Education Marketing

School sales in March seem to have taken the rise that we were expecting, at least judging by the sales that companies operated by Hamilton House have revealed.

Obviously we use in our selling techniques the various approaches outlined in our news letters etc, and through this approach sales of CD resources were up by 25% in March over February, which was encouraging.

Likewise sales of a new course we are running in May (at a cost of £800) are starting to come in, which is encouraging with those not registering saying, “we are just waiting for the approval of funds, and that can’t be given for another week.”

This suggests to me that despite the cuts and issues around, there is still activity and opportunity providing the four fundamentals of marketing are observed:

1: Offer the product the customer wants

2: At a price the customer is willing to pay

3: In a way that grabs the customer’s attention

4: And in a manner that excites the customer.

I would add one particular point here – 99% of the ads I see going into schools (either email or direct postal mail) miss the last point (they don’t EXCITE) even if they hit the other three.

Thus I would strongly suggest that every time you write an advert you look at it (or better get someone else to look at it) and ask, DOES THIS EXCITE ME?

If not, do it again.

The Velocity programme (in which we do the excitement bit on your behalf) is at www.velocity.ac

We are running half price email ads from now until the start of next term – there’s details of all our email lists on http://www.emails.gs/PersPrefLists.html

And next term we have half price email ads continuing with our stand by service http://www.emails.gs/standby.html

We also have a shared postal mailing to 5000 secondary schools, with a free email campaign using our personal lists. Delivery of materials by 20 April; materials despatched 27 April. http://www.shared.org.uk/FreeEmail.html

Do call 01536 399 000 if you want any more information.

You can follow us on the Education Marketing Newsletter (email education-marketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com) and on Twitter @HHMailings)

Tony Attwood

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

Whenever you do an email campaign with Hamilton House it is possible to send a follow up email to the people who have clicked through from the email to your web site.

Indeed it is possible to build a list of all the people who have been on your web site in this way, and remail them regularly.  It can be a very effective and low cost way of advertising.

The only problem is that you need to be careful about what you say to these people.  Writing along the lines that “I noticed you were on our web site recently and…” is generally a total disaster (since no one likes to think that their web site activities are being spied upon.)  A more sophisticated approach generally works better.

If you are interested in writing again to the people who hit your web site, we can supply the data and help you do this.  The process works slightly differently depending on the list that you used to mail out, but here’s a simple guide…

In each case, we will tell you how many click throughs to your web site got, but you will only be charged our set price irrespective of the number of email addresses involved.

What’s more each time you do this we can add the new email addresses that have clicked on your web site, and add them to your list.   Each time the price remains the same.

So, to be clear, you might get 100 click throughs from a mailing.  We can then remail those addresses later for you for the fee below.  Next time you mail with us you might get another 100 click throughs.  We will add those to the list you picked up last time, deduplicate and mail out again.  So this time you might mail 180 addresses.   A higher number but the price remains the same.

Indeed if you have done an email campaign with us in the last month we will still have your data on file – so we can start by using that.

Here’s the price, according to the list you use at the start.

a) Generic list. If you used a generic list (i.e. one that contains addresses such as admin@, office@ etc) then we can supply you with the data so you can email the list yourself as often as you wish.  The price is £20.

If you would like us to email the list out for you the price rises to £40.

b) Preference lists. These are lists that go to the same sort of addresses as generic lists, but include in the subject line the name of the teacher – and this enhances response rates.   Again we can supply you with the data of people who clicked through - in this case the cost is £30.  And again, if you want us to mail it out for you, the cost is £40.

c) Personal. With the personal lists (which contain the full personal email address of the teacher) we are not able to supply you with the data of who clicked through, but we can email the people who clicked through for you, and add them to an ever growing database, so that next time we can email the people who clicked this time, plus the people who clicked last time – and de-dupe the list so each person only gets one email.   Again this is £40 to pick up data and transmit it.

d) Using your own list for the initial mailing. This works in a slightly different way, but the options are still the same.  There’s details at http://www.emails.gs/ownlists.html

Please do call 01536 399 000 if you would like to know more.

Tony Attwood

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

One of the issues that my colleagues and I often put to our regular clients is that they should do some research prior to doing a mailing – and yet there is often a reluctance to do this.

But research can be hugely beneficial.  You want to sell a certain product to teachers in charge of behaviour, or you want to promote some videos to the school librarian, or books to the head of chemistry….  what you really need to know is what they are already using, what their attitude is to this topic, do they see it as a problem, where they see a problem, do they buy this type of product, which competitors products do they value…

Of course we do this quite often for our Velocity clients (creating the questionnaire, sending out the questionnaire, gathering of the data and the analysis of the answers) and it takes up a tiny part of the monthly Velocity fee.

But it can be done as a one off – you will pay a little more, but not that much, and you will get information that will enable you to write adverts that really get to the heart of the matter.

What actually happens however is that quite often adverts are written without the research being done first, and so the ads themselves become guesses in terms of what the recipient is thinking.

