The Blaze Blog

Just a short post this week as we’re ear-deep in envelopes and mail merges!  Being sensible account manger types, we’re rather partial to managing direct mail projects as they pander to our tastes for procedure, checking and obsessive spreadsheet completion.

We’ve got through 20 mail merged documents in the last few days and we’re seeing merge fields in our sleep!  But these small projects have served to highlight the benefit of direct communications with niche sections of your customer base.

Our clients have been making their customers feel loved by targeting small sections of their client base and preparing messages that are particularly relevant to them.  These have ranged from service updates, welcome packs and new contact information.  It doesn’t matter that the messages being sent are small, the customers on the receiving end know that what is being sent has been tailored with them in mind showing that they really matter.

So next time you’re preparing your customer communications, remember

One size doesn’t fit all, think small to see big results!

Don’t just blanket mail all your data with one homogeneous message, think small to see big results!

Dressed in our business best we shoot down into town

In this tough economic climate all businesses need to be hungry to gain new clients and grow into new areas. This is particularly true for the SME working in the service industries such as marketing communications agencies – AKA us!

We’re very lucky as we have a great (even if we do say so ourselves!) search engine optimised website that drives good business in our direction and we also benefit from a high number of referrals from (very lovely) existing clients. From these situations we’re usually given new work straight out but sometimes we’re invited to pitch against other agencies… and that’s where it gets exciting!

Preparing for a pitch begins with being given a brief which we need to get inside, crawl around and understand from the inside out. Our aim isn’t to be the agency who delivers their proposal the quickest, it’s not to be the cheapest nor is it to be the most creative. Our aim is to deliver marketing communications that bring a return on investment and most importantly – meet our client’s objectives!

The creative team and the account management team sit down and ‘heatedly debate’ the best marketing communications solution to the brief given. The design team bring fantastic creative ideas to the table and the account management team bring their sensible marketing heads. Then between us, over the course of a few hours and much tea we have a concept upon which we all agree and are excited about putting in front of a client.

Then comes the sweaty bit! Dressed in our business best we shoot down into town and meet the client face to face, sometimes this is fairly informal chat with just one marketing manager, other times we’re met en masse by a team of marketing, financial and sometimes even company directors! On these occasions we have to go into performance mode, channelling Robert De Niro (that would be Jamie, I’m obviously more of a Katherine Hepburn type) to present our pitch with dazzling aplomb and answer an array of challenging questions before exiting stage left with crossed fingers.

We then return to the office to sit it out waiting to hear the exciting new client say that it’s us they’d like to work with. Which is where you find us today, returned to our desks after a big grown up pitch for a company in the City, tired but excited by the prospective new project we’ve had a glimpse of. Have we won it? We don’t know yet, to find out you’ll just have to watch this space!

Twitter twitiquette!

Our new year’s resolution was to practice what we preach and get busy with Twitter in the hope of meeting interesting people in our industry and building up our social media presence.

We expected it to be a fun process, but we never expected to fall head-over-heels in love with a social media platform, especially one that restricts us verbose marketers to just 140 characters!

During our time in the Twittersphere we’ve met some lovely people, we’ve discovered juicy industry gossip and learnt the finer details of twitiquette! We’ve enjoyed it so much we’d like to share some of our discoveries with you, starting with our:

Top Ten Twitiquette tips:

1. Make yourself pretty! Let people see you’ve made an effort, don’t make your followers talk to a faceless egg! Get a picture or logo up on your account, choose a suitable background and hone that bio to show your company off as the best that you can be.
2. Tweet regularly – Twitter is a demanding mistress and to benefit from the rewards it offers you need to visit regularly and often! People are unlikely to follow your account if your last tweet was 6 months ago.
3. Engage – social media is designed to be just that, social! Think of it like a date, would you want to be involved with someone who only talked about themselves and never engaged in proper conversation? Of course not, once you start engaging with people, rather than just ‘talking’ at them you’ll reap the true benefits of Twitter.
4. Check your grammar – it’s imperative that businesses use good grammar on Twitter. That simple tweet could be your first impression to a lucrative new client, if they see you making mistakes when working with just with 140 characters, chances are they’ll not want to trust their business with you.
5. Don’t just sell – you wouldn’t walk up to a stranger in the supermarket and shout down his ear about your great product, why would you do so online?
6. Don’t get obsessed with numbers – don’t worry about follower numbers, yes it is very flattering to be one of the most popular people at the party, but the fun of Twitter is the journey in building up an interesting network o like-minded people, not sitting and admiring your follower count.
7. Keep it professional – when you’re sitting on your sofa, glass of wine in hand, it’s so easy to forget that you’re representing your company. Never tweet anything you wouldn’t say to a client… or your boss!
8. Share information – Twitter is all about sharingn so share links to relevant industry information that you found useful as it will benefit others too, just don’t forget to make sure that the link works!
9. Retweet – sharing interesting tweets from your timeline with followers is not only useful for them, but also helps you to build relationships with fellow twitterers.
10. Remember your manners – just as you would say thank you in the real world, don’t forget to say thank you in the Twitterverse when you receive help or are retweeted.

