Here’s a good use of a free taster session voucher by Nuffield Health at Paddington Recreation Ground.

I was approached by someone in the park who offered me a free taster session for their newly refurbished gym. He then took my contact details and tore off the other half of the voucher for me to use as my pass. Unfortunately, as you can see the design meant that you only get half of the front of the design, so you can’t read it properly. The back half was still fine, but it doesn’t say which day you should come on (it’s for use for today only).

I got given this on Monday morning, and was back there again yesterday walking the dog, but this time saw no sign of anyone giving out passes.

My assumption was that because they’re focussed on driving you to the website that it would be optimised for capturing your contact details so they could stay in touch with you. However that’s one point in the process where they’ve actually fallen down. The website (www.glovesboxingclub.com) needs to be much better at capturing your contact details.

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You can download the good practice guidelines that the ASA has put together.

Have you ever wanted to know how to run an effective activity marketing campaign?

Would you like to know what the National Social Marketing Centre says you must do when running a social marketing campaign?

Now’s your chance to find out. Make Sport Fun have pulled together dozens of research reports, dozens of case studies of effective actvity marketing campaigns and millions of pounds of research data. They’re making it all available for free at 10am on 10th September at the Top 10 ways to increase participation seminar in King’s Cross. 6 free places are available to Heads of Leisure, Heads of Sports Development and people involved in planning or running activity marketing campaigns.

If you attend you will learn:

• What millions of pounds of research have found to be the top 10 ways to increase participation
• The 4 stages of an effective activity marketing campaign
• The 8 criteria your campaign must meet to be classed as social marketing
• How www.promotingactivity.com can help you plan and run your activity marketing campaign

To book a place for the Top 10 ways to increase participation seminar please download this letter, fill it in  and email it to john@makesportfun.com. Places are allocated on a first come, first served basis.

Here’s a great email newsletter from British Gas about a swimming promotion they’re running. It’s attractive, simple, personalised, the design matches all their existing advertising and drives people to actually try out this activity. They’ve got links to find where you can go within the email itself, which makes it simple. And there’s a call to action in the form of the Book Now button at the bottom right.

Very impressive.

Users can create their personal profile using tests to assess your personality, aptitude and reactions.

They can then find out which Olympic sport they are best suited to with a short psychological and aptitude test. It’s been developed with an expert team of sports psychologists at Loughborough University.

The results give you: Your profile, Getting started (some inspirational case studies to look at) and Near you (activity/facility finder)

http://www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/olympics-sport.aspx

They have been developed to help strengthen the use of effective social marketing approaches. They were developed following a two year independent review in 2006 which examined social marketing methods and approaches. The review identified that there was an increasing tendency for work to describe itself as social marketing without necessarily reflecting social marketing core concepts and principles. The eight point benchmark criteria built on the review findings and also Alan Andreasen’s previous six point benchmark from 2001.

It is important to note the reason why other factors, which are critical to any successful intervention have not been included. Obvious examples would include: strategic planning, partnership and stakeholder engagement, review
and evaluation, (to name a few). These are clearly all important in there own right, and key to successful interventions.

The reason they are not part of the benchmarks is that they are not unique to social marketing. Their presence (or absence) does not indicate if something is social marketing or not. The eight criteria included in the benchmark are however, the things that have to be present in order to be described as consistent with social marketing.

I’ve explained here how each of these should be used as part of an activity marketing campaign.

1. CUSTOMER ORIENTATION
‘Customer in the round’ Develops a robust understanding of the audience, based on good market and consumer research, combining data from different sources

Make sure that you use the marketing communication plans when deciding how to market to your chosen segments. These are based on the very robust Sport England and DH segmentation, and an extra £100,000 of research on top of that.

2. BEHAVIOUR
Has a clear focus on behaviour, based on a strong behavioural analysis, with specific behaviour goals

3. THEORY
Is behavioural theory-based and informed. Drawing from an integrated theory framework

Use the four stage Make Sport Fun method (Know, Like, Try and Repeat). This is a proven framework to make sure that you’re driving people to try activity, then to stick with it, rather than just increasing the intention to participate.

4. INSIGHT
Based on developing a deeper ‘insight’ approach – focusing on what ‘moves and motivates’

Make sure that you use the marketing communication plans when deciding how to market to your chosen segments. These are based on the very robust Sport England and DH segmentation, and an extra £100,000 of research on top of that.

5. EXCHANGE
Incorporates an ‘exchange’ analysis. Understanding what the person has to give to get the benefits proposed

Look in the marketing communication plans at the motivations of that group (these are on page 2 of each plan).

