Many years
ago we realised that the key to a successful shared mailing was getting the school
administrator to open the shared pack and pass the leaflets on to the relevant
teachers.
Up to that
point all shared mailing companies were doing the same thing putting in a
standard cover page on a shared mailing pack which contained a list of the
leaflets, and details of who they should go to.
We decided
to change that approach for we realised that if the school administrator does
not open the pack and pass the materials on to the teacher then everything has
been in vain. Our research highlighted
the fact that if a school administrator felt overworked on a particular day,
the first thing that she would abandon would be the distribution of the
leaflets in the shared mailing pack.
Not
surprisingly some school administrators did not feel that it was their job to
pass around adverts. Some felt there
was an ecological issue (accusing us of destroying the Brazilian rain forests
among other things). Others felt that
they were protecting teachers from having to look at leaflets they had already
seen before.
So we hit
on a simple idea. We decided to engage
school administrators in a continuing conversation on the issue of the shared
mailings and why we do them. We stressed
their ecological benefits (the fact that shared mailings use fewer resources
than solo mailings). We stressed the
fact that direct mail (contrary to popular belief) uses less energy per sale
than any other form of advertising. We
told them about the way campaigns work, and why some customers send out a
leaflet more than once, and we explained that the EU was more than
self-sufficient in the production of paper.
All these
topics were covered in a newsletter which went out with every shared mailing to
the 10,000 largest schools in the
We moved on
to other subjects of concern for school administrators the Workload
Agreement, union recognition, training, criminal record verification and much
more. Slowly moments of humour crept
in. A piece written in the style of
the late Stanley Unwin, a comedian with a singular style of writing and speaking,
produced a huge response, as did a test for 5 year olds which seemed to fool
most adults.
As a result
of this expansion of topics we started to produce free reports. Reviews of the Workload Agreement, and how
to cope with it, were very popular. So
was the report on the new system of payment to sixth form students. Risk assessments for school administrators,
and the introduction of the Work-Life Balance programme all produced huge
levels of requests for the reports.
Which took
us on to the next level. Hamilton House
obtained funding from the Dept of Trade and Industry to research and produce a
qualification for school administrators the Diploma in Educational
Administration. This work is on-going
we have as our partners the University College Northampton, and have entered into
a preliminary agreement with the exam board OCR to validate the course. Response from school administrators has been
very positive.
So what
does all this have to do with shared mailings?
The fact is that the first thing the school administrator sees when she
gets a shared mailing pack is our newsletter with its coverage of a topic of
interest to her. She opens the pack,
reads it, and then passes the leaflets inside on. She knows why she is doing it, and appreciates
our interest in her. She can contact us
at any time by email, fax or phone, and she knows that every communication to
us is answered at once. The dialogue
exists.
Of course
dealing with the school administrator is not all there is to getting a shared
mailing out. Here is what happens
during the rest of the process.
Part
1: Your leaflets have to get to our warehouse.
Here you
have several options you can have your printer deliver them, you can collect
them from your printer and drive them to our warehouse, you can ask us to
collect them, or you can ask Hamilton House to print them. Whichever option you choose, you need to
ensure that the printer knows that time is of the essence. Obviously if we print, we know that, and we
make sure your leaflets get here on time for the mailing. But if may be helpful to tell your printer
just how important time is with a shared mailing. (You might be surprised at the number of
printers who call us and say I know we should have delivered this by
Part
2: Processing the mail.
This is done
in our warehouses using collating and wrapping machines. If you would like come and watch you are
very welcome. It isn't very exciting
but we always welcome our customers and we might even buy you a drink at the
Toppled Bollard when the process gets too dull to endure.
This is
where Royal Mail comes in. We use
Mailsort 3 for most postings a service that can take up to a week for
delivery to be achieved. But some packs
are sent out 2nd class mostly where we are undertaking regional
selections within the shared mailings.
This is the
bit we changed the opening section of this article describes how we developed
our school admin newsletter, and why it is so important.
We have
tried other methods. We have tried
putting the packs in white envelopes for example, rather than polythene. This worked for a short while but then
after a couple of weeks the school administrators realised what the white packs
were, and response rates dropped back to previous levels.
We have
also experimented with the number of leaflets per pack. School administrators dont like packs of
more than 20 items, so we limit ours to 15.
Anything smaller seems to make no difference to the willingness of the
school administrator to pass the leaflets on.
We are
certain our actions have raised response rates in shared mailings, for two
reasons. Firstly, on a couple of
occasions our customers have undertaken their own research comparing results
from a Hamilton House shared mailing with those of another mailing house we
achieved considerably more sales than those gained through our rivals.
Secondly,
we have in the Hamilton House group a separate company that sells books to
schools. Every sale this company
achieves can be traced back to the individual leaflet sent to schools, and we
know that sales per leaflet have increased since the new approach of writing to
the school administrator has been introduced.
The growth
of the new qualification for school administrators which will be run by
Hamilton House in conjunction with OCR gives us a further major link with the
school administrators, and will further strengthen the bonds between ourselves
and the people who put your mail into pigeon holes.