This is important because there are lots of people searching for where to do sport, fitness or activity. As an example of how much of an impact ranking high in Google can have on your marketing let’s look at Aerobics.

165,000 people search for the term aerobics in the UK each month. 49,500 search for aerobics classes and 6,600 search for aerobics course. However if you go to Google and search for aerobics NW3 2QX then the nearest result which comes up is over 20 minutes walk away. I happen to know of 4 places offering aerobics within that distance which aren’t up there.

Google knows that NW3 2QX is a postcode, so they show results on a map which are near to that postcode.

So there are lots of people searching for aerobics (and various other activities which you might offer) on Google, but they’re not finding good results. Luckily it’s simple to add your listing to Google Places and show up when people are searching.

These are people who are already at the link stage of the 4 stages of activity marketing campaigns. They want to do activity, but they don’t know where to go. You know where they can go, but you’re not appearing top on Google, so they’re not finding you.

If you’ve got the right information on your website, then why can’t Google find you? As clever as the search engines are, they’re still only as good at reading as a young child. They need to be spoon fed some of the information.

To help you with this there’s an introduction to Search Engine Optimisation in the Make Sport Fun book, which you can buy for £9.90 from www.makesportfun.com/book.

You might have seen one of these codes recently and been wondering what it is.

It’s a QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code). This is a type of code made up of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background.

The technology has seen frequent use in Japan; and is fast becoming popular in the UK as well.

Anyone with a Smart Phone (iphones, android phones, blackberries, etc.) can scan this code with a QR reader app (available for free). They’re then redirected to a website, sign up form, video, picture, a twitter follow page or a Facebook like button.

The benefit

It makes it very easy for you to redirect people to the exact place online you want them to go without them having to type in a long website address.

Where to get them from

Just Google QR code generator to find lots of options. I used http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ to generate the one in this blog post. If you scan that one it will take you to the Make Sport Fun Twitter page.

And what is this ingenious device you might ask.

Is it Facebook – the darling of the marketing world. No, it is not.

Is it Twitter – the up and coming social media phenomenom? No, it is not Twitter.

Is it something even cleverer and newer than Facebook or Twitter? Is it FourSquare? Is it Ning? Is it new? Is it shiny? No, it’s not FourSqure, it’s not Ning.

It is the magical speaking tube known as . . . the telephone.

The telephone? Really? Yes indeed. But surely, you might say, this is old-fashioned. This is not innovative enough. To that I say “Innovative, schminnovative” (yes, I sometimes have the sense of humour of an 8-year-old). The telephone really works – and that’s what I care about.

In a recent project in Durham they found that the bulk of their GP referral programme participants were dropping out. So they implemented a phone-programme to keep those people active, to keep them going to the classes. They called people up, to check how they were doing, whether they were happy with their classes. And damn it, they were nice to them! This has led to a measurable, significant increase in the number of people sticking with their programme.

In America there’s an amazing company called Zappos. You probably haven’t heard of them yet, but you will, trust me. Zappos started out as an online shoe store in 1999, in July 2009 they were bought by Amazon for $1.2 billion. One of the key reasons for this outstanding success is the extreme levels they go to in customer service – the bulk of which is done over the phone. All their staff, whether they work in customer service, finance or HR have to start by doing 2 weeks in the customer service department, on the phone, talking to customers. The CEO – Tony Hsieh – was once in a hotel with some of Zappos’ suppliers and they couldn’t manage to find anywhere to order pizza. Tony joked that they should call the Zappos customer service team. The supplier took up the challenge, made the call, and 2 minutes later he had the number of a local late-night pizza restaurant who would deliver.

So why is the phone so powerful. According to some research, only 7% of what we communicate is the words we say, 38% is how we say it and 55% is body language. So, obviously, talking to someone in person is ideal, but it’s not always practical. Over the phone is much more convenient, while still allowing you that extra 38% than writing does. That friendly, supporting tone of voice can have more of an impact in getting people active than any amount of information. If you work with people directly then you know this from the work you already do, so just put that to use in your marketing.

So next time you’re planning some activity marketing don’t forget to include the phone.

The British Heart Foundation National Centre has looked at common barriers to walking to school and put together a range of tips to support teachers and other professionals in overcoming these barriers and encourage active travel among staff, pupils and their families. These tips were adapted from the popular BHF Active School Pack.

