Category: Marketing

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Coming soon!

the mayday diaries cover teaser

It’s suddenly all happening.

The Mayday Diaries from Pindrop Press launches on 1st May (oh yeah!) and the countdown has begun!

Negative thoughts: I’m reminded that I should have started thinking about promoting the book ages ago. Probably need help.

Positive thoughts: The marketing cap is back on, I’m reviewing my websites and socials and preparing to dust things off and move up a gear. I’ve bought a domain name. I’m creating an action plan.

I’m proud of the collection, proud of the testimonials for the book and ridiculously proud of the cover. All will be revealed in due course – yes! It’s one those annoying cover-reveal-teasers. Who knows, maybe there’ll be a live unboxing too, he he.

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Stop the GDPR madness! Small poetry presses & arts organisations please read

This isn’t the usual subject for my blog. I try not to mix (marketing) business with (poetry) pleasure. But as the emails about GDPR intensify I’ve decided I have to say something – in the hope that it might prevent even one small, underfunded, hardworking, non-profit poetry press or community writers’ group from the suicidal step of unsubscribing its entire email list.

We’ve all been getting them – the emails telling us that in order to comply with the new GDPR regulations, we MUST re-subscribe to their list, or else they WON’T BE ABLE TO CONTACT US EVER AGAIN after May 25th.

I have no idea where this advice originated, but it has spread like a bad joke, to the point of madness.

My first thought on receiving an email like this is ‘why do they think can’t they contact me after that date, when I already signed up for their emails, or paid my subscription, or regularly attend their events?’ The second is ‘why am I being punished for not going along with their mistaken belief in what the GDPR is all about?’

When it’s an organisation I’m fond of, or feel sorry for, or if I’m just in an altruistic mood, I reply – telling them they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, offering links to the information they should read, offering my advice – always with the caveat that I’m no lawyer, but I do speak with nearly 20 years’ experience of working in email marketing. Sometimes I am thanked, sometimes I’m told ‘you’re probably right but we’re not sure if we’re compliant and we only do it for love and don’t have 17 million quid to pay the fine’, or words to that effect, I’ve even received the icily defensive “well we’re just a teeny weeny non-profit run by volunteers but you are obviously much more up on it than us!”

It’s very sad that so many completely well-meaning people, who would never dream of knowingly spamming anyone, are panicked by the well-publicised “fines of up to £17.5 million” – to the point of potentially ruining their entire enterprise (please read – or jump – to the end for the last word on this). The deluge of emails has resulted in ‘consent fatigue’ – the current re-subscribe rate is averaging 10%. At this rate, mailing lists (the lifeblood of many arts organisations) will be decimated. Even if you have a high quality list consisting of engaged, loyal supporters, you’re looking at probably losing half of them. This has implications not just for the marketing of books, magazines, courses and events, but for issues such as funding too – size matters when it comes to ‘how many people do you reach on a regular basis’- type questions.

Plus, it’s not advisable to just copy what others are doing. Rebecca Cooney has this sensible advice at The Third Sector:

“If you rush to write to all of your supporters, saying you’re moving to consent and if they don’t respond they’ll never hear from you again, you really can’t go back on that[…]so the phrasing and the wording that you use is really, really important.”

There is only one point of authority on the GDPR, and that is the ICO (the Office of the Information Commissioner.) If you have been compliant with current rules on email communications (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of 2003, anyone?) then the permission you obtained under those regs still holds good under GDPR. The new regulations require higher levels of transparency, lawfulness and fairness when dealing with people’s data. This wider context seems to have been lost on many people.

Here’s Toni Vitale, from law firm Winckworth Sherwood, quoted in The Guardian a few days ago: (my emphases)

“Businesses are not required to automatically ‘repaper’ or refresh all existing 1998 Act consents in preparation for the GDPR,” Vitale said. “The first question to ask is: which of the six legal grounds under the GDPR should you rely on to process personal data? Consent is only one ground.”

Vitale goes on to suggest that the process of emailing people to ask for their permission may even be illegal, since it suggests you don’t actually have permission to send that email. (See the cautionary tale at the end of this post.)

