Performance related email lists

08/02/2010 by Tony Attwood.

We’ve been doing special offers on using our email mail lists in the school hols for a couple of terms now, and getting some interesting results.

It seems that emails sent to teachers’ personal addresses during the school half terms do get read and can get responses - suggesting that many teachers are picking up their emails directly at this time.

So this time we’ve got a new offer: Performance Related Emails.

The idea here is that with emails to our Personal Email lists during next week we will charge according to the number of click throughs you get as a result of the email going out.   The charge is 99p per click, with a minimum charge of £50 and a maximum charge of £250.

If you would like to know more there is a list of all our personal email lists on http://www.emails.gs/PersPrefLists.html   For more information and to book in please do call us on 01536 399 000.

But please also do remember that each of these email lists only gets one email per week from us - so we only have one vacancy per teacher, and as always they are booked on a first come first serve basis.

Tony Attwood

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Selling to children and parents via the school

04/02/2010 by Tony Attwood.

A report from Learning Support (full link at the end) suggests that schools are increasingly allowing themselves to be used more and more by businesses to market their products, without knowing the impact on children, says a new report.

 

The government-funded study found that the most common growth area was sponsorship, voucher and token schemes and overt advertising.

 

Sainsbury’s and Tesco both promote themselves through voucher schemes, often getting large banner advertisements erected outside schools.

 

Commercial organisations also offer teaching materials to schools. Even if these don’t directly promote their products, they “brand build” by introducing students, staff and parents to the company in a way which might suggest the school or teacher is endorsing the brand.

 

Schools might be giving mixed messages, for example on issues such as nutrition, if they allow businesses to market themselves in schools through branded materials and equipment, says the report.

 

Critics have also questioned whether voucher schemes really benefit schools and pupils, or whether the time and effort involved in collecting vouchers outweighs the rewards.

 

However there is no doubt that some of these schemes can be particularly beneficial to schools.  In one approach for example companies offer free educational materials to the school in return for the school sending an email to parents telling them about the product – but including the overt message “the school does not endorse this product”.   That seems to minimise the risk to pupils, while giving a genuine benefit to the school.

 

http://learningsupport.co.uk/newsblog/2010/01/growth-of-advertising-in-schools.html

 

If you would like to know more about the work of Hamilton House in reaching teachers and parents, please do call 01536 399 000.  There’s also more on our web sites…

 

www.hamilton-house.com

www.educationmarketing.org.uk 

 

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Online links generate huge numbers of new customers

03/02/2010 by Tony Attwood.

In September 2009 I started posting advertisements from Hamilton House customers on www.blog.schools.co.uk   I did this for free, as part of our preparation for setting up www.ukeducationnews.co.uk - which picked up these items.

 

To my surprise the readership of www.blog.schools.co.uk went up and up, despite the fact that we were not advertising the site, linking to the site or anything.  All we had was content.

 

Here are the monthly individual readership figures - each person counted read at least two articles - but each individual is only counted once, irrespective of the number of times they came back to the site.

 

September 8,172

October 12,988

November 19,111

December 24,149

 

So where did these people come from?  My guess was they found the site through searches using Google etc, and because they were using Google Alerts.

But I had no way to prove it.   Until now.

 

Here is a note from Marketing Vox (link at the end).  It refers to a study by Post Release.   They refer to a “sponsored forum” which is their name for a site like www.blog.schools.co.uk 

 

If you want to get your post onto www.blog.schools.co.uk or one of our similar sites, it is free - just book a listing on www.ukeducationnews.co.uk or use one of our email lists or shared or solo mailing lists.  Call me on 01536 399 013.

 

Here’s the Marketing Vox article

The study also showed that 60 days after a typical sponsored forum post’s appearance, the total number of click-throughs increase by an average of 40%. After 180 days they increase by an average of 77%.

The reason for this effectiveness, according to PostRelease president Justin Choi, is that the posts remain in place for the life of the forum and contain content that can be discovered in search engine results long after the campaign is over. This enables the post to continue driving traffic to the ad not only from the audience of the forum in which it appears, but also directly from organic search listings.

“Consumers don’t have to be browsing a particular forum to discover an advertiser’s message there,” said Choi. “If a post offers useful content, it’s likely to show up when it is relevant to a consumer’s search for information - boosting traffic to the ad and to the forum. The click-through rates increase over time because posts are discovered by people who are actively searching for that content, and therefore are highly motivated to click through.”

Specific findings about reads and click-throughs of sponsored forum posts:

After 60 days the reads increased 28.8%

After 60 days the click-throughs increased 40.7%

After 180 days the reads increased 49.2%

After 180 days the click-throughs increased 77.1%

After 360 days the reads increased 60.6%

After 360 days the click-throughs increased 103.6%

In commenting on the increased effectiveness of sponsored posts, Choi also noted their durability vis a vis traditional display and search ads. “This is traffic they receive after the campaign has ended - for free. Whereas display and search ads turn ‘off’ as soon as the media buy ends, sponsored posts can play a powerful role in helping companies build a repository of online content that is available to be found by consumers searching relevant topics for weeks, months, even years to come.”

