How to sell to FE and HE

Direct mail remains the most common approach of selling to lecturers in FE and HE - the biggest problem being that not all of the lists that you might be looking for actually exist.

What happens at this point is that a lot of people give up - and yet it is often possible to research the list you need and build up your own personal database totally suited to your needs.

Direct Mail: considers the various ways in which direct mail is used to reach the FE/HE sector.

Research

Recently we were asked to undertake research into how universities buy their furniture. A number of possibilities arose:

That the university made central decisions
That each department or each faculty made its own decisions
That all buying went through one consortium
That a single major supplier had tied the university, or certain departments, into a long term contract
That there was a mixture of policies - some items coming from a central consortium, others being left to the individual departments.

In contacting each university we found each possibility existed somewhere - but we were able to gain information on exactly which establishment had which policies in place, and who was responsible as a buying agent in each case. This not only saved our client a considerable sum in each subsequent promotion, it also ensured that individuals (for example, those responsible for buying in specific faculties) were included in subsequent mailshots.

This latter point had a double benefit, for it not only meant that our client now pitched to these people - but also, because most firms do not undertake this type of research, these departmental buyers are very undermailed and are thus prime targets.

Here are further examples. A company supplied modern language software to schools and needed to know two things - what languages each school taught, and where specific languages were taught what software was in use. Another company needed to know which schools had a significant number of Apple computers, while another needed to know which schools had a strong commitment to swimming lessons but did not have their own swimming pool.

In the primary sector one company wanted to know how schools were banding together into groups, and where these groupings were influencing purchasing policy. And elsewhere there was a need to know how local authority advisers were handling the issue of giving every child experience on a musical instrument - and which instruments, and which suppliers they were recommending.

All of this information can be obtained. Of course it costs money - but once obtained it can totally transform your approach to marketing, by giving you the insight that allows you to avoid advertising to specific schools, and allowing you to focus on other targets that are much more likely to buy.

Direct Mail

The traditional approach to mailing academics is to buy one of the lists of named academics interested in a specific subject. The problem with this traditional approach is that the cost is high (each letter goes to just one person), and most such lists include people who might have an interest in a specific area, but not necessarily a high level of interest in such an area.

For example, when I was a senior lecturer in music, I was researching into the sociology of music, trying to work out why different styles of music were related to cultural choices. During this period I received direct mail not just about music (in all its aspects, and I can assure you there was no way I was going to buy any more books on JS Bach), but also on sociology.

This had happened because, when asked what my interests were, I ticked the nearest boxes to my interest - music and sociology. Which means that a lot of mail that reached me, despite seeming to be closely targeted, was highly irrelevant.

Because of the problems and high cost of mailing named academics an alternative low-cost approach has been devised, which can be particularly successful.

In this approach a pack is put together containing say six copies of the leaflet that is to be distributed. On top of these is put a letter addressed to the departmental administrator, which asks if she will distribute the leaflets to the senior members of the department. The overall pack is addressed to this administrator.

Although some administrators won’t bother, it seems that most will (particularly since you are only including a small number of leaflets). What this means is that for the price of mailing one university or college, you are potentially reaching six people – and more to the point, six people who work in the department that is relevant to you (rather than people in other departments who might be doing some research that overlaps into other areas.)

Of course, it can be argued that you might want to reach these other departments. But if so they too can be mailed. So if you have a volume on sociology, but you think anyone researching the sociology of music might be interested, you can mail both sociology and music.

Instead of mailing everyone in a department via the administrator you can just mail the head of department – especially if the product you are selling is one that would need the approval of the top person in the department. This approach is perhaps the simplest of all – you just mail the institutions with the generic title “The Head of Biological Sciences”. You can also try various other titles such as “The Professor of Behavioural Psychology” or “The Reader in Education” or whatever is appropriate.