Download a copy

However, it isn’t always easy to reach the right people. Different schemes have devised different ways of promoting themselves successfully.

Some of the best examples are given in this article.

http://www.wfh.naturalengland.org.uk/results.asp?key=2335|0|42710633981142|p|1063|0&parentkey=2335|0|42710633981142|p|1063|0

Anyone who’s heard me talk will have heard me explain the 4 stages of an effective activity marketing campaign. But I thought I should re-emphasise them here on the website.

These are not something that I invented, but rather something that I discovered. I have researched dozens and dozens of activity marketing campaigns. Some of them have been successful and some haven’t. One of the common themes amongst the successful campaigns was that they had four stages:

1. Know
2. Link
3. Try
4. Repeat

Know

The Know stage is about catching someone’s attention. You can’t communicate with someone if they don’t know you exist. The normal thing to do at this point is to try and give someone too much information. Instead what is successful is to capture someone’s contact details at this point. This helps in two ways.

• It stops people from stopping paying attention from information overload
• It gives us the ability to communicate with them again for much less cost

The reason that this gives us the ability to communicate with them again for much less cost is because we don’t need to work nearly so hard to get their attention the next time. They’ve asked us to communicate with them, we have their permission. Therefore we don’t need to spend nearly so much time and money the next time to get their attention. And getting people’s attention is what most marketing money is spent on (just think about how much of the adverts you see on TV are really about the product, and how much are funny, attention grabbing pieces).

At this know stage nearly all our efforts (in our advert, poster, flyer, maildrop, etc.) should be put into catching someone’s attention and convincing them to sign up to receive future marketing from us. A good way to do this is to explain the benefits of the marketing to them, and to run a prize draw.

Link

Now that we have collected people’s contact details we are able to write to, email or text the people in our area who are interested in our sport or activity to link them with the activity they most want to do. The cheapest option is email marketing, which can be done from 1p per person! But the other two options are also much, much cheaper than advertising (from 8p per person for text and from 60p per person for mail).

This list of people who are signed up to receive communication from you is known as your marketing list. And building a marketing list is one of the simplest and most effective things that you can do in your marketing. Wandsworth council is an example of an organisation which has done this really well – http://www.makesportfun.com/casestudy/keeping-older-people-active-in-wandsworth/.

The three main tactics in the link stage are:

• email marketing
• direct mail
• text message marketing

A good place to get free activity for the content of your email marketing and direct mail is NHS Choices Live Well, whose content can be re-used by PCTs and other public sector organisations for free.

Try

The try stage is based around a low barrier to entry opportunity for someone to try the activity for the first time (or at least the first time in a while). Common examples of these are:

• Taster sessions
• Come and Try It events
• Open days

All of these are fantastic ways to give someone a fun, friendly and free way to try out your activity, club or venue.

Repeat

The repeat stage is your regular activity. Most people reading this are much more accomplished at putting on regular, high-quality activities that people will enjoy than I will ever be, so I won’t say much about this. The main thing to focus on from a campaign perspective here is that people will drop out, and they’re your best market for getting back into activity.

Sometimes people drop out and won’t come back, but most people who drop out from an activity can be coaxed back in if you continue to send them updates

Read more

What is an A/B Test?

An A/B test involves two differing emails being sent out to a small portion of your subscriber list, with the most successful (‘winner’) email being chosen from the two after a defined period of time. The winner is then sent to the remainder of your subscribers.

You may have heard this practice being described as ’10/10/80 split’ or ‘multivariate’ testing (however the latter involves changing multiple parts of your campaign). Perhaps you have heard reasons why people don’t use it, such as ‘it’s too hard to do’, or, ‘by the time I get the results from the initial test, it will be too late’. The good news is that we’ve set up a very powerful and easy-to-use interface for your to conduct A/B split campaigns. As the results arrive in real-time, you don’t have to wait until the following day to select your winning email; in fact, we’ll send the winner out automatically.

So… Why test?

There are a number of great reasons why you should optimise your campaigns using A/B testing, including:

• The chance to experiment and learn from different subject lines – what will produce the better open rate, ‘Receive 20% off all products at ABC Store’, or ‘Discounts on all products at ABC Store’?
• The opportunity to decide what email content is most relevant and responsive – Is layout A better than B? What call to action will work best?
• Deciding which From name is best – Do you go corporate ‘ABC Gym’, or personal ‘Bill from the gym’?