About the analysis: The company analyzed all PostRelease campaigns - which enable companies to insert clearly labeled, sponsored posts into targeted online forum discussions - that have at least six months of historical data, to see what residual traffic they were receiving after the campaigns had officially ended. Posts can include text, pictures, hyperlinks and links to video. A “click-through” is defined as when someone clicks one of the advertiser links that is embedded within the post. A “read” is when someone goes into the post - either from the forum discussion page or from a search engine. Overall, PostRelease click-through rates average 33%, with highs reaching nearly 90%.

http://www.marketingvox.com/sponsored-forum-posts-increase-response-by-more-than-100-046025/?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=mv&utm_medium=textlink

 

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How a campaign can cost less than a one off mailshot

18/01/2010 by Tony Attwood.

With the schools now having to spend their 2009/10 money before April 5th, and with next year’s money assured by the government this looks like a good time to advertise.

 

Indeed First and Best (the publishing company we own, and whose sales we use to monitor the general activity in school sales) has had a terrific opening to January - despite all the snow.  (If you want to know how we did it, do give me a call on 01536 399 013).

 

The question then is, how to build on this situation at a time when teachers have to spend (or risk having their money clawed back).

 

It is possible of course to book in individual email, and direct mail adverts to see how they go.   But it is also possible to save a lot of money pro-rata by booking in a regular campaign or by planning ahead.

 

I mentioned last week that we have now introduced stand by advertisements for email (there’s a section on this at http://www.emails.gs/standby.html

 

But another alternative is to pay a monthly fee, as part of the Velocity programme.

 

Velocity allows you to work with the HHM team and pick and choose the activities you want…. including, copywriting, blog writing, emailing, research into teachers’ views of products, competitor activity, re-writing landing pages to create more sales, listings on UK Education News (www.ukeducationnews.co.uk) and other PR activity, developing your own email list of possible customers and mailing them regularly…

 

Plus of course all the guidance and advice you need as to which list is best for your product or service, and how one should go about doing the promotions.

 

The monthly fee varies, but is generally around £450 per month - and you will usually get over £1000 worth of activity from this fee.

 

There’s more details on www.velocity.ac - but if you do just want to book in a single shared mailing, solo mailing or email mailing please do call 01536 399 000.

 

For news from the world of education, hour by hour, day by day, do visit UK Education News.

 

Tony Attwood

 

 

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

 

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Why direct mail to school response rates are on the up

15/01/2010 by Tony Attwood.

It is always very hard to give an accurate picture of what is happening to response rates in direct mail, and what the cause is, but I think there is some evidence that the decline in the volume of direct mail reaching schools has resulted in an increased response rate.

Shared mailings are down to about 50% of the level (in terms of leaflets going into schools) that they were at four or five years ago.    As a result it appears that school administrators are now passing on almost all of the leaflets - because by and large they only get one pack a week to handle.

In primary schools the situation is even better with even the largest schools getting only one pack every two or three weeks.

What’s more the contents of the packs are much smaller than they were in the past, so the time taken to deal with a pack is less.

The impact for individual teachers is less as well - just one leaflet turning up once every two or three weeks means that leaflet is looked at.

In solo mailing the decline has been less, but it is still noticeable - the overall level is probably about 40% or 40% of four years ago.  

Even though this is not so much of a decline as elsewhere it is still reducing the stress and strain on the admin staff who have to sort the mail.

HHM now offers a free inclusion on www.UKEducationNews.co.uk with each solo or shared mailing that is charged at £200 or more (excluding the postage on a solo).   There’s details of our shared services on www.shared.org.uk    If you have not tried a solo mailing before there is information on http://www.mailings.org.uk/ 

There is also a full guide to solo mailing to schools on www.solo.ac

Or you can call 01536 399 000 or email me: Tony@hamilton-house.com

Tony Attwood

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

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Personal emails at 50% discount

11/01/2010 by Tony Attwood.

We’re introducing a new “stand by” service for emails which makes our most responsive email lists available at a 50% discount.

The discounts apply to our personal email lists (see http://www.emails.gs/PersPrefLists.html) and our subscription email lists of teachers (http://www.emails.gs/emailteachersdirect.html).

To get your 50% discount all you need to do is supply us with your copy to go out to the teachers, and pay for the email transmission.  We then guarantee to send that advert out to the personal email addresses of the teachers you have selected within five weeks of the date on which we receive the copy and payment.

And that’s all there is to it.  Obviously this is not a service where you are looking for an immediate return, because we won’t be able to tell you if the promotion will go out in week one, week five or anywhere in between.

But where time is not of the essence, this can represent a considerable saving.

And our guarantee that each list only has one email sent from us each week still applies - so no matter when your email goes out, you’ll know that it will be the only one on that list to that teacher, that week.

Lastly, the 50% discount is not available on subscription mailings to school managers, and personal mailings to deputy heads, as these lists tend to be fully booked most weeks.

If you would like to know more, please call 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

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

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