5 Simple Tips to Keep Your Employees On-Side and Informed

Our employees are our biggest asset… blah blah blah…

How many times have we heard this? I’m sure there are no MDs or CEOs who would willingly insult their employees. But thousands are doing it every day just by sending out hapless employee communications.

Let’s face it most internal communications are organised by the marketing or communications department and often badly. ‘Not me’ you protest. I beg you, just have a look at the five pointers below and if you can’t check all of them off then there’s room for improvement.

We all know that the best way to find out what’s really going on in the company is:

a)      At the water cooler

b)      In the smoking area

c)       In the coffee area

d)      If you’re a woman, in the ladies bathrooms. (Possibly that goes for the gents too?…I invite your comments?)

So how do you harness this mire of gossip and underworld activity?

Here’s how.

1.       Nominate Communications Champions for each department. Give a real communications job to the office gossips. Filter the communication through them and keep them informed, both with the good and bad news.

2.       Not on computers? These days most people are on email. But for field based staff, technicians on the road, etc. this isn’t always possible. Ensure you have an effective and well understood system for communicating messages: SMS, noticeboard, or team briefings just for starters.

3.       No bullsh1t. This is fundamental. People will see through it and it will cause more harm than good. It’s essential to be 100% sincere in your communications. No stock standard phrases and no waffle.

4.       Love the media, but not too much. Don’t let employees find out what’s going on in the company through media reports. (Yes, this actually happens – I know. It happed to me on more than one occasion.) Ensure your employees are briefed BEFORE the media.

5.       Direct from the horse’s mouth. If it’s important (and by that I mean significant re-structures, mass redundancies, takeovers etc), let your employees hear it directly from the CEO. Call a mass meeting and talk to everyone together. And CEO’s: don’t be defensive when your staff ask questions. Answer truthfully and openly. It will do wonders for the CEO ‘street cred’ to be seen communicating directly with the staff.

Do you have anything to add to these five tips? What’s your experience? What works for your organisation? I’d LOVE to hear from you. I'd welcome your comments below.

Managing Integrated Campaigns

We all consume different types of media at different times of the day, and for different reasons. This is why single channel advertising campaigns are so rare. With the ever growing number of communication channels it’s important to understand your target market and how to connect with them. Marketers need to be comfortable in producing communications across several mediums. Here are a few tips for managing an integrated marketing campaign:

Be clear on your objectives. It’s easy to get lost on what you are trying to achieve when caught up in the million things you have to do to go live with a campaign. So remind yourself regularly of what it is you are aiming for.

Get organised. By this I mean prepare a series of folders, both electronic and paper so you can keep track of the various rounds of artwork, briefing notes, and calculations for each aspect of your campaign.

Select your media carefully. Don’t assume that TV will be the most effective medium. If your budget won’t allow a sufficient media spend for TV spots, then select a range of channels that will give you your best “bang for buck”.  Depending on your audience, this could be something like internet ads, posters and radio or a clever social media campaign

Ensure the clarity of messaging across all mediums. The big idea may work well in TV, but be less convincing on the web or in direct mail. A good agency will think this through before presenting ideas, but it’s always worth checking with a little home market research on family and friends not connected to the brand.

You don’t have to use the same images for each media channel. So long as there is a strong common message or element that links each communication piece, then it will knit together as a campaign.

Make sure you can measure the effectiveness of each media channel.  Consider different phone numbers for each call to action or a system of codes – whatever works for your business. Be aware, though that TV can drive your web traffic or your yellow pages link. Not everyone will choose to respond in the same way.

Brief all customer-facing staff. With many campaign elements, it’s essential that everyone who deals with customers either on the phone or in person are aware of the campaign and what it is about.

Measure the results of your campaign from all angles. Understand what worked and what didn’t work. Sometimes a campaign can have a surprising effect that you could never have predicted.

Jill Bynon is an award winning marketing campaign manager, turned copywriter. Contact CraftWrite for your copywriting needs across all mediums: jill@craftwrite.com.au

Managing Direct Mail Campaigns

Direct Mail (DM) is still an underdeveloped sector in Australia, when compared to the US or UK. This means the direct mail, when done well, has a good chance of standing out in the mailbox and getting you results.

There are three main components to direct mail:

1.       Data

2.       Offer

3.       Creative

Of these three, the data and the offer are the most important elements. After all, if your letter never reaches its intended recipient, then the rest is just a waste. And similarly, if the offer is not something that appeals to the target, all the fancy creative in the world is not going to make them respond. The creative element plays its part too. Clever use of headlines, call to action and envelope design can lift your response rates considerably.

