The strangest schools story of the week

28/02/2010 by Tony Attwood.

This is a story that I saw on UK Education News (www.ukeducationnews.co.uk)   It just struck me as so amusing (and I am not sure why) I thought I’d take a day off from all the serious marketing stuff, and share it with you.

 

Countryside Ban for Children because mums cannot read maps and don’t like mud.

 

“The countryside is off-limits because it is out of the comfort zone of many affluent, suburban parents, according to researchers.

A lack of map reading skills was one barrier, while fear of their children being hurt, running-off or getting dirty was also cited. As a result most parents limited their excursions to country parks and farms that catered for families.”

The research quoted comes from Hertfordshire University research. The research was carried out, I must confess, at a prep school in the south of England, so maybe the results are not universally applicable, but there are still some interesting findings…

Debbie Pearlman Hougie, senior lecturer in rural geography at the university, said: “None of the mothers I spoke to could read a map.

“I put a 1:25,000 Ordinance Survey map on the table and they didn’t know where to start, they also didn’t know anything about rights of way.

“There were stories of families who had gone for a walk and ended up on someone’s land and got shouted at and never went back.

“They did not know how to make up circular walks or work out where it might be safe to go cycling with children.

“I think, with this group of people, their fear of danger is exaggerated,” she said. “They are very scared of children not only being run over, but being stolen even when they were with them.

“There also seems to be an obsession about cleanliness. Perhaps because children are in expensive clothes, mud seems to be abhorrent.”

Ms Pearlman Hougie said parents had doubts about children’s stamina levels and were worried that if they set out for a five mile walk, their children would give up half way round.

“Exposure to the countryside did not seem a priority,” she said

“At the same time children were not pestering their parents for kite flying or rambling, even though the older children were very aware that going walking was good for you and there was a definite desire to want to escape to exciting places where they could get lost.”

Poul Christensen, chairman of Natural England said: “Children are being denied the fundamental sense of independence and freedom in nature that their parents enjoyed.

“Our research shows that contact with nature has halved in a generation, and that the overwhelming majority of children now want more opportunities to play outdoors.

“Whether through pond dipping or tree climbing, nature-based activities can play an important role in the educational and social development of children.

“Society must question its priorities in providing safe open spaces for play – the money spent on parks and trees in this country is a fraction of that spent on the roads that cause parents safety concerns.”

The Telegraph also adds that the proportion of primary children walking to school has fallen to less than half, compared to 62 per cent in 1989.

Research in 1971 showed that 80 per cent of seven to eight-year-olds got to school on their own. By 1990, that had dropped to nine per cent.

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There’s more news - generally of a more serious nature - each day on Education Marketing Newsletter - to subscribe free of charge send an email to Education-Marketing-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com and just click reply when you get a message back.

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UK Education News  - www.ukeducationnews.co.uk

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Original story - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/countryside/7279301/Countryside-ban-for-children-because-mums-cannot-read-maps-and-hate-mud.html

Tony Attwood

 

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“How to increase your sales to schools by 10%”

22/02/2010 by Tony Attwood.

“How to increase your sales to schools by 10%” is one of those titles that says it all.   It’s an article that gives you six things to do and six things to avoid, all nice and simple and straightforward.  

I wrote it, and I genuinely believe in it.

If you would like to read it, just click on this link

http://bit.ly/XVGoL

If you want to read the whole list of our free reports, go to…

http://www.hamilton-house.com/howto.html

If you have any questions or comments on this report or any of our reports, or come to that anything else, from the quality of the snow, to Arsenal’s performance last weekend, please call me on 01536 399 013.

If you want to stay up to date with issues relating to marketing to schools in the UK you can subscribe to our daily free news service… just email education-marketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com 

And if you want to see the daily news about education in the UK (as opposed to marketing into education) take a look at www.ukeducationnews.co.uk - it updates every three minutes.

Tony Attwood

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Selling to schools after half term to Easter

19/02/2010 by Tony Attwood.

Schools in England have to spend between 92% and 95% of their annual funding by 5th April, and it looks like heads are giving out the message in many schools that trying to hold money back is going to be risky.

This final half of term leading up to the Easter holidays (Good Friday is 2nd April) should therefore be the best part of the school year for selling.

