In the first hour of the BETT Education
Show at Olympia 2005 two customers of mine approached me with exactly the same
question in relation to shared mailings.
They posed an issue which I was to hear
several times during the show. “We are
customers of yours,” they said, “but we have from time to time been tempted
away from Hamilton House by your rivals through special offers.”
As befits the fellow who writes the Toppled
Bollard stories for Hamilton House I feigned shock, horror, palpitations and a
headache at the mention of our esteemed rivals, and our customers dutifully
smiled, before proceeding with their question.
“What we found was that we got a lower
response with them, than we do with Hamilton House. But we can’t understand how this can be –
surely you are all using the same methods, and your lists must be pretty much
the same.”
These were experienced mailers of schools
and they knew as well as anyone that there were many possible explanations for
this effect. One reason could be the
timing – response rates straight after Easter tend to be poorer than those
achieved in early June for example. The
first couple of weeks of September often produce lower responses than mailings
at the end of that month. If they mailed
with Hamilton House at a good time and with our rivals at a bad time, that
could explain the difference in results.
Another explanation could involve
selectivity. Each mailing house offers
different selections in its shared mailings, and if ours fitted better with the
customer’s target audience, we could again see this as a possible explanation
for higher response rates through Hamilton House.
But I do believe there is probably another
explanation. Five years ago we
introduced the School Administrator’s Newsletter as the front
item in most of our shared mailings, and this page has achieved a very high
readership – not least because no one else writes regularly to these people who
open the mail and pass it around. We
get a huge level of feedback from administrators who do not hesitate to tell us
exactly what they would like covered in future newsletters. I think they do see us as an important
source of news and information.
My view is that in many schools, when the
mail arrives the administrator opens the pack with the newsletter in, reads
that and hands out the mail from that pack.
(We make this easy by using polythene envelopes and ensuring that the
newsletter can be seen the moment the envelope is picked up.) Then, after reading the Newsletter and
handing out the leaflets, they get on with looking at other mail – and since
there is no incentive to handle other shared mailing packs these tend to get
left until later – and may not always be reached at all.
In other words I think that more leaflets sent with Hamilton House shared mailings actually end up in teachers’ pigeon holes than items sent out within the shared mailing packs of other companies – and this is what explains the higher response rates.
Tony Attwood
Direct line: 01536 399 013. Email: Tony@hamilton-house.com Sales line: 01536 399 000