27/12/2009 by Tony Attwood.

The problem with 2009 was that the game kept changing.   We knew that to sell to teachers it was important to develop advertising that was a conversation, not an announcement.  We needed to stop shouting 30% DISCOUNT at them and instead treat them like professionals who want to know the educational benefits of our product.

But then four problems hit us at once.

• Response rates for many generic emails declined
• The Secretary of State for Education declared that the education budget would be cut
• “Rarely cover” was introduced meaning that it became very hard to sell conferences to teachers
• Royal Mail staff went on strike

However for those who know how to do it, the market brightened considerably towards the end of 2009, and the money started rolling in.

First: the biggest boost was the primary school education settlement for England and the pre-budget statement. Schooling was not cut at all.   Schools which have been holding back on spending in the fear of deep cuts now have until April to spend most of their 2009/10 allocation.

Even better 2010/11 has been left alone and there will even be an increase in the years after that.

Second: the amount of direct mail entering schools is now about 10% of that which was going into schools four years ago.  As a result people using solo and shared mailings using the “conversational” approach have seen an upturn already.

Third: Personal, Preference and Subscription email services have shown that email can work and bring in great results.  What’s more carefully written Generic emails started to show a recovery.  Even better, there will be a new Generic Email service in 2010 based around schools that do respond to Generic Emails.  A real breakthrough.

Fourth: Although “rarely cover” will continue to disrupt conferences, those who are able to focus on taking events to schools, rather than the reverse are finding themselves in considerable demand.

Fifth: PR has made a considerable come-back through the advent of www.UKEducationNews.co.uk which during its introductory phase from mid November to mid December has been getting 5000 story reads a day.   This service has cut the cost of PR dramatically, bringing it to the reach of many firms that could never work with it before.

In short, with the new style of  writing ads, the revival of generic emails, the new email services, the boost to direct mail caused by the fact that schools now get so little of it, and the arrival of UK Education News as a free add-on, selling to schools is showing a considerable upturn - to the relief of many of us!

If you want to discuss this further please do call me on 01536 399 013 or drop me an email.

Tony Attwood

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15/12/2009 by Tony Attwood.

We have a few spaces left in our schedule for the period Monday January 4th to Friday January 8th in our Subscription emails, Personal emails and Preference emails schedules and these remaining slots are now being offered at 50% discount off the normal price.

Only one email is sent to each teacher per week in these services, which of course means the first person taking the booking in each case gets the slot.

To get the 50% discount we must have your booking confirmed, and the copy in place by 5pm this Friday.

To enquire about availability first check the list of subject options we have (details below), then call 01536 399 000 and let us know the subject you want.  We’ll tell you if it is available and then start the process, if you want to go ahead.

Here’s the details of the services we offer and on which there are the 50% discount offers.

Subscription: These teachers opt into our service and receive two emails a week, one of which is pure news, and one of which is an advertorial.   You can see the list of subjects and prices at http://www.emails.gs/emailteachersdirect.html#cost - but remember all the prices quoted on the web site can be cut in half for this first week in January.  The discounted price is 10p each.

Personal: These are heads of departments personal addresses.  You can see the full list at http://www.emails.gs/PersPrefLists.html  The discounted price is 9p each

Preference: These are the email addresses of schools that have not allocated individual email addresses to teachers.  We send out the email to the school address, with the teachers’ name put in the subject line.  Again details are at http://www.emails.gs/PersPrefLists.html - just scroll down the screen.   The discounted price is 5p each.

If your order comes to over £200 you will also get a free listing in www.ukeducationnews.co.uk

Please do note that we have already taken a number of bookings for dates after the first week of term, so if you do want an email later in the term it might be worth booking in this term, to reserve your slot, although we will not require copy until the new year.

Final point, I can’t send out a list of which subject areas are still available for any particular week, because as soon as another booking comes in, that list is out of date.  Just call 01536 399 000 and then you can enquire if a particular subject area is available.

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04/12/2009 by Tony Attwood.

I feel rather good about using blogs to double response rates.

This is because this is not another bit of pontificating on my part, but is in fact because I have just spent two years getting this right.

Blogs (rather like search engine optimisation) are one of these areas where the world is full of people who tell you they know how to do it, but then seem vague on the details.  Of course there are people out there who deliver - I am not suggesting there is not.  It is just I seemed to come across a lot of people who were hot on promises and cold on delivery of results.