The options for selling are:

Solo mailing: the most expensive, but also normally gets the best response.  About 45p per school all included.  Ideal for testing, but because this is likely to be a time of good sales it is probably not the best time for testing.

Shared mailings: these continue weekly until a couple of weeks before the end of term - about 8p a school

Emails to named teachers on the subscription lists at their own address - 20p per address including despatch - these teachers have asked to be on the list.   However only one per week per teacher is allowed, and some lists are already fairly booked up - worth enquiring sooner rather than later.

Emails to non-subscribing named teachers at their own address - 18p per address - but as above only one per week.

Emails to the generic lists of schools (to the school administrator for her to pass on) from 5p per address - no restriction on use.

www.UKEducationNews.co.uk - puts your article on the continuing news site, and gives it a permanent place on one of our retained news sites.  From £25.

Blogs should obviously be talking to teachers about the need to get money spent and the dangers of claw back being imposed - but beware of hammering the information.  It should be written in an advisory manner.

Call me if you would like to talk this through (01536 399 013), or email me on Tony@hamilton-house.com

Tony Attwood

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You are probably not reading this

17/02/2010 by Tony Attwood.

You aren’t reading because of “email fatigue”.

Even if your email gets through to you and is not blocked by filters and the like, “e-mail fatigue” then clicks in.   The fact that you get 128 billion emails a minute means that you have had enough.

They have it worse in the US where only 10% of emails get looked at, while in Europe it is 13%.  

The point is that once you are reading a message, there is a chance that you will click on a link.  Getting clicks is not the issue, getting people to read the email in the first place is the big problem.

So what to do?

Firstly, stop sending emails to people who really don’t want to know.  If you have 5000 emails going out but only half a dozen people opening and clicking through, then the service providers (who have systems that do this sort of thing automatically) will start treating your transmissions as spam, and either send them straight to spam boxes, or refuse to deliver them altogether.

Second, use stunningly brilliant headlines.  Headlines that are so amazingly exciting and engaging that you force people to look, even if they are utterly disengaged.   “You are probably not reading this” is not the greatest headline in the world - but it is a damn site better than most that hit my in box each day. 

(It is certainly better than “Transfer of funding responsibilities is fast approaching!” which just landed in my in box.   Anything with an ! in the headline usually counts as rubbish with me).

Third, stop writing in “email speak”.  Use a natural conversational voice.  With an interesting personal accent.  And just one little moment that no one else could ever write.

Fourth, replicate the emails on a blog, so they stay in a permanent record.  This makes them public, and other people will find them and then be interested and join in.  This little piece for example started out on a news service, and then ended up here.  . 

If you want to talk about writing blogs and emails, or sending them out, or anything else come to that, call me on 01536 399 013 or email Tony@hamillton-house.com

Tony Attwood

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The forgotten benefits of solo mailing

15/02/2010 by Tony Attwood.

One of the biggest benefits that comes with solo mailings is the fact that it is often possible to do very small tests for very modest amounts of money, and still learn a lot about the response rate you get.

Imagine that you have a product that makes you £25 profit on each sale (or indeed a group of products that tend to sell together so your average profit is £25).

It costs something in the order of £45 to mail 100 schools - so clearly you know that if you mail out the 100 schools and get two sales, you have covered your costs.   Three sales takes you into profit, and although hardly worth doing when mailing just 100 schools, this would mean that if you mailed 5000 schools you would make £1500.

But that mailing to 5000 schools will cost you around £2000 (less than the 45p each because of the bulk discounts).  And none of us likes to risk £2000 until we are quite sure the profit will be there - even when the profit after all the mailing costs are paid is £1500.

So the test is invaluable - and a test of just 200 schools for £90 generally will not put too much of a strain on finances.

And this is the point about solo mailings.  Because response rates of 3% can be achieved, it is possible to test with a mailing of just 200 schools for £90.  In the worst case scenario you get no sales, and have lost £90.  But you might get two sales and get your costs back.  OK you don’t have a viable campaign, but you have not lost anything.

And you know you are almost there.  A tweak somewhere in the copy, or the realisation that you are only selling to one particular type of school and so don’t need to mail the others could mean that you are readily able to up the response.

This is where solo really scores - for a minimal cost you can experiment, get the advert right, and then roll it out.

