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At Changeworks, we produce many e-shots and e-newsletters for our clients that achieve phenomenal open rates – up to 55%. This significantly exceeds the 10-15% average, but how do we do this?

The first rule of thumb when producing e-shots lies merely in a KISS:

Kiss and Tell

Keep It Simple Stupid!

Research claims that the average person is aware of seeing or hearing over 1,400 promotional messages each day and ignores virtually all of them. There are endless amounts of e-shots that include far too much copy, appear way too clunky and have the reader thinking, “So what!” – at which point the e-shot has a front row seat to their deleted items folder.

So how can you captivate your audience by keeping it simple?

Back to basics:

- Use short sentences (10-15 words)

- Use plain English (no academic terminology)

- Make it easy to scan read (use bullet points where possible)

Your audiences live just as busy lives as you do. They don’t always have time to read lengthy articles. In fact, you only have a matter of seconds to grab their attention and the first thing they see is the subject line.

5 Top Tips for Effective Subject Lines:

1. Spark curiosity in the reader – make them want to find out more

2. Include the main benefit of your product/service – customers do not buy for the product, they buy for the outcome

3. Ideally get points 1 and 2 in your subject line

4. Keep them less than 50 characters to reduce spam

5. Use active verbs i.e. get, see how, claim your

The most important thing to remember is ‘what’s in it for them?’

Subject lines make up the first part of the AIDCA process – a popular marketing tool used during planning stages. A breakdown of this model will help you to create ideas for content and structure your material.

For a captivating e-shot, AIDCA is the solution:

Attention – What outcome, change or improvement can you offer them that will grab their interest and make them want to find out more? (Subject line)

Interest – What aspects or features of your product/service deliver these outcomes or improvements above? (Banner and first section of your e-shot)

Desire – What can you write/use to make the outcomes irresistible to the reader? (Pictures, case studies, recommendations etc)

Conviction – What evidence can you use to make the reader believe it’s all true? (Testimonials, approvals, qualifications etc)

Action – What do you want the reader to do? (Call, email, visit your website, order a catalogue?)

These are just a few tips to help you with the basics of creating a captivating e-shot. In Part 2, I will focus more in depth on communication and how you can build better relationships with prospective customers.

If you can’t wait for Part 2 and you would like to speak to one of us here at Changeworks, please call us on 01785 247588 or email info@changeworkscom.co.uk

Part Five – Using a presenter to tell your story:

How to tell a story using voice

With a rapid increase in the popularity of online video, how can you get your message heard above all others?

With the advances in mobile phones and digital cameras, video making has become widely accessible. Anyone can pick up a camera, shoot some footage, string it together using a basic video editing software, but the finished result (more likely than not) will not utilise the professionalism needed to make a marketing video stand out.

Part five of this blog series offers practical tips and advice for using presenters to tell your story. Novels are often written in the first person with the author taking on the task of telling his/her own story. Biographical works use a third person style. But what about video? A further dimension is added here as we can also see what is going on.  Although it is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, often it is useful to have spoken words to link pictures together or bring something to life. Here are two examples of how you can use the spoken word in your video:

Telling your story with words:

• Voice over/Presenter: A voice over can provide additional information to the piece or explain something that may too be difficult to understand in a visual sense. As an alternative to a disembodied voice-over you might like to consider using someone to front your video – in other words, a presenter. Breaking the words up between presenter and voice over adds human interest and provides continuity even when the presenter is not seen on screen.
  
  

  How to use voxpops

• Vox Pop: Vox pops are commonly used in advertising and documentaries to sound out popular opinion using informal comments from members of the public. Think of aquestion related to your film and carry out street interviews with lots of people. Vox pops require the minimum of two people; one to ask the questions and two to do the filming. Shoot your interviewee close-up and facing slightly to the left or right. Make sure that you get a variation of angles for when you edit your video as shooting them all one way will not make a professional looking film. If you do shoot your interviewees all at one angle, your video editing software may feature the ‘horizontal flip’ filter enabling you to flip your shots around.

If you would like to find out more about online video, please visit our Changeworks website

When it comes to public relations, there are really only three options, either keep it in-house, employ an agency to take on the work for you or do you ignore it altogether. 

Agency or In-house, you choos

A wise person is the one who deliberates between the first two points.  The options are narrowed down considerably and it’s now thatthe choices become a little more difficult.

Which Way?

So, how does a company best choose to handle its PR and Marcoms?  Well to answer this question we need to look at the two options and see whether we can draw any satisfactory conclusions.  So let’s look at keeping things in-house.  Well not wishing to paint a bleak picture, but first of all there is finding the right person to run your communications department. It takes time for any new employee to get to understand the business, but when it comes to communications you want someone who will get off to a flying start. If you decide to go with someone who is experienced in your area of industry then you’re going to pay top dollar for them.

So you decided to employ a general all rounder, someone who can write a bit and has one or two media contacts, but are you getting value for money with this person?  Is there enough work within your communications department to keep them fully employed and if they are working on a part time basis are you, as a business, getting the publicity exposure you want/need, are they creative enough and finally are they adding real cost value to your operation?

The PRO’s tend to split into two distinct camps and in doing so it’s easy to see why each is a creature of its own habitat. But which adds real value?

The ‘Maverick’ verses ‘The Trojan’

The Maverick is the agency PRO. Outgoing, creative and savvy they embrace new technology they involve themselves with network communities. As the media platform rapidly increases, they’re generic experience grows, they are able to evaluate the bigger picture and take risks accordingly.  The Maverick will to deal with a multitude of different clients each bringing its own unique experiences and challenges.

