The Toppled Bollard: radical direct marketing in practice

One of the great things about direct marketing, according to our mentor Billy “The Dog” McGraw, Elvis impersonator and landlord of the Toppled Bollard is that it changes all the time.  For this reason, those people who just stick with old methodologies slip behind, while those who keep up with the pace are able to forge ahead and overtake old rivals.

“Just as soon as you get the hang of it,” he announced at this weeks lecture to the assembled multitude, gathered in the Cesc Fabregas bar at the Bollard, “some smart Alec, clever Dick, or intelligent Ian comes along with a new ploy.

“The trick is to know which ploy works, and which one doesn’t.  But what you cannot do is just do what you did before.”

There was a hush in the bar, save for the jingling of glass in the washing machine.  This was what the audience had come to hear: the news of the future, the way forward, the key to making the business grow.

“Direct mail is down about 50% on this time last year,” Billy announced, and a hundred pens on a hundred notepads wrote the words down.

“Conversely email marketing is up by about 400%.”  The scratching of quill on parchment continued.

“This suggests that email is getting horribly overloaded – but when we look at this scenario more closely what we find is that all the overload in email is going into the old generic lists – the ones that just go to the general company address, with “Attention Marketing Director” in the subject line.”

(Scribble scribble)

Suddenly Billy raised his voice.  “So what does that tell us?”

There was a long pause which paramedics removed more elderly members of the ensemble who were suffering from shock.

“It tells us that this is another issue in which what happened two years ago is no longer a guide to what happens now.

“Copy and design that worked two years ago won’t work now.  The way in which people bought two years ago is different from now.  The media that worked two years ago doesn’t work now.

“It has all changed!!!”

He banged his glass on the table and several young ladies rushed forward to replenish his supplies.  There were calls from the floor of, “Tell us what to do,” and Billy the Dog surveyed the scene.

Eventually he said, “Here’s the ups and downs.

“First, direct mail written in the new conversational style works, because there is less of it around, so it gets more attention.  The old “announcement” style in which you just tell the reader what you have got, is utterly and totally dead.

“Second email to general addresses is getting less and less effective because there is so much of it, and most of it is written badly.  There is a secondary rule here – if the medium is dirt cheap then the writing is bad because the users don’t employ professional writers, so the chances of getting people interested through that medium go down because there is too much of it.  So everyone stops reading that type of email.

“Third, email to specific individuals does work if the email is directed to them, without any attempt to bulk mail everyone with the same information.  You have to use email in a way that directs the right information to the right people.  Otherwise they will unsubscribe from your list or just block you and not read.

“Fourth, there are new opportunities all the time.  The one that really seems to work brilliantly is the blog.  There’s evidence that companies that run regular blogs get twice as much work as those that don’t – just through the effectiveness of the blog.  Even my words are now recorded on a blog!

“There are more things I could say, but that surely is enough for now!”

The crowd agreed and there was wild celebrating.  The future, everyone was certain, was brighter than it had been ten minutes ago, and nobody noticed that Billy had once more upped the price of drinks in the Cesc Fabregas Bar.

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Want to know more about blogs, emailing and direct mail?  Call Hamilton House on 01536 399 000 or email Tony@hamilton-house.com   I am sorry to say Billy does not reply to individual emails.  There’s more about our work at www.hamilton-house.com

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