Indeed the whole of the marketing operation of First and Best books (our publishing company) was based around this - and the lessons we learned from hundreds of solo experiments are now being transferred to our email marketing campaigns.   What we have found is that the way we write the solo mailings, tells us how to write the email campaigns.

If you would like to talk about solo marketing to schools - including doing tests - do get in touch.  I am on 01536 399 013.

Tony Attwood

Hamilton House Mailings Ltd

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Why blogs can be so amazingly effective when selling to schools

12/02/2010 by Tony Attwood.

Why blogs can be so amazingly effective and how to make them work for you

 

Blogs can be one of the most effective ways of bringing in customers that exists. And yet most companies don’t run them – largely on the grounds that they don’t quite understand how and why it all works.  Worse, some companies that do run blogs manage to run them without any success, because they make basic mistakes in the operation of the blog.

 

Two years ago I decided to experiment with a blog, starting absolutely from scratch, not writing about direct mail or email marketing, not writing about education, in fact not writing in an area where anyone knew anything about me, and not in any way trading on the name Hamilton House. 

 

In short I started as an absolutely anonymous writer.

 

In January 2008 (my first month of running the blog) I had 2,000 different readers visit the blog site. In January 2009 I had 60,000 individual readers on the site. And in January 2010 I had 170,000 individual readers on the site.  (The measurement of these numbers is quite strict and I am happy to discuss the parameters used – give me a call).

 

So, where did all these people come from? Or put another way, how can you get this level of readership to your site?

 

1.  People read the blog because you tell them to

 

If you are writing a blog it makes sense to email all your customers and potential customers to tell them about it.  Indeed some firms quite reasonably send copies of the blog occasionally to their potential customers as a way of drawing them in.  Obviously the blog has to be interesting to these people, but if it is, then you start by making your own audience.

 

2.  People read the blog because they find it on an accumulator site – such as UK Education News

 

If you are working with HHM then your blog can be listed on www.UKEducationNews.co.uk each time you run a new story.  It can be done totally automatically - and can bring in a continuous supply of new readers, who, if they like what they see, can return time and time again.  At the moment the average number of stories read by each visitor to the UK Ed News site is a staggering eight.  Try the site and see how you get stuck on it!

 

3.  People read the blog because of searching on Google

 

Blog articles get listed on Google and other search engines, so when someone does a search and picks up a phrase that is on your blog, they come and find the blog - and from there find your main website or give you a call.  The HHM site www.blog.schools.co.uk which does nothing but run adverts for our clients now gets around 28,000 individual readers on the site each month.  That means that each month the average article on the site gets 70 reads from people – and that goes on month after month after month. 

 

Remember also that those people reading the articles are people who have searched for the specific topic so they are already interested.  And that number is growing month by month. (People who just come to the site briefly and then never return are considered to be there by mistake and so are not counted.)

 

If you have not had an article on www.blog.schools.co.uk do give me a call to talk about it. 

 

4.  People forward the blog to friends

 

This takes a while to get going but once people start looking forward to your blog each day or each week then they start passing the message on.  On our test blog this did take about 10 months to start happening, but now, two years on, it is a major reason for our continuing growth. The more readers you have, the more people they are likely to tell.

 

5.  Other sites start picking up on the blog

 

Again this can take time but once it happens the numbers rise. After a year we started being picked up by other sites. After two years we have about half a dozen sites a day referring to us and giving us links – which of course helps take the site up the rankings and helps get more readers.

 

So why doesn’t everyone do it?

 

Because although you can get a readership fairly quickly it takes a little time to set up the blog and get going properly. Also it takes time to write it…   And it takes a bit of writing skill too, to entertain the customer and keep him or her returning.  The key element, incidentally, is the headline of each blog, and it is here that many people fall down.

 

If you would like to talk about blogs I am happy to discuss them with you – call me on 01536 399 013.  There’s no obligation in calling, but if you are interested, Hamilton House can write the blog and/or, administer the site for you.  Or you can simply buy into our www.blog.schools.co.uk site, or get listings on www.ukeducationnews.co.uk

Last point, just in case you are interested, the blog with 170,000 readers a month is at www.blog.emiratesstadium.info 

 

But be warned, it has nothing to do with teaching and learning, and is written for a very different audience from that which you may wish to reach.

 

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