The blog I set up two years ago (www.blog.emiratesstadium.info) got 120,000 unique readers last month, and is used to sell a book about Arsenal FC that I wrote.  It started (obviously) from zero in a very crowded market, and I found out during that time how to get my blog to the top of the lists.  If you look at it you will see that it now has a number of guest writers, and gets a fair number of comments each day.

Having got the blogging bit sorted I then added the twist which linked it to schools.  You can of course start your blog on education any time you want.  But you will also need to find ways of getting people to read.  

To help with this, what we have done is set up www.UKEducationNews.co.uk which contains a rolling list of news stories - and is attracting a large number of readers each day.  In between the stories from the BBC, Guardian etc are pieces that either come from our customers’ own blog or news pages, and items that we put up on our own blog, on behalf of customers.

That might seem a bit complex, but in essence here’s how it works.

If you send us in a story, we put it on our schools blog, and the story gets listed on www.UKEducationNews.co.uk   That story can get anything between 100 and 400 readings in a day.

Now if you do a generic email to 5000 secondary schools you might get 100 or 200 click throughs onto your web site.    Using UK Education News as well (which will cost you just an extra £20) you are going to double the number of people who read your details.  

The only note of caution I need to add here is that because many people do send out emails to the generic list without taking any guidance on how to write the copy the click through rate from generic emails can range from 20 to over 400 - it all depends on the offer and the copy that is written.

But whatever number you are getting, using UK Education News should be doubling the number.

You can see UK Education News at www.ukeducationnews.co.uk

You can see the blog where we put news items on behalf of clients at www.blog.schools.co.uk

If you have your own news pages or blog on your site, we can pick that up automatically day by day into UK Education News - please call 01536 399 000 to talk this through.

If you would like to know more about blogs there is an article in the HOW TO series on the www.hamilton-house.com site - just click on the link - click on the HOW TO tab on the left (second one down) and you will see a list of articles.   HOW TO MAKE MONEY OUT OF BLOGS is there.

If you have questions, if you would like HHM to be involved in developing your blog, or if you would like to know what we are about to do next in the world of blogging, give me a call.

Tony Attwood

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

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02/12/2009 by Tony Attwood.

This is the question that has been put to me a number of times since UK Education News was launched.

Most callers have seen the benefits - it is a rolling news service which covers all the major stories in education every day.   And it is free to teachers.

Indeed many schools are already putting up a link to the news service on their own web site, to help governors, teachers, managers and parents keep up to date with the news on schooling.

But, as some suppliers have pointed out, what are you supposed to do if you don’t have news?

I think all products and services can be turned into news.   The easiest way to do it is to focus on the benefits of the product, and the results that the product or service bring.   For example if you sell posters, you talk about what the posters do, what difference they make to teaching and learning and so on.

You might be able to find a piece research on posters which shows just how much of an impact they can have.  I certainly found one such article when I went looking on behalf of a client recently.

If you really do think you have a product or service that cannot be turned into news, send me a note as to what it is about (Tony@hamilton-house.com) or call me on 01536 399 000 and I will try and come up with an idea straight away.

Certainly if you can turn your product or service into news, then you can get onto UK Education News and reach thousands of readers in a day - and at the moment the price is just £20.

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01/12/2009 by Tony Attwood.

The new on line education news service from Hamilton House www.UKEducationNews.co.uk had over 5000 stories accessed on the fourth day of its full operation.

Even better news, some of advertisements that have appeared there have also started to receive good response rates - despite the incredibly low cost of advertising.

And now we have discovered that without our even mentioning the idea around 150 schools have added UK Education News to their school web site or the school learning platform.  We are now starting a campaign to invite all schools to do this.

The site contains links to all the main educational news stories of the day - and refreshes every 3 minutes.  It is clearly being accessed by teachers, governors, managers and parents.

At the moment of writing (December 1 2009) we are still in our trial period and still promoting the site to schools, but we are accepting PR style advertisements on the site for a price of £20.00 plus VAT.   Email and direct mail advertisers with Hamilton House get the service for free.

What you get is your story first of all on www.blog.schools.co.uk (which got 20,000 individual readers in November 2009 - a number that is rising week by week).   The about 15 minutes later it appears on www.UKEducationNews.co.uk 

If you would like to talk about the service or know more, just give me a call on 01536 399 000 or else email Tony@hamilton-house.com

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