For many subscribers, perhaps the majority, English in Britain appears on the radar only when a branded enquiry arrives in their inbox. That is actually quite a rare event. Does that mean the service is not being used, or is becoming less effective? Let us first of all consider exactly how rare an event this is, and then look at the why.
As any subscriber can see from logging in to the /clients section and then looking at their own cumulative stats, on that same page underneath their data will be found weekly figures for the site as a whole (aggregating the totals of now current subscribers - and disaggregating discontinued subscribers). Roughly speaking, emails per week run at about 50 for the whole site. To put that in context:
To put that another way an emailed enquiry is the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to English in Britain activity. Moreover we are all completely ignorant of what is probably substantial activity because we cannot know how much of the English in Britain Guide is used when downloaded, neither do we know how many or which pages of data are viewed by those who install the app (4000 installations to date). We might summarise by saying that an email sent from English in Britain represents rather less than 1% of English in Britain activity.
Why should this be? The main reasons are as follows:
1. It is almost entirely unnecessary. Clients may include as much data as they wish on English in Britain and the answers to most questions are there. And since English in Britain offers multiple links to subscriber sites, the obvious place to make an enquiry of any kind is there.
2. None of us (most especially in the developed world) likes completing forms which ask for personal information and email address. Whatever we're looking for - trains, hotels, clothes, courses, services - we prefer to do it anonymously.
English in Britain should not and cannot seriously be judged on traceable emails and attributable booking conversions. That would be to attempt to apply the old "ARELS coupon" model to a completely different environment. The old coupon model worked well because a) the information in the guide was summary and arcane, and probably not understood by most, and b) the main source of marketing information was the glossy paper brochure. Such brochures are nice and they not yet dead, but in terms of information delivery they are clumsy, slow, inflexible and almost entirely redundant. Not to mention expensive.
There are three necessary, and sufficient, conditions for successful web sales:
The first two are the most difficult, and everybody in business knows how hard it is to establish market position, to choose imagery, to write good copy, to communicate USPs, and intangibles such as school culture and values and so on, and all in the fog of massive competition - but it's what has to be done . The third condition is the one English in Britain has fulfilled for subscribers for years, and better than anybody else.