The Trojan is different. The in-house PRO may work within a small team or as is often the case on their own, but they are part of a wider team.  They are less likely to blog and will avoid the media industry limelight. Within the business they all rise to the same challenge, there focus is but one goal and that is victory.  However they all approach this goal from different positions and although they share the same ethos they never really achieve total unity.

Opting to employ an agency is the most cost effective way to manage your communications. All the benefits may not be apparent first hand but as a company begins to work with an agency, it begins to see more and more benefits come to the surface.  Firstly the agency not only has the systems in place to provide a complete service, from copy writing and proof reading through to using a distribution network to issue the press release.  Agencies tend to focus on a specific sector of business, so the expertise is already there so the need to come up to speed isn’t as applicable.  The major factor is that the Agency PRO generally has a wealth of experience in campaigning, and can tailor that experience, when it comes to your business.

So, when deciding who to trust with your communications, you need to balance cost effectiveness and added value to the business but don’t forget the creativity factor.

Whether you choose to employ someone to look after your communications or you engage an agency, it is essential that you have the correct evaluation procedures in place. More on this next time.

Part Four – Practical Tips for Shooting your Video:

Operating the camera

With a rapid increase in the popularity of online video, how can you get your message heard above all others?

With the advances in mobile phones and digital cameras, video making has become widely accessible. Anyone can pick up a camera, shoot some footage, string it together using a basic video editing software, but the finished result (more likely than not) will not utilise the professionalism needed to make a marketing video stand out.

Part four of this blog series offers practical tips for shooting your video so that you can be more creative yet remain professional. When it comes to practical tips, practice is what makes tips useful. Have a read of the four points below, get out your camera and experiment – it’s the best way to learn.

Practical Tips for Shooting your Video:

Rule of thirds

• Composition: The most fundamental rule of composition is the ‘Rule of Thirds’ based on the classical interpretation of balance in a picture. If you have a background in still photography, you have probably already come across this concept and therefore you are at an advantage. The ‘Rule of Thirds’, when looking at a visual image, is set up with one horizontal line and three vertical lines (see diagram). The most obvious example of balance in a video picture is the tracking shot. If the camera follows a person walking across a scene with their nose up against the edge of the screen, this shot will be unbalanced. Track them so they always have two thirds of space in front of them.

• Pan, tilt and zoom:
  • The PAN shot is where the camera is moved from side to side or up and down (this is the TILT shot, aka Vertical Pan). In order for it to work in a creative way, it must be planned from start to finish and have a justification for its use. Let the action in the frame make the movement and only pan where necessary. 
  • There are two main rules to using the ZOOM; the purpose of zooming into an object is to draw the audience’s attention to something. If you are zooming out, zoom out to reveal something to the audience.

• Depth of field: What we mean by depth of field is when the camera lens is focused accurately on a particular subject to make it the only point of focus is the frame. Objects in front and behind the subject will be blurred to the eye. This is another technique to draw the audience’s attention to something. Depth of field can be also used creatively by experimenting with the Pull Focus shot. This is where the camera moves its focus from one subject to another. Three things to consider when establishing depth of field:
  • Focal distance of the lens: if you focus on an object near to you, you will have less depth of field than you would have when focused on a distant object.
  • Focal length: Moving the zoom control to the furthest telephoto range will reduce depth of field. Move it to the furthest wide angle and the depth of field will increase.
  • Aperture setting: Bright lighting conditions will give you a greater depth of field where the aperture lens is stopped down. The smaller the aperture the greater the depth of field.

Part Three – Setting up your video shoot:

With a rapid increase in the popularity of online video, how can you get your message heard above all others?

Part three of this blog series, offers useful tips on how to shoot your video so that it looks and sounds more professional. There is an extensive amount of production tips and advice out there. I am highlighting just some of the main ‘tips and tricks’ to give you an overview of the broad spectrum.

With the advances in mobile phones and digital cameras, video making has become widely accessible. Anyone can pick up a camera, shoot some footage, string it together using a basic video editing software, but the finished result (more likely than not) will not utilise the professionalism needed to make a marketing video stand out.

Setting up your shoot:

• Steadiness Techniques: Get as close to your subject as you can without causing them distress. This will enable you to work at the wider angle end of your lens thus avoiding the instability caused when working on full zoom. However, avoid full wide angle as this is likely to distort your subject.

• Shot Sizes and Angles: When setting up your shot, keep in mind which shots will be edited together; two images shot from the same angle with the same sized subject, will cause a problem with visual continuity.

• Lighting: Video recording systems tend to have a weakness in their inability to cope with contrast and backlighting. A good test to apply for all shooting situations is the “squint test”. Screw your eyes up until they are just slits and you can just about see the subject. Look into the shadow areas. If you can still see detail in the shadow areas then all is OK. If not, you can use reflectors to reflect light back into the shadow areas.

• Sound: Get the microphone as close to the subject as possible. This could entail moving the camera closer to the subject. If this becomes a problem, look to using external microphones that can plug into your camera mic socket and monitor the sound with headphones.

• White balance: To get a more accurate white balance, best way to do this is to set your camera’s white balance to a manual setting. You can then place a white card/board in front of the camera, zoom in so it fills the viewfinder and press the white balance button to adjust the colour cast of the light.