One of the other legal grounds you may rely on to process data is ‘legitimate interest’. Here’s Ben Rapp on the Rappidly blog:

“Most processing of data for the purposes of sending out marketing emails would be justified under Article 6.1f  – it’s in your legitimate interest to do it, and you believe that that interest outweighs the consumer’s right to privacy. Which, if we’re just talking about a name, an email address and their prior browsing and purchasing history from you, is probably true. You need to write that justification down, and show it to the natural person if they ask for it – or to the ICO, if they ask for it.”

And Todd at the Spaghetti marketing agency blog:

“…you can pretty much apply it [legitimate interest] to your marketing and business to suit you as long as you’re transparent about what you send and why and then how you store the data; and you’ve conducted a balancing test to make sure your legitimate interest doesn’t outweigh the individual’s.”

None of this means you don’t need to ask people’s permission to email them – it just demonstrates that if you already have that permission and want to be absolutely compliant with the new regs then stop asking people to re-subscribe to your list and instead look at your data collection and processing systems, at how easy it is for people to leave your list, at whether you tell them what data you store and what you used it for.

Anyone with an email list who’s unsure what to do then a good place to start is the ICO’s Lawful Basis Interactive Guidance Tool.

And the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) have produced this free PDF document on ‘Consent and Legitimate Interests’.

There are also some very good examples of how to do it. Here are two I’ve received. I have highlighted in red the sentences that illustrate what I’m talking about. The first is from Live Canon:

To all our followers,

As you’ll be aware, new mailing list/data protection laws (GDPR) come into effect imminently. We have been reviewing how we use our mailing list, and how we store the data to make sure we are fully compliant.

We wanted to reassure you that we only hold email addresses on our mailing list; these are not cross-referenced to names, addresses or any other data. All of our mailings (including this one) have an unsubscribe button at the bottom; this allows you to unsubscribe from the mailing list immediately at any point.

We hope you will continue to follow our mailing list and receive news of what Live Canon are up to…

And another, in an email from Write & Shine:

A note on GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect on 25 May. We’ve updated all our processes to ensure we adhere to the new law. As you’ve opted in to the Write & Shine mailing list in the past there’s nothing you need to do, but please update your subscription preferences and read our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter anytime by clicking the link in the email footer or by contacting us at hello@write-and-shine.com.

And finally here’s something else to think about. What would it take to get that £17.5 million pound fine? First of all, someone on your mailing list has to complain to the ICO. The chances of this happening is in itself pretty low when you think about it. “Dear Information Commissioner, I got an email from the Poetry Goodguys to tell me about a workshop they’re running at Bromley Library costing £20 and I don’t know how they got hold of my email although it might have been at the Poetry Book Fair.” Then if they’re having a quiet day, who knows, the ICO might investigate. They might find that Poetry Goodguys have emailed 137 people whose emails they obtained at various poetry events and they wrote them all down longhand in a notebook and added them to their list of poets who might be interested in courses, without a double-opt-in and most of them without actual names, just email addresses. Are they going to fine them 17.5 million quid? Are they going to fine them at all? Are they even going to investigate the complaint, in these days of under-resourcing and bigger-fish-to-fry?

OK then, how about this cautionary tale, as reported in The Register:

An investigation by the ICO found that Exeter-based airline Flybe had “deliberately sent more than 3.3 million emails to people who had told them they didn’t want to receive marketing emails from the firm”.

Those emails ironically were asking customers to update their marketing preferences, including whether they wanted to receive emails like the ones Flybe had just sent, and offered customers the chance to be “entered into a prize draw” for contributing.

Flybe ostensibly sent the email to ensure that its data on customers was held in compliance with the GDPR but landed a a £70,000 monetary penalty notice from the ICO for breaking the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR) while attempting to do so.

Laugh? I nearly cried. And note the amount – £70,000. For a firm the size of FlyBe sending 3.3 million emails. That were asking people to re-subscribe to their mailing list. I rest my case.

 

 

Angst/

What makes you buy (poetry)?

First, a little story about sales.