DM is a numbers game

Direct marketers are all well aware that 95-99% of their hard work ends up in the bin. It’s important to do your sums, and work out how much your campaign will cost. Then work out a realistic response rate together with the revenue this will bring. Subtract one number from the other and if it’s coming out positive, then you’ve got a business case to proceed.

Never start a direct mail campaign on a hunch. Always, always crunch the numbers before proceeding.

Buying a list

There are a few important things to know when purchasing data. Ask your supplier how it was sourced and how they keep it up to date.  You must use a list of people have agreed to receive offers from third parties. Privacy laws are strict and fines for breaking these laws are steep.

Most list suppliers will categorise their data for you and you can refine your selections to ensure you are targeting the prospects most likely to respond. For the consumer market, lists can be categorised by lifestyle and can give you quite an accurate picture of your prospects. Business lists are often categorised by market sector and job title.

Remember to wash your data list against your existing customer database if you’re trying to attract new customers.

If you’ve purchased lists before, remember to take out prospects that have already requested no further contact from you.

Developing your creative

The more your creative agency understands about your campaign, the more in-tune their creative designs will be.  Ensure you share your objectives, data selection and total budget with them. If you can only afford to print and post a DL envelope and A4 sheet, you must let them know as this will dictate the limitations of the design.

There are a number of areas you can test with your creative including:

·         Headlines

·         Envelope designs

·         Imagery

·         Call to action

Even if you’re just doing a one-off campaign, it’s always worth testing at least one element. For example, send half your list a creative envelope and the other half a plain envelope and see which performs better. Remember to split your data evenly and make sure you are comparing like with like.

The Offer

Consider your direct mail offer carefully. It needs to be attractive to the prospect and not too complicated to understand. Think about testing different offers to see what works best. Provide the prospect with all the details to make a decision and options on ways to respond. Mail, telephone and web cover most preferences.

Managing the mail house

You will need to give your mail house a very detailed brief, particularly if there are several test cells and if there is more than one item in the mail pack. Provide all the details on a briefing document, and include mailing date(s), contents of each pack and the number of recipients. You should also provide details of when and where the printed items will be delivered from.

Ensure your mail house receives your data around 2 weeks before your first lodgement date. This will enable them to run set up files, produce test runs and live proofs for you to approve. You will need to allow for about 10% extra in your print runs to allow for testing and spoilage if a machine jams.   

Undelivered mail

Undelivered mail will come back to you, so consider what return address goes on the envelope. You can expect anything up to 5% of the addresses on your mailing list to be undeliverable. Consider having return mail sent to your mail house to handle for you. Details of undelivered mail, and deceased records need to be fed back to your list supplier. There is a handling cost involved, but better than trying to sort through thousands of mail packs at your desk and having to placate a disgruntled mail room manager.

Weather issues

If you’ve ever collected your mail from the mailbox after a day of rain you’ll know that only the essential pieces are hung out to dry and the rest of the soggy pile goes in the bin. There’s nothing you can do to manage this except for staggering your mailings during rainy periods to lessen the likelihood of being ruined in the rain. Be aware of natural disasters too, and cancel DM to areas ravaged by fire, flood, cyclone or earthquake. There’s little chance of mail deliveries in such times.

Handling responses

Ensure your call centre is aware of the direct mail campaign and is set up with scripts to handle incoming calls. Similarly, make sure your internet site or landing page is ready and has been tested. If customers are likely to reply via mail, then make sure your order processing and fulfilment teams are briefed and ready for action.

Handling complaints

The majority of complaints arising from direct mail are in relation to privacy. Inform your call centre of how the data was procured and how your company will handle “do not contact” records. When targeting consumers, inevitably there may be a few deceased people on your list, triggering distressed calls from relatives.  Equally, prospects will demand to know how you got their details. Equip your call centre to handle these calls respectfully. Capture the “no further contact” records in a list and ensure this is washed against future campaign data.

An overwhelming response

It’s a nice problem to have, but a situation that needs to be handled correctly or else it will leave you with dissatisfied customers. There are a few ways you can manage customer expectations when a direct mail campaign has a larger than expected response:

·         Advise customers via a recorded message when they dial the campaign number

·         Put a note on your internet site, or landing page

·         Divert calls to an overflow call centre

Measuring success

Once the campaign has run its course and all the orders are fulfilled it’s back to number crunching again. There are many measurements you can gather, including:

·         Number of calls

·         Number of sales converted from calls

·         Number of web visits

·         Number of emails

·         Comparison of test cells

It’s essential that you record what you learnt, what worked, what went wrong and how you could do better.

As any direct marketer knows; it’s all about test and learn, then test and learn some more!

CraftWrite applies years of campaign management experience to direct mail copywriting. Contact Jill Bynon today about improving your response rates with better DM copy: jill@craftwrite.com.au