If this whole advertising business seems just too complex for words, try this to make it simple.

I am often reprimanded by readers of these ramblings, and indeed by customers of schools.co.uk, to the effect that I come up with too many different thoughts on how to improve the effectiveness of one’s advertising.

Just tell me what the problem is, and what I should do about it,” was the comment I had recently. And so, always willing to please, that is exactly what I am going to do here.

Now I am going to cheat a bit by suggesting two things to do, but that is only because I don’t know exactly where you are at the moment. Honestly - I am not trying to wriggle out of my headline promise before I’ve started.

Thus I have a question for you: Are you currently undertaking some email advertising that is not working as well as you might have hoped?

If the answer is yes, then read on. If not skip the next four paragraphs.

When email advertising is not working as well as you might hope, above all else you need to know where it is failing. Which means a little bit of analysis concerning how many people looked at your advert, how many people clicked through to the web page, and how many then purchased.

If you don’t have all these details and would like to know how to get them, please write to Stephen@schools.co.uk or call 01604 880 927. If you do know how to get those figures, then these stats will tell you where the problem is.

If the open rate is low, then that normally suggests the design or headline is not working and needs changing. If the click through rate is low, but the open rate is ok, then you are losing people when they are reading. The text needs sorting. Finally if they are clicking through to your website, but then stopping, it is the webpage that is wrong.

In each case if you then want to send over a copy of the email and what your statistics tell you, we can help resolve the problem - and give you advice without charge. But let me give you a clue: by far the most common problem comes with the website. The email generates the interest, but the website loses it again.

Moving on, if you are not advertising at the moment what you might care to do is this.

First, book into one of our promotions for the start of next term. You might just want to do a one off advert, but I would suggest you try our “Four Emails' Campaign for £195 (if emailing the largest primary schools, secondary schools, nursery schools or special schools) or £269 if emailing all primary schools.

Then send over your proposed advert and invite us to take a look at it and suggest how it might be improved. You don’t have to take any notice of our comments, of course, but you’ll have a start. Then if the results don’t come up to expectation, you can ask us to make further comments and help develop the advert further.

If you want to see how we write advertisements there is a whole range of information on our blog, including an example advert, and details of exactly why we wrote it as we did.