28/07/2008 by Tony Attwood.

This is not a point I make lightly. The companies that do know the answer to this one question, normally do far better than those that don’t.

The question in question (as it were) is delivered to teachers and is…

in two parts.

Part one says, “When you are teaching topic x what resources do you currently use?” Part two says, “Can you tell me briefly the major benefits and draw backs of this product?”

OK, you are saying to yourself (if you are the sort of person who says things to yourself), what is so magical about these questions?

The point is you get to ask a random sample of teachers to give their opinions on the rival products avaialble when teaching a particular topic or subject. They tell you the positive and negatives of using those products in the classroom.

Then…

You create adverts which focus on the failings of your competitors’ products and the way in which you overcome those issues. I am not saying you mention your competitors by name or denigrate what they do. Rather your knowledge of how your potential customers see the products in this area becomes the most important factor there is in creating successful advertisements.

There’s one final point. Sometimes I’ve heard people say, “we don’t have any competition – no one does it like us,” and I am sure that is true. But that’s not quite the point here. The key issue is not what you think – but what the teacher thinks – and that is often quite a different issue.

Tony Attwood

PS: We undertake research to find out what teachers think about products avaialble to schools. The average cost is around £450, which in terms of the marketing benefit you can derive is rather a tiny amount. Call me before I put the price up.

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08/07/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Hamilton House PR Agency now offers a guarantee: it guarantees that your company will be mentioned positively in at least three papers or journals every month.

Getting positive coverage in appropriate media three times each month sounds a tough call – but with the right approach it is possible. 

We can guarantee to achieve this every month because we are (probably) the only PR and Marketing Agency that specialises exclusively in reaching teachers.

So we know the market, and we know the journalists, and we really can deliver.   

Thus we can give an absolute guarantee that you will get coverage in at least three different magazines, papers, TV stations or radio stations, every single month.   (Sometimes of course we get you more than three media appearances, but when we do we don’t charge extra.  We just let you have that as a bonus). 

In the extremely unlikely event that we fail to get you the promised coverage, we don’t charge you a penny for that month’s work.

But that’s not all.   As part of our package we also work developing separate longer-term projects with you (call me if you would like to have some examples).   We also undertake regular research for our clients into teacher attitudes, buying habits, competitor activity and the like.  It is all included in the monthly fee.

Of course sometimes a smaller, more specialised type of campaign is required and we can always tailor our work to meet such needs.   For example, some companies do not need the guarantee of significant coverage every month and obviously that reduces costs.  In other cases the research into teacher attitudes and activities is not needed very often, and again that cuts down on our expenditure on your behalf.   Where this is so we can cut our monthly fee dramatically.

In other cases the key issue may be marketing – analysing response rates, evolving new approaches, comparing email with direct mail, devising new incentives and so on.   Obviously here our fee can be lower than might otherwise be the case.

We’re happy to discuss the marketing and PR coverage we’ve achieved in the past, and come up with ideas for a campaign for you, without charge or obligation.   Do give us a call and we’ll talk it all through.

Just call 01536 399 000

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01/07/2008 by Tony Attwood.

As an experiment for 2008/9 Hamilton House Mailings is offering a free email campaign direct to teachers with every shared mailing campaign - at no extra charge.

Shared mailings are mailshots sent through the post, in a pack together.  Usually there are about 10 items in the pack and the school administrator passes them on to the relevant department.   In 2008/9 academic year you get the bonus of your advert being featured in Education Management News – our email news service that goes directly to opted-in teachers.

When considering emails it is important to note that there are two types of email lists in education: lists of schools (that is emails that go to the school administrators) and lists of teachers (which contain the teachers’ own email addresses).   We’re talking about the latter – email addresses that are specific to each teacher.

All the teachers on our lists are there because they opt-in and the reason they choose to opt-in is because we send them interesting and stimulating news once or twice a week.  Your announcement will be linked to one such news item.  Obviously not everyone opts in, but those that do tend to read what we send them – hence the higher response rates.

When booking your shared mailing you need to email us a copy of the text you want on the email.  We can’t run the free email advert unless you send us a copy of your text in Word or RTF format.   Because of the stringent nature of school firewalls we don’t include any pictures, but we can include a link to your web site, and your email address as well as your phone number and postal address.   If you want to change the text from that in your advert, there’s no problem, and there’s no limit on the size of the advert (although if you go on too long, the teacher might stop reading!)

There’s  an  extra bonus  too.   You know the bit that says you can’t combine two offers at the same time… this time you can.   You can take the 10% extra free offer (which means we’ll send out your overs through the shared mailing system a few weeks after the main mailing, up to a maximum of 10%) along with the free email to teachers offer.  

To book in your shared mailing in the normal way, and then email us the text you want in the email advert, along with a note of the date of the shared mailing, and who you want to reach.   We’ll do the rest.

There’s more about shared mailings on www.shared.org.uk    To find out more you can call on 01536 399 000, or you can email sales@schools.co.uk

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19/06/2008 by Tony Attwood.

In terms of selling direct to teachers there are three main options: solo mail, shared mail and email. So which one is best.

In my experience a fair number of companies make a choice on emotional and cost grounds. As in the firms that don’t use shared mailings because “we would never want our products to be advertised alongside items from other companies”, and the companies that go for email rather than shared on the grounds that email is cheaper.

