Foreign Perspectives

Although you can usually assume that you’ll get around a 1% return on any marketing that you send out, now and again you can get a much better response if you happen to hit on exactly the right message and target it at exactly the right group of people at exactly the right time.

The message that you use is the one variable that you have a great deal of control over and it’s worthwhile running a test of each marketing e-mail that you plan to use in your campaigns before you send the mail to everyone on your mailing list. By testing on a small group you have the chance to modify the text and get a better feel on the level of response that you might expect which in turn let’s you stage the mailing appropriately.

Unusually for us, we decided to short-circuit that process and just send out a brand new e-mail to our latest mailing list without any prior testing which has resulted in a certain amount of chaos in the last 24 hours.

For a start, the e-mail was unexpectedly attractive to the target audience which resulted in the webserver slowing to a crawl almost immediately after the e-mail went out. The volume of people looking at the site was so great that within a few hours we used up as much bandwidth as we normally do in two days. This in turn reduced the take-up as it was so slow at times that the signup form was timing out for some people. Finally, the responses coming through were so many that it looks like it will take us an entire day to process them all.

And all this for an e-mail that was sent out in what would ordinarily be a time of week that would produce quite a low immediate response rate for us!

I think in future we’ll make more of a point in testing any new messages that we issue.

Over the last couple of years we’ve watched our very own French gite listings site slowly but surely climb the ranks in the search engines.

Now that it’s a middling size site, roughly comparable to the likes of VisitFrance in size it’s great to see that it’s sitting right there in the middle of all the fully commercial sites and, moreover, often towards the top of that list.

What’s confusing though is quite simply: why? After all, several of those commercial sites are spending quite serious amounts of money in promoting their site whilst we spend very little comparatively speaking. We know for a fact that at least one of the middle ranking sites (which we rank much better than) was spending around £3000 per year on marketing up to a year or so ago.

Confusing too is how come we’re not innundated with applications to list on our site in that we charge a maximum of £29 whilst comparable sites are charging around the £100 mark and, for that matter, we even offer a “free forever” listing too whereas others limit their free period to six months.

One thing that continues to amaze me is just how long some blog promotion efforts continue to run.

Almost a year ago, I started off on the Technorati Favourites Exchange and even now hardly a week goes by that I don’t get a little note to say that someone has added me to their favourites and can I reciprocate? You’d think that it would have petered out by now but it looks like one that could still be running in a few years time.

Others which you’d have thought should have been just as successful have indeed petered out or not really gotten going in the first place. I’d have thought that the mutual blog reviews movement would have really taken off but in reality it’s rare to see more than a handful on any blog that you see doing them.

Now what I need to do is to find the next Technorati Favourites Exchange and get in on it at the start.

Whilst moving from one European country to another is as easy, at least legally, as moving from one American state to another, it’s a whole different matter when you want to emmigrate to a completely different jurisdiction.

Aside from all the normal differences in taxes, social security and health systems that moving countries always entails, you add the complication of needing to apply for a visa, residence and work permits which adds considerably to the time that it requires to make the move as well as increasing uncertainty somewhat.

For example, take the relatively simple case of a British citizen wanting to move to Canada.

Canada is, of course, in the British Commonwealth so, in theory, that should make the move easier. However, even if you have a pretty much perfect points score for the move, it currently takes around four years from initial application through to the point where you have your Canadian visa and can actually move.

That’s a very long time and a great deal can change during it. For example, four years ago I had one son and now I have two. The second one would obviously need to be added to the visa application for a start and there’s the complication that he has even more nationalities than the first little guy.

Such a long lead time seriously complicates matters in other areas. For one thing, you’ll be working in your existing job and not know in advance how long. You may be wanting to move house too over that kind of time. It’s even possible that the visa categories which you’re eligible for could change too if, for example, you had an inheritance you might find that you could apply under one of the investment categories or perhaps you added a qualification (eg I picked up a university French diploma within the last four years which adds significant points to my Canadian application) or skills. The list is endless.

In fact, over that time period your life could change radically so you need to be really set on moving to a particular country if you’re talking of application periods running into years. Yes, of course, you should be that determined but over such a long period many things can crop up to change your mind even if you originally were really set on making that particular move.

And, remember, that’s just for a relatively simple move!

The events surrounding the slow death of the Northern Rock mortgage bank get more and more surrealistic by the day.

Back in July last year it was actually the leading mortgage lender in the UK with 19% of the entire market for new mortgages sold in the first half of the year. Bearing in mind that it’s basically a fairly small building society this should have been the first sign that trouble was ahead as it meant that to source the funds for those mortgages it had to move well outside it’s traditional deposit base and borrow on world markets to find the money.

Just two months after announcing these fantastic results we find that the bank needed to go to the Bank of England for emergency support which, of course, it was granted. The next day the troubles began in earnest for the bank as everyone tried to reassure the customers that everything was fine. Of course, it was far from being fine as the large queues of depositors asking for their money bank well knew on hearing this announcement. On September 17th, just three days later the government moved in to guarantee the deposits held by the bank, subsequently extended on October 9th to include all deposits made regardless of the date.

Moving on to today we find that the government has provided some £25 billion (around £1000 from every family in the country) to support the bank and here’s where the magical world of finance really kicks in.

Although the bank seems to have enough security to repay all of it’s debts, to repay everyone would entail calling in the mortgages on an awful lot of people which obviously wouldn’t go down too well and might not even be possible legally for those that have been keeping up their repayments. Of course this is the same situation for all banks: if everyone wanted their money back at the same time there just wouldn’t be enough on hand. Therefore, in a sense, it makes sense for the government to provide backing to avoid repossessions on a wide scale and to provide confidence in the banking system in general.

However, the government clearly need the money back at some point unless they want to nationalise the bank.

The snag is that there is really no way for them to actually get the money back. So, what they’re doing instead is proposing selling bonds to the value of that £25 billion. The problem with that is that nobody wants to buy bonds from a bankrupt bank and therefore the government will have to provide the security for the bonds too which means that they won’t be clear of that £25 billion for some years, if ever (some similar bonds issued for the first world war still haven’t been repaid!).

And, of course, this is just one bank. Granted, a bank that over-extended itself but who’s to say that there aren’t a few other banks around in a similar situation or who could find themselves in such a situation if the current squeeze on credit worldwide continues?