No matter what you decide to test, A/B testing will always provide you with useful feedback on your campaigns. For example, you will soon find that the process of choosing the ‘perfect’ subject will rapidly become less of a guessing game and more of an empirical study.

Creating an A/B test campaign

Creating an A/B test campaign is similar to creating a regular campaign – after you click the ‘Create a new campaign’ button, you will see two tabs beneath ‘Step 1: Define the Campaign and Sender’. Click the ‘A/B split campaign tab’ and you will be on your way:

In this example, we’ll be selecting two different subject lines. You will be required to enter differing subject lines for Version A and B of this campaign. You can also personalize the subject line with the recipient’s first name, last name or full name:

Once satisfied, complete ‘Step 2.1: Select the format for this campaign’ as you would on a regular campaign. If you have chosen to send two differing emails, you will be presented with the option to include both of them on this step. Next, you will move onto defining recipients. At ‘Step 3.1 – Select the recipients for this campaign’, select your subscriber list as you would for a regular campaign, then click the ‘Define A/B Split’ button:

In ‘Step 4.1 – Size of test and how you’ll decide the winner’, you can define using the slider what percentage of your subscriber list will receive the initial A/B test emails, then what percentage will receive the winning version. These percentages (A/B/Winner) are entirely up to you, however they cannot be smaller than 1/1/98%, or larger than 25/25/50%. Commonly, 10/10/80% splits are used:

Secondly, you can define what criteria will be used to select the winner. You can select from Open rate, Total unique clicks, or Total clicks on a selected link. This will map back to how you will finally gauge the success of the email campaign, for example, if you are looking to drive visitors to your online store, you may want to select ‘Total unique clicks’ as the criteria for selecting a winner.

Finally, you can select the number of hours or days across which you want to run the A/B test. The default is to ‘Select a winner after 6 hours’, however depending how time-sensitive your campaign is, you may want to select more or less. Note: Setting a testing period of less than a few hours may impact the reliability of the test, as there may be insufficient click and open data generated to accurately determine a winner.
Once you’re done, click ‘Next’.

You will then be presented with a snapshot of the email campaign, including the two subject lines defined earlier. Review, then click ‘Test and define delivery’:

In ‘Step 5.1 – Test your campaign’, you will have the opportunity to test your campaign prior to sending it just as you would a regular campaign. Likewise for ‘Step 5.2 – Schedule campaign delivery’. It’s time to get sending!

Sending and monitoring an A/B test campaign

The excitement all happens once you’ve sent out your email campaign – and at this point, you will see the real-time presentation of results to be quite different from that of regular email campaign sends:

Not only will you be able to see how each version of your creative is performing in the test, but upon completion, you will be able to view the total benefit gained from running the test. This is an excellent way to admire your own handiwork, as well as learn how differing approaches to subject line, content and the from line can alter the results of an email campaign.

I’ve always focused on trying to create interesting and useful content for the Make Sport Fun email newsletter, but I hadn’t ever thought much about the email subject line. I just called it “Make Sport Fun newsletter”.

I read an article which talked about the importance of subject lines, read other people’s research about their own emails, looked at what journalists do when writing newspapers, and more.

One interesting piece of research tracked the open rates for 40 million emails, found the ones with the highest open rates and the ones with the lowest open rates. Then they pulled 20 from each pile and put their subject lines in a side-by-side comparison.

Source: Mailchimp

This is interesting, because it shows that the most popular email headings are very simple, and just tell people what the email is, not what’s in it, and not using catchy headlines.

I found that it’s agreed everywhere that your subject line is actually hugely important. So I started doing some testing. I’ve used something in Sportmailer called A/B testing (more on that in the future) which sends two versions of the same email with different subject lines to a random selection of your readers. Whichever version is opened by more people gets sent to the rest of the readers.

I quickly found that people are much more likely to open my emails if I put a quick teaser of what’s in there as opposed to just calling it Make Sport Fun newsletter. But even when you describe what the email’s about a simple change can make a huge difference. Look at these two versions of the same subject line:

• Email marketing made easy and 70 new free netball photos
• Simple email marketing tool and free photos

One of them was opened by 27% of people within 1 day, and the other was opened by 38% of people in the same time. Can you guess which is which?

It turns out that “Simple email marketing tool and free photos” was the better subject, but I would never have known that without testing it.

The moral of the story? Test. To try out Sportmailer’s A/B test just click on A/B split campaign in step 1.