A much more reasoned way of working out whether to use solo, shared or email is to look at the return on investment - how much profit you make for each £1 you spend on advertising. But this is a complex issue, and I know from experience that discussing ROI is one of the easiest ways to lose an audience. So I am going to try another approach with a set of basic rules which although not complete are, to my mind, better than the emotional response

Solo mailing is ideal for testing - it gets the highest response rates so the number you have to mail is often small. Doing a trial mailing to 400 schools in this way will cost you around £150 or so - and that shouldn’t break the bank. All you need to work out is how many sales you need to recover your £150 and make a bit of a profit. If the answer is less than 3% its worth a try - over 3% and it is maybe possible, but getting harder to achieve. (I am talking here of response rates from a list of schools that include many or all who are not established as your regular customers. Mailing customers should result in higher response rates).

So you mail the trial mailing, it gets the percentage you need, and then you quickly do all the other schools on your list, certain in the knowledge that you will make the profit you want.

Shared mailing is ideal for getting people interested, and regular reminders about products. Most firms selling products up to £50 in value tend to find they get fewer sales with shared mailings, but they earn more for each £1 spent. This is a reflection of shared mail’s pricing structure - you can send a leaflet out for anything between 5p and 10p per school (depending on weight etc) - which is about a quarter of the cost of solo. Selling books and reports I found the best way to use shared was with a one colour two side leaflet with up to six books advertised, and a simple order form at the end.

It is no longer a fact that shared mailings cannot be used for heavier items - price changes in recent years have meant that items up to 100g or even heavier can be worth putting in a shared mailing.

Finally email. Here the matter has got very complex by the fact that there are a number of different approaches to email. For this comparison I am just going to take “generic email” - email that goes to the school’s main email address which is usually “admin@” or “info@” or “office@”. Such emails go to the school administrator who then passes it on - often by printing the leaflet out (since many schools still don’t have email addresses for each member of staff). The price of email addresses can be anything from 1p to 10p each, and generally speaking you get what you pay for. Only a handful of companies guarantee the delivery of their school email addresses - and non-delivery on non-guaranteed lists and lists culled from CDs can be fairly useless.

Emails are ideal for a promotion in which your main interest is in taking senior managers (the head, deputy and the like) to your web site via a live link, or getting them to send in an email requesting information. It is possible to get sales of up to 1% for products (we tested on products costing around £20) where the teacher has the choice of ordering on line, by fax, by phone, by post and by download. Email is much harder to make a profit from when trying to sell without the web site, and when selling to a head of department (eg the head of maths).

I hope that helps clarify things a little - do call me on 01536 399 000 or write to me (Tony at schools.co.uk )with comments. If anyone asks me to I’ll follow this with a more detailed look at the rules we’ve evolved on how to get the highest response rates from email marketing, and the various forms of email to schools that have exploded onto the market in the place year.

Information on shared mail: www.shared.org.uk Email: www.yesmail.org.uk Solo: www.directmail.org.uk

Tony Attwood

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13/06/2008 by Tony Attwood.

This year’s £50m allocation of elearning credits is the last.   At the end of August this year Curriculum Online Service will come to a close and it will not be possible for schools to use eLCs to purchase digital resources after this date.

If your product can be sold for E learning credits it is worth undertaking a final reminder that eLC’s that are not spent by August 31 will have no value.

As with all promotions HHM will be very happy (indeed thrilled) to help you  undertake this reminder via shared mailing, solo mailing and via email.  

The materials for the last shared mailing need to be with us on 20 June (although we might be able to move this back slightly with pre-arrangement).

Solo mailings have a bit more time but will still need to be arranged very quickly to reach schools before the end of term on July 18 - so please do call 01536 399 000 asap either for address labels or for a full mailing service.

Emails can be arranged more rapidly at our end and can be turned round very quickly.  We have mailings to generic school addresses, and to the personal email address of heads, heads of ICT, PSHE teachers, teachers i/c fundraising and marketing, administrators/bursars, and SENCOs.   Again, please call 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

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09/06/2008 by Tony Attwood.

All professionals see the world in a way that is peculiar to their profession.  Solicitors, accountants, dentists – they all have their own unique world-view.

In this regard teachers are no different from everyone else.  Except that they hold a world-view that is unique among professionals.

Whereas in every other profession, the young professional is given one task at a time, in school the teacher is given a full class to teach from day one developing their own approach to teaching as they go.

As a result of this lack the technical expertise teachers are granted less respect by the public than (for example) doctors.  And yet the teachers generally feel that their years of training and dedication deserves a much better press.

Meanwhile they spend all day with children and teenagers, and this again affects both their own behaviour and their attitude to the outside world.  (To prove this just watch teachers attending an in-service training seminar – and compare that with the behaviour of other professionals).

All this means that teachers have a particular world-view, and if you wish to sell to them successfully, or persuade them of the value of your work through articles in magazines or broadcast interviews, you need to take this into account. 

Hamilton House studies the ways teachers think and behave, in order to establish the best ways to promote products and services to teachers.  

We undertake one or two research projects a week with teachers, while over 10,000 teachers, managers and administrators in schools subscribe to our news services and regularly supply feedback on issues of the day.  And of course we monitor teacher blogs and discussion groups.

Tony Attwood 

PS: If you’d like to increase the number of times your company is mentioned in the press, or increase the response rates for your direct marketing, by ensuring you use the right language when communicating with teachers, please call Laura, Steve or myself on 01536 399 000.

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