Thursday 28 October 2010

Update from Lighthouse printing

We have some free reams of paper to give away! Most of them are the
sort of textured, tinted paper used for posh letterheads.

It's nice paper but we've had them in our stock room for some time now
and we're having a 'sort-out' to make some space so we've got to be
ruthless!  Anyone that wants to come and collect a ream or two of
paper is welcome to give us a ring at Lighthouse Printing on - 029
2034 4899.

You can find directions to our office at www.lighthouseprinting.co.uk.

Tuesday 19 October 2010

E-mail marketing - UKBF post

I've just submitted as post on UKBF answering a question about e-mail marketing that I thought would be of interest.  here's a link to the question itself  and here's the text from my reply :


"I think with a mailing to existing customers it's a 50 50 call as to whether formatting the e-mail yourself as a simple document (perhaps including your logo) which keeps things looking 'intimate' or having something produced that might look very marketing orientated and/or more mass produced - depends on the nature of your clientele and the impression you'd like to convey. For a small mailing like this I'd go for the in-house approach personally. Perhaps consider a semi-regular professionally laid out newsletter as an alternative ?

As per other comments, be careful about the set up of your e-mail to avoid spam filter problems. You'll also need some kind of 'opt out' clause, so ensure their is a mechanism to remove people from your database on request.

However you route the mailing, make sure that the mailing list is sent in the bcc box - a few weeks ago I saw a large mailing list sent out in the cc box in error and it was a bit of a data protection debacle.

Last bit of advice and this will impact on content and layout - make it short and snappy. In my experience people will only ever take in one or two paragraphs if they bother to read the mail at all - make sure then that there are no more than one or two key messages and only one call to action - once you've rewritten your content for brevity, e-mail it to yourself in the final draft format - then if you can, take a step back and re-read it as a customer and assess :
impact, content, message, layout - does it tick the boxes you want the customer to get?

Hope that this helps

Phil"

Monday 18 October 2010

Added value services in the insurance sector

Recently came across an old article on the Money Marketing website ("The Frill of it all") discussing the value of propositional enhancements like Best Doctors, RED ARC and Next of Kin.

It's interesting because the discussion of adding value to insurance contracts that benefit their policy holders in a non financial way really doesn't seem to have moved on since this article was first published in August 2005.

Whether it is a function of the recent economic recession or not, the major insurers are still largely selling their wares based on commoditised pricing and product elements and really not caring too much about 'giving back' to their policy holders. Surely however, when the pricing within a sector is tight and new business hard to come by, the time is right to offer enhancements. More surprising is the failure of mutuals, friendly societies and healthcare insurers to differentiate themselves by offering these kind of benefits more pro-actively.

Perhaps now is the time to re-do the research mentioned a couple of times in the article with a view to finding out if purchasers of protection insurance want value or commodity ?

Thursday 14 October 2010

New member for Localventure - SS Bookkeeping & Accountancy Services in Sheffield

SS Bookkeeping & Accountancy Services

SS Bookkeeping & Accountancy Services is a small bookkeeping & accountancy service provider based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire specializing in small businesses. I work closely with my clients giving them a bespoke and professional service that is unique to their business, our rates are extremely competitive. There services I offer are:

Bookkeeping
Year End Accounts
VAT Returns
Tax Returns
Payroll
Corporate Tax Returns

The contact information and website address is :

Miss Samantha Nicholson – 07545 149 327