So why do some advertisers not like to do research?   I’ve done some research to find out (!), and these are the answers I have got…

a) I don’t have time – we need sales now.   (The answer to this is, fine, lets do the advertising now, but let’s do the research at the same time – and you will have the answer to the research in two weeks – so in case this promotion does not work, you’ll know why, and what to do next).

b) You can get research to tell you anything.   Yes that’s true – but generally because the research is unfocussed and badly constructed.  Let’s say that you want to sell some revision books to the parents of pupils.   The key thing here is whether teachers will be willing to tell pupils and parents about such books – or whether they will feel that they should not be doing this.   Have they ever done it before?   Would they feel like doing it again?

The fact is the answers to such questions won’t be perfect – but they will give a clue.  Just because a teacher says he/she will would pass on the information to the parents doesn’t mean he/she will – but if 85% say they won’t then you know you have a problem.

c) It is too expensive.    Even if you are not part of Velocity and you pay the full market rate, taking the survey directly to say 2000 heads of department, the cost should not be much beyond £400.  If you do it as a Velocity client the cost will come down to around £160.

d) It is too time consuming.  For Velocity clients it isn’t because we do it all. But even if you are not on the Velocity programme we can still reduce the amount of time taken to an hour or two.

If you would like to talk about questionnaires or Velocity please do call 01536 399 000 and ask for Stephen or Tony.  www.velocity.ac

You can follow us on Twitter @HHMAilings

Tony Attwood

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

Of course I don’t know whether your potential clients do read what you write or not, but I can tell you that by and large most teachers don’t read most of the emails and direct postal mail promotions that they get.

They might look at them, but they don’t read them.

This is an issue that we often face, and indeed it is a topic that I commented on recently in the email “What makes an interesting question?”

The point is that you must grab the reader’s attention in the first few seconds of looking at the email or the printed page.  You cannot and indeed I would say you must not assume that everyone will read something just because you have sent it.

But there is more to it than just grabbing attention.  Even when you have grabbed attention there is no reason to assume people will read all you have written.  In fact it is better to assume they won’t.  They will skim.

This is why I often have debates with my customers over the issue of the length of a sales letter or email.  My customer might say, “They won’t read all this!” and I say, “no they won’t – which is why I have written it in a particular way”.

That may sound singularly obtuse, but in fact there are techniques for driving individuals to very specific points in an email or letter, in order to get them to do the next thing you want them to do (like click on a web site link or pick up the phone).

I am working through this issue at the moment on the Creative Direct news group (a group similar to this but which focuses totally on the way email and direct mail can be written, examining what others write, and with detailed investigations into what the Hamilton House team think work – and why).

You can follow this by subscribing to the service (it is free) by emailing creativedirect-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and then clicking reply when you get the confirmation email back.

Or if you prefer you can look at www.goodad.co.uk – which contains many of the articles sent out on the news group.    The article on what to focus on once you have grabbed attention is now on that site.

If you would like to discuss any of this with myself or my colleagues, do call 01536 399 000 or else email me (Tony@hamilton-house.com) a copy of your email or sales letter and I will call you back with my comments – in complete confidence of course.

Tony Attwood

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

Does it matter what your competitors are doing?

If you know what your competitors are up to, in terms of their latest promotions and offers, and if you know what’s on their web site and so forth, then congratulations.  You are in a tiny minority of companies.

I would say quite probably you are part of an elite group of 5% of firms that have this knowledge.

But why is it important to know what the opposition is up to?  And why do people not bother?

For me the answer is a marketing one.  You need to know what the rivals are doing in order to ensure that you are doing something different.  No matter what it is that you sell, you adverts need to be different from your competitors, in order to ensure that potential customers read what you say.

If you have not done this recently go onto the internet and look at the home page of the web site of your rivals.  Then look at your own home page.   Ask yourself, which is the most immediately attractive.   Ask yourself, if you were just flipping past, which of these web sites would you most likely enter.

If you can manage it, get hold of a copy of a leaflet or email being sent out by your competitors to schools.  Then compare what they are doing with what you are doing.

Does your advert stand out?  If a teacher saw one after the other could you be sure that they would pick yours?

If the answer is that your adverts always stand out then there’s no problem – you are probably sailing away into the sunset secure in the knowledge that your business is on a high.

But if you have any doubts, by all means send me a copy of the adverts, or links to the web sites, I will call you back and we can have a chat about what’s going on, and what might be done to make the situation more promising from your point of view.

As to why people don’t do this sort of research, I think it is mostly pressure of time.  Which is a shame really, because it really can be incredibly helpful.   Which is why we have put competitor awareness and feedback within Velocity, so we do it for you.  There’s details on www.Velocity.ac

Tony Attwood

For a number of years we’ve been offering a very strong email list of school administrators who subscribe to the weekly newsletter of the School of Education Administration.

Now we are also building a list of the personal email addresses of school bursars, and have a selection of some 2000 available for secondary schools.

The amount of power and influence that has moved away from senior management and into the world of admin and the bursar’s office is very significant indeed and there are many products and services that are now bought or authorised through these offices.

Details of our personal email lists are at http://www.emails.gs/PersPrefLists.html and details of our subscription email lists are at http://www.emails.gs/emailteachersdirect.html

Or of course please call 01536 399 000.

Tony

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