My first ever job was as a Saturday girl in the Lilley & Skinner shoe shop on London’s Oxford Street. I remember one of my first ‘training’ sessions with the supervisor, in which he told each of us our sales targets for shoes, matching handbags and ‘sundries’ – everything from shoe-trees to spray protector. We were supposed to push them quite aggressively. I asked ‘what if the customer says they’ve already got the spray protector?’ His answer: ‘Tell them it’s new on the market.’ ‘But what if they were here last week and bought this actual same spray protector?’ ‘Tell them it’s new on the market.’

This taught me two things: 1) I was never going to do well in that job and 2) I never, ever wanted to work in sales.

Little did I know that in the 21st century everyone would work in sales, whether we wanted to or not. (Nor did I know that footwear would actually provide the most significant turning point in my life, but that’s another story.)

The problem (still) with ‘sales’ is that we’re bombarded with information about ‘how to sell’. The first question on people’s lips whenever they find out I have a background in marketing is how can I sell my pamphlet/get more people to my readings/increase sales? It sometimes feels as if people are expecting some kind of magic bullet. My answer is invariably that you have to turn the question around.

It’s not a question of what sells, it’s a question of what people buy. And I don’t just mean ‘people buy benefits not features’ – sure they do, but that’s not the whole picture. The real question is, what makes people part with their hard-earned dosh?

Now a sales person will tell you people buy out of fear: fear of missing out (‘buy now before the price increase!’), fear of losing their home/income/possessions/professional standing etc (insurance), fear of feeling inadequate or out of step with peers, fear of their kids feeling inadequate or out of step with peers, fear of feeling left behind/old/different, (probably covers all consumer goods) fear of just about anything that can be painted as negative or threatening to one’s way of life or beliefs, substantiated or not (politics), fear of illness/pain/stress/life – you get the picture.

Of course this is a simplified picture. Fear is the age-old, lazy way to sell.  So what are the other reasons we buy? To get into the head of someone who might consider buying your book/pamphlet/services/whatever, look at any similar things you’ve spent your money on recently and ask yourself what motivated you to buy. For example, here’s where my poetry pennies have gone recently:

1) Two tickets for the Poetry Trust Poetry Prom at Snape Maltings in August. My husband is a musician and had been reading a biography of Benjamin Britten. He’d never been to Suffolk, and fancied a short break there to do the Britten trail.  I’d heard so much about the East Anglian poetry scene so wondered if there was something we could go to – found the August Poetry Prom, saw it was John Hegley and Ian McMillan, knew it would be something we’d both enjoy. The dates worked. Done deal.

Reasons for buying: reputation made me search for events at Snape, it was serendipity/luck that the dates worked, the poets appearing were known to me as being accessible for a non-poetry audience, and good seats were available at a fair price. If the price had been higher we would still have booked, because all the other factors made this event very attractive. Price is often seen as the most decisive factor in determining sales, but sometimes its role is negligible.

2) A copy of Jeremy Page’s new collection Closing Time (Pindrop Press, £9.99).

Reasons for buying: I was at the launch event and know Jeremy (we live in the same town and are both involved in the Needlewriters) – so I suppose you could class that reason as personal connection/loyalty, plus I also know Jo Hemmant of Pindrop Press. All the same, it’s hard to support every writer you know or always buy a copy if you go to a launch – it can get a tad expensive. There were other factors – I enjoyed Jeremy’s reading and was genuinely curious to read the whole collection, the book also looks and feels attractive and I’m a sucker for excellent production quality (more of this later). The price also seemed fair. It’s rare that I find a poetry book over-priced, to be honest, have you?

3) A donation to Cinnamon Press (£10). I wanted to mention this because I think asking for donations is both an under-utilised tactic but also requiring very delicate navigation. You could write an entire blog on the subject but I just want to offer up one example. I was browsing the Cinnamon website and followed a link to ‘Cinnamon Friends.’ You can visit this page to find out more, but basically two Cinnamon authors have got together to help fundraise for the press, so it can ‘stay innovative, independent and sustainable’. How wonderful is that? Not only does it say to me ‘this is a press that clearly values and supports its authors in such a way that they want to give something back’, but the language of the page does not cajole or make the reader feel guilty or anxious.