6. COMPETITION
Incorporates a ‘competition’ analysis to understand what competes for the time and attention of the audience

Look at the barriers that you need to overcome, these are in the marketing communication plans on page 2.

7. SEGMENTATION
Uses a developed segmentation approach (not just targeting). Avoiding blanket approaches

Choose who your target audience is by looking at the strategic tools on www.promotingactivity.com – especially:

• The Strategic Planning tool which will show you where participation is low, where interest in an activity is high and where different adult segments live
• The Sport England bar charts which show you how many of the Sport England segments live in your borough
• The DH family segment maps which show you where the DH family segments live

8. METHODS MIX
Identifies an appropriate ‘mix of methods’
‘Intervention mix’ = Strategic SM
‘Marketing mix’ = Operational SM

Look at the recommended communication channels in the marketing communication plans, these show you which communication channels work best for that segment. Also look at how these different communication channels fit into the four stages of an effective activity marketing campaign.

Created in partnership between the Greater London Authority (GLA), NHS London and Interactive, „Inclusive and Active 2‟ aims to build on the success and profile of the first ‘Inclusive and Active‟. The strategy will increase the number of disabled people participating in sport and physical activity, change perceptions of how disabled people can maintain an active lifestyle and embed inclusion within mainstream sport and physical activity.

“Inclusive and Active 2‟ is now available to download on all three co-owner websites.

www.interactive.uk.net

www.london.nhs.uk

www.london.gov.uk

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What is an open rate?

Open rate is a measure of how many people on an email list open (or view) a particular email campaign. The open rate is normally expressed as a percentage, and at Make Sport Fun we calculate it as follows:

So a 20% open rate would mean that of every 10 emails delivered to the inbox, 2 were actually opened.

How do you measure an open?

When each email is sent out, we automatically add a piece of code that requests a tiny, invisible image from our web servers. So when a reader opens the email, the image is downloaded, and we can record that download as an open for that specific email.

It is important to understand that the open rate is not a 100% accurate measure. Recording an ‘open’ can only happen if the readers email client is capable of displaying html with images, and that option is turned on. So if you are sending text-only emails, there is no way to record open rates (the exception is if they actually click a link). Similarly, people reading your html email without images showing will not be recorded as opens.

Another issue is that your readers may have a preview pane in their email client. That preview pane might be displaying your email automatically (and therefore downloading the images) without the reader ever having to click on it or read it.

So you should never take your open rate as a hard and fast number, because you can never know the true figure. It is much better used as general guide, and as a way of measuring the trends on your email campaigns.

What is a typical open rate?

Really, there is no typical open rate. The rate obtained for any list, or group of lists will depend on how it was measured, when it was sent, the size of the list and a zillion other potential variables. There is no shortage of benchmark numbers out there, but even between benchmark figures you will find big variation in the reported open rates.

So instead of giving a specific percentage, we’ve come up with the following chart.

There are certainly some broad trends in open rates.

• As list size goes up, the open rate tends to fall; possibly because smaller companies are more likely to have personal relationships with their list subscribers.
• Companies and organizations that are focusing on enthusiasts and supporters, like churches, sport teams and non profits see higher open rates
• More specific niche topics, like some manufacturing areas also typically have higher open rates than emails on broader topics

Why don’t you just give me a number!

So what if you or your clients just have no idea of what is a reasonable open rate? Based on everything we have seen here at Make Sport Fun, and on the other research out there, the bottom line is this:

If you are getting an open rate between 20% and 40%, you are probably somewhere around average.

Very few lists of reasonable size are getting much above 50% open rates from normal campaigns. Your list may have some specific factors that give you higher rates; if so, well done.

However, don’t expect to be getting 80% open rates. People are too busy, inboxes are too full and the measurements are technically limited. If, after all that, you are still interested in seeing specific figures, see the footer for some references you can browse through.

How can I increase my open rate?

There are a ton of elements you can vary to try to entice more of your subscribers to open up your emails. Here are just a few things you could try:

• Experiment with your subject lines: Try including details about the content of the email right in the subject line, instead of using your standard subject.
• Send on a different day: Are your subscribers too busy on a Wednesday morning to read your email, leaving it languishing down the inbox? Maybe a Friday afternoon email would be welcomed.
• Get the important content up the top: Remember that many people will see a preview of your email before deciding to open it or ignore it. Make sure your email is recognizable, and that your key points are in the top third.