We’d love to hear if you have any twitiquette tips we’ve not mentioned above, leave a comment below or reply to us by tweet (@Blaze_Group) – See you in Twitter!

If you enjoyed this blog entry, you may also be interested in reading our latest guest article on Women Unlimited – The 5 worst reasons for using Twitter for your business – 1st impressions matter!

Boost your SEO rankings & Build brand reputation

As you may know, this year we set ourselves a new year’s challenge to practice what we preach and get busy with the blogging. We eagerly set up a Wordpress site, hotly debated the subjects about which to write and proudly sent our first missives to family and friends to print out and stick on their fridges.

Now after two months of blogging we thought we’d share our beginner’s findings with you in the hope that in return you may share your top tips from the blogging world.

Reasons why you should blog:

1. Boost your SEO rankings – all in-bound links to your website help boost SEO rankings, so make your blog keyword rich and get them linked them to your website.
2. Build brand reputation – If, like us, you’re a service provider, people come to you for your expertise, so by sharing your expertise with the online community you’re not only boosting your credibility, but also increasing your audience.
3. It’s rewarding – much like writing a diary, the writing of a blog encourages you to rethink what you do at work, allowing you to take a moment to bask in the glory of a well managed project!

5 Top Blogging Tips

1. Keep it short and sweet – blog readers have neither time nor the inclination to read a blow-by-blow account of your latest client win. Share the news but keep it detail-light.
2. Post regularly – there’s nothing worse than a blog account with two entries both written over a year ago. It looks like you’re easily distracted and unable to finish projects, not the kind of impression you want to make upon a potential new client.
3. Close with a question – encourage people with your brand and leave a response by closing with a question
4. Promote it – It’s all very well writing a blog, but if you don’t tell anyone it’s there, no one is likely to read it. Be loud and proud about it and get it out there on Twitter and Facebook.
5. Don’t try to be too clever – Don’t scare your audience away with too much detailed information, keep it simple! People visit blogs for inspiration, entertainment or general advice, not a 500 step procedure to understanding nuclear physics!

We’ve really enjoyed our baby steps into the world of blogging and are determined that this is one new year’s resolution we won’t let fail! Therefore we’d love to hear your top tips too – what is the one piece of advice you’d give to a blogging novice?

Clients often come to us to ask how they can get the most from their direct mail campaigns so we’ve compiled our 6 steps to direct mail

Direct Mail Campaign

1 Effective Data
Data is paramount to a successful direct mail campaign.  It doesn’t matter how effectively the letter was written or how cleverly designed your envelope is – if it never reaches the intended recipient it’s a waste of marketing budget.

2 Careful Timing
Think carefully about how you react to incoming direct mail – do you find that first thing on a Monday morning all you want to do is have a coffee and look at the week ahead? Then your recipient is likely to feel pretty similar! Also, consider the content, is it time-specific?

3 Clear Messaging
So this is your five seconds in front of your intended recipient – use it to your best advantage. You need to grab their attention and encourage them to react in a particular way, this of course varies upon the message communicated and the action desired.

4 Think outside the envelope
Can you remember the last piece of direct mail that really made you sit up, or even better do you still have a something received in the post sitting on your desk? Direct mail doesn’t have to be a uniform letter in a DL envelope – be creative and stand out from the crowd.

5 Postage method
The postal delivery market is ever expanding with new players appearing all the time. Frustratingly, the best mailing solution for one campaign may not be the best solution for all your campaigns. Use your mailing house’s expertise and ask them to explore the different options for you.

6 Tracking and testing
So your mailing has gone out and you’re snowed under with new business enquiries – how can you be confident that this performance can be replicated? Tracking and testing is the key, whether you test different creatives, landing dates or even data segments, it’s important that results are monitored and acted upon.

We’d love to hear about effective direct mail you’ve received – what’s the best piece you’ve seen lately?