Too often, we’re told that a poetry press can only survive if we all buy more of its books and help prevent it going under, or the owner of the press has sold their house/children/life for the cause of the press and the least we can do is to buy one damn book... I am sympathetic, truly! But does it feel good to buy out of guilt? Not for me. I’m after that sense of well-being that comes from giving willingly, from helping people who are doing a great (tough) job but not asking me to feel bad that it’s a struggle.  I want to feel my donation (however small) makes a difference – but I need to be shown that, not told it. I want to feel special in some way, not a person on a mailing list. It’s the kind of thing that large charities, for example, can sometimes get wrong.

Reasons for the donation: I was impressed with the initiative, the page oozes a gentle confidence and I was made to feel my donation would be genuinely appreciated, I was offered many different ways to donate/support and it was quick and easy. I was also in a good mood and probably thinking about my own foray into publishing and how nice it would be to get a donation out of the blue. I haven’t been pestered for more, but I did get a personal thank you, all of which makes me inclined to do it again. You could say my reasons were that it felt good, I liked what it said about the press, it was easy to do and the timing was right.

4) A copy of the Little Magazine issue 1110 from Miel. No, I hadn’t heard of Miel either – I followed a link from someone’s tweet – so quickly I can’t remember who it was – singing the praises of something she’d just got in the post from this Belgian outfit and how beautiful it was. The stationery/letterpress geek in me was getting excited as I explored the site, and almost bought a chapbook as well as the mag – until I realised with the shipping costs it was a bit extravagant. So I just went for for little mag, and can’t wait to have it in my hands.

Reasons for buying: the promise as presented on the website appealed to me (lovely production/paper/print), the serendipity of the unknown, I was curious about it and it was fairly low risk (10 euros). It was an impulse, the kind that has often paid off in the past.

This has been a long post – thank you for staying with me. I’m interested to know what makes you part with your poetry money – do you respond to the guilt thing, and how does it make you feel? Do you agree that personal connection is a huge factor? Is it terribly shallow of me to be affected by the production quality of a book? What do you think about asking for donations (a huge area I know)? Do you agree that key to making sales is at least trying to understand people’s motivations for buying?

Angst/

These poems will make you rich/attractive/understand the off-side rule

Henry Wallis's portrait of poet Thomas Chatterton (1856)
Market or die?

Lots to think about in this post from Todd Swift, in which he ponders on how to sell poetry, or rather poetry books … he says people only buy stuff that’s going to either inform/advise them about something, or provide entertainment/escapism, and that poetry does ‘neither exactly’.

In the comments, someone points out “that’s why publishers do comparatively well with projects like Heaney’s Beowulf or Armitage’s Odyssey…” because they appeal to a larger class of readers who may not go for poetry as such but fancy brushing up on their ancient texts.

That got me thinking about other possible poetry hybrid forms, but more perhaps on the scale of ‘must have’ information aimed to attract a mass audience. For topics, just look at what’s being advertised everywhere online. How to look younger, find romance, win the lottery, say goodbye to the day job. And then there’s the voracious business market: how to get on in your career, how to close a deal, how to start a business, how to be a social media guru, even how to blog. And what about all those other things people want to know about – what’s going on in Scotland? How does the offside rule work? Could any of these topics lend themselves to a poetic treatment?

Speaking as a marketer, I’m only being half-flippant here. Poetry has tried to follow traditional 20th century advertising techniques, aka interruption marketing (poetry on the tube, poetry falling out of the sky like ticker tape, guerilla poetry inserted in places you wouldn’t expect it, pop-up performances in shopping malls, plus good old flyers and the odd bit of polite email marketing…) But it’s hardly a strategic approach. Where are the poetry marketers, other than publishers trying to sell books? Where are the people who embrace the idea of marketing poetry, rather than seeing it as something necessary but pretty scruffy? Why is it headline news when an estate agent employs a poet to write its property descriptions? There’s joy to be had here – and who knows, even money. We need to think bigger.

 

Image: detail from Henry Wallis’s portrait of poet Thomas Chatterton dead in his garret (1856) from The Guardian, Poetry needs to move out of the garret for good, 5-Nov-08