing friendly informative conversational messages for both those groups.

Indeed a recent survey has found that 41% of B2B marketers say that producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers is just about their  biggest problem.

 Of course some companies still do seek to overcome this issue by simply sending out announcements about what they sell, and hammering away at how good the price is.

 Some vary this with closed question messages – such as “Are you looking to reduce the cost of your company’s heating bills this winter?”  

 Neither approach counts as “producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers”, quite simply because neither approach works very well (although, as you will know if you read our regular Good Ad blog which takes four or five direct marketing ads a week and reviews them, a lot of companies do use these tactics over and over again).

However the number of firms that recognise that producing engaging content for customers and prospects is a problem, is rising.  It has in fact gone up 14% in the past year since the last survey was done by MarketingProfs.

The survey found that respondents have two huge challenges: producing enough content (20%), and having the budget to produce enough content (18%).

As you might know from my previous commentaries this problem doesn’t have to be fundamental, nor does the solution have to be expensive. It is in fact what Hamilton House offers, but it seems a lot of companies are stuck when it comes to solving it.

 I know this is hardly the moment to talk about radical changes to your style and approach to marketing.   But if you do want to talk, Hamilton House is open until Thursday this week.   You can call us on 01536 399 000.  

 After Thursday we close – but we are back in the new year, as you’d expect.  And if you get bored over the holiday period many of the messages I’ve been sending you (and many others from our other news groups) are available on line.

There’s the aforementioned Good Ad blog at www.goodad.co.uk and there’s the Hamilton House blog on direct marketing matters on www.blog.hamilton-house.co.uk

 Have a good holiday, and I do hope you have found at least something helpful and positive in my ramblings during the past year.

 Tony Attwood

I have noticed a rather interesting change in the way the results of email campaigns are being reported in some quarters.

Generally the tradition has been to say that the total number of emails sent is the 100% from which other numbers are considered.

From that you get the number of people who opened the email (maybe 25%)

Then there is the number of people who clicked through to the web site.

We have always quoted the number of people who have clicked through to the web site as a percentage of the total number of people reached.  So 100 people mailed, 7 click through to the web site, that is 7%.

But some firms say 100 people mailed, 25 opened, 7 clicked through – that is 28% – (i.e. 7 out of 25).

There’s nothing wrong with this at all of course – it is just another way of doing it.  But I did come across one company making the point that their click through was in the region of 30%, and pointing at other companies (perhaps meaning my firm) with much lower click throughs.   Lies, damn lies and statistics!

The problem with all this is the open rate.  Open rates are only meaningful within an individual system – because each program measures open rates in different ways.   On my computer, for example, I can read most emails without clicking anything – and thus I don’t register on some systems as “opening” an email.  But on some systems, the fact that my email has not bounced back counts as “open”.  Others give an assessment of open, for no activity.

So open needs to be treated with a bit of caution.  And if you see a high click through percentage – do take care and see how the percentage is calculated.

There is more discussion on www.blog.hamilton-house.com and you can follow us on Twitter @HHMailings

Tony Attwood

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

I am having real problems with Linkedin – and thought you might like to be aware of them – just in case you are tempted in – or out.

But even if you are not in Linkedin you might like to note what has happened here.  This is really not the way to run an online service.

I joined a while ago, but really felt it didn’t do anything for me, so I unsubscribed.

Unfortunately I kept getting messages despite having seemingly left the system.  So then I completed a form asking me to change my wishes, saying that I no longer wanted to get any messages.

But I couldn’t get into the system at all at that point.  So I went looking for an email address of the company to write to.  I couldn’t find one on the site.  I found a postal address – in the Republic of Ireland.  So I wrote to that.

There was no reply so I called the Data Protection office, and asked what to do.  They said I had to send a registered letter to Linkedin, and give them a month, and then after that I could put in a complaint.  In other words it is now not only costing me time but also money to get out of the wretched system.

Beware!

Tony Attwood

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

Should you respond publicly to criticism?

My answer is generally no, except perhaps within the forum where the criticism is produced.

So if someone on one of the blogs I run calls me names in the commentary section then I tend to respond, although always in a modest way.

But what I would not do is respond to a problem outside of the medium in which the problem arises.

I thought of this because I saw one guy recently make public the fact that someone had been complaining about his emails on Facebook.

Personally, I’d just respond on Facebook, or leave the whole thing alone.  What is the benefit, I wonder, of drawing attention to the problem?

In his response this writer tried to use a form of sarcasm, which for me didn’t really help.  Sarcasm is a difficult form of humour to get right, and I tend to leave it alone.  Irony – yes I do use that a lot, but mostly in a self-deprecating form – not against someone else.

We all know there are a lot of strange people on Facebook as on all parts of the internet, and they post many strange things.  But lowering oneself to respond can backfire.  By and large I wouldn’t – unless as I say it is within a blog in which people are free to make their comments.

Tony Attwood

PS: On the other hand I never mind being critical of other people’s advertising.  If you want to see some, take a look at www.badad.co.uk

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

There is a growing tendency to ask questions in adverts. Nothing wrong with that. But NOT closed questions.

Closed questions can be answered yes or no, and invite the reader to turn away in boredom. Also they end up normally with the writer saying, “if you are answering yes, then…”

It is so obvious, so false, and it doesn’t work.

If you want to ask questions, ask open questions that cannot be answered yes or no.

Here’s a really bad example of how not to do it

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You can follow all our commentaries on good and bad advertising on Twitter @HHMailings. And if you would like to discuss how can best create adverts – or indeed how you can use our Velocity Service to help you create ads that work each time please do have a look at www.velocity.ac or call 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood