How much does a subscriptions copywriter cost?

And what does a subscriptions copywriter do for your money?

A subscriptions marketing copywriter delivers far more than just copy. It’s a sales job. His marketing advice can include techniques for:

How a subscriptions copywriter helps
Often, a business owner has too much to do – and too little time! And he or she hasn’t the time or experience to do all the things listed above. They are, after all, specialised marketing areas. People who work flat-out every day on a business can become out of touch with what new prospects want to hear and buy.

How a subscriptions copywriter sells your product
You may feel you know more about your business than an outsider – and of course that is true. But do you know more about selling your product than anyone else? No. And usually there is no member of staff who can write effective selling copy.

What about editorial? A website editor, for example, is rarely equiped to write sales copy. He may not, through day-to-day pressure, find the time to talk regularly to prospects and investigate changes in what they want to receive. He will probably have had no sales training.

A website publisher may not have time to carry out regular market testing among prospects and existing customers: only market-testing will reveal what people are actually willing to part with money for (this is where price testing really pays off.)

Is the managing director a marketer?
A managing director may be a great ideas person, a great administrator, a great ‘people person’ or a great marketer, but rarely all of them.

This is why most successful companies in any market, employ outside copywriters – to keep fresh and ahead of the field. With a subscriptions copywriter, it is clear as soon as the response comes in what kind of value your subscriptions copywriter will bring to your business. Those cheques, direct debits and credit card orders tell their own story.

Freelance subscriptions copywriters see more
Remember – a freelance subscriptions copywriter knows better than most what is pulling the most reponse in the market today. He works across many disciplines and works with many websites and publications and is better placed to see what’s working. You can profit from that.

Here are some figures from a successful website:

Email promotion revenue

This is the response achieved from an subscriptions marketing email message sent out to new registrants:

Website receives 500,000 visitors a month

5% of visitors register = 25,000

50% of registrants open the first email promotion: 12,500

1.45% of registrants who open the email buy a subscription = 181

181 @ £70 for the annual subscription = £12,670

Total revenue from email promotion: £12,670

The email promotion response figures shown above are for copy created by an expert freelance subscription copywriter. Remember – that copy can be used again and again at no further cost to you.

In-house copy: the drawbacks
Let’s look at what happens if you write copy in-house and the promotional email you send out to your new prospects pulls in half the response: 90 subs.

Half is a typical figure and is around what a good in-house copywriter will achieve. The revenue will drop to:

Total revenue from in-house email promotion: £6,335

So you with your best in-house effort, you have £6,335 less revenue for that promotion. Now I will turn our original question ‘How much does a subscription copywriter cost’ on its head:

How much would you pay an expert subscriptions copywriter to create copy that brings in an extra £6,335?

It will be a fraction of that revenue figure.

Subscription and membership copywriter

We can create subscription promotions with great incentives at a low cost from material you already have – perfect for building new long-term business!

Click here to learn more

Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

Capturing profitable leads

In selling, the quality of your leads is most important

Let’s take the process step-by-step and look at how some highly successful websites are capturing and converting customers.

Then we’ll look at the Top Gear website which hasn’t taken even rudimentary marketing steps to build prospects either for its website or magazine.

Where do your visitors register?
‘Register now for free information’ in a prominent box on the home page is a must. And it’s important to include an incentive such as a free report, tips or newsletter.

Where to put your registration box?
Where on the home page should you put your box? Locate it where it cannot be missed, dead centre top, or at the top of the left or right column. Repeat the box lower down too.

But most visitors to a website don’t arrive at the home page. The answer to that is to employ a pop-up box. Here are some subscriptions best practice pointers:

A pop-up box is the most effective method of capturing email addresses.

A free bulletin or newsletter is vital to keep visitors in touch with a changing market, and your name in their minds.

Three more examples of subscriptions best practice:

The Peak Performance website has the registration box dead centre and visitors cannot, and do not, ignore it.

Moneysavingexpert.com: the free sign-up box contains a list of nine benefits to tempt the reader to sign up for their weekly email. That must be a record.

Money Week: how often should you send out free information? The most successful of all information publishing companies, Agora, sends out daily emails.

Surely all this subscriptions stuff is common sense?
No it’s not. If it was common sense, then everyone would carry promotions to attract visitors to register on their websites. That is quite a simple first step: in selling, quality leads are everything.

But they don’t.

The Top Gear website is the flagship for the biggest TV brand in the world. More people worldwide watch the BBC Top Gear show than any other. But they have no promotion on their website for visitors to sign up for a free newsletter, tips or news.

Search, and you will find a box down on the bottom right of the home page (the worst place to advertise anything). The wording is:

‘Newsletter. Top Gear for your inbox. Sign up now’.

Not what you would call a promotion, is it?

Subscriptions and membership copywriting

We can create registration boxes with great incentives at a low cost from material you already have – perfect for building confidence and qualifying new leads!

Click here to learn more

Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

Website marketing: the two big downsides!

How subscriptions and membership copywriting builds repeat business

If we accept that the purpose of marketing is to win and keep customers, then subscriptions and membership marketing answer the two big downsides to that aim, especially for new or expanding businesses:

1. People won’t buy your product

2. Customers won’t come back

How does subscriptions and membership marketing help a business prosper?

1. The Internet is a highly effective way of building a prospect, membership or subscriber list

2. Membership marketing is a proven way to profitability

3. ‘Renewability’ makes subscriptions marketing the most effective way of building repeat business.

Publishers were first with subscriptions marketing
While publishers were early adopters of the membership or subscription business model, many other industries now use subscriptions marketing, either free or paid for.

Examples include investment and finance, property, charities, software, telecoms, expert advice, online gaming, music, video and TV.

Why the customer won’t buy your product
Why should a customer buy your product? He doesn’t know you, he doesn’t know your company.

Sending out free bulletins, reports and news articles helps build confidence before you ask your prospects for money. Yet most websites do not build and qualify prospects in this way.

More than 50 years ago, McGraw-Hill created a business advertisement that explained why your potential customers are not predisposed to accept what you have to say at face value. With the Internet, that problem has become far worse.

Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?

Problem: websites cost little! A company – or a rogue – can now present a classy website to the public. He no longer needs big budgets: colour brochures, advertising in press and broadcast media, PR, retail outlets, sales reps etc.

The cost of entry to the Internet is around £800 for a good looking website. If you are clever, you can do it yourself for a lot less.

Unfortunately, the public knows that a good looking website does not need the backing of a serious organisation.

Mental block: a free subscription or report is a way of removing the mental blocks to most purchases: either your prospect isn’t in a buying mood, or he doesn’t know your company.

Building trust: your customer may be interested in learning more about what you are offering. And that is where subscriptions marketing comes in. Trust can be built and all those tough questions can be answered.

Wanting more: a free subscription is the easy way to build profitable, repeat business. You give stuff away, but you leave people wanting more ..

We can create reports, white papers and other incentives at a low cost from material you already have – perfect for building confidence and qualifying new leads!

Click here to learn more

Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

Solve the secret to marketing in 2012

Marketing is a discipline full of secrets. Secrets that take years to learn. And unless it finds a solution, a company will lose that knowledge when the key marketing person leaves (as they always seem to do).

Other departments are not the same. Advertisement and affiliate sales, editorial, website design and production etc, are not as vulnerable.

When an editor leaves, a new face brings new ideas, a fresh set of contributors and perhaps a more modern look.

The same with an Ad manager: a new approach to advertising partners brings in new clients. And website technicians are now easily replaceable.

The secrets of good editorship, advertising sales and SEO are few. Advertise for any of these jobs and you will be inundated with applications.

The hidden subscriptions marketing experts
Subscriptions marketing, however, is a hidden, tactical persuit, with few exponents. Google the term ‘subscriptions marketing expert’ and you’ll find most of the first page entries are for us, Subscriptions Strategy.

Marketing expertise is complicated and the lessons are learned hard. When a marketing expert leaves he takes with him many of the secrets of success and failure he learned at the company’s expense.

But there is simple solution to the problem.

Ensuring success on the marketing battlefield
Good marketing people are soldiers. Every time they organise a promotion they enter a dangerous, destructive world. They win or lose by results every day.

It takes many sorties along the promotions road to discover where profits lie, which promotions bring the best return on investment – and which will heap destruction on your budget.

And marketing minefields are never cleared. Marketing budgets never safe.

As with a lawyer or tax advisor, the best way to secure a permanent route to success is an outside expert you can call on whenever you need advice on tactics – the best and cheapest way forward. Building and maintaining market leadership is a long-term task and most companies give up. That is why subscription numbers seem to stagnate at a low level.

Outside expertise actually works out a whole lot cheaper than the alternative because he or she never deserts, dies or diverts from the job at hand.

Remember, in our business, nothing is new. It’s just hidden, lost or forgotten.

Contact us for some ideas on how to move to the next level:

Click here to learn more

Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

How to ensure your new venture succeeds

The success of a website or other publishing venture is based on two things which should be, but are not a contradiction:

1. You must have doubts

2. You need confidence

You need enough doubt to accept that there are many ways to set up your venture to fail, but just one way to guarantee success.

And you need confidence that your target audience will like and want your product. Good marketing has both of these things. It enables you to measure your success before you launch.

This isn’t cutting edge technique or anything new. It’s just good marketing and good business. But ours is the kind of business that attracts all kinds of do-it-yourself enthusiasts who end up disenchanted with the progress of their website or publication.

What you need to get right – eight examples
Get things slightly wrong, for example – the colour, copy or layout – and you’ll fail to maximise visitors, conversions or revenue.

Here are eight places where errors are most often made:

*Email capture boxes

*Regular editorial contact

*Regular email promotion messages

*Sales copy

*Landing page copy

*Home page copy

*SEO

*Regular upsell and upgrade promotions

It’s not difficult to get all these things right. It’s just that very few people do it.

Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

“If you’re serious about marketing you need to keep up with best practice techniques.”

The Subscriptions Strategy newsletter – with four special subscription marketing reports worth £132 FREE of charge

Most subscribe to our newsletter for the case studies it contains: successful promotions and techniques for websites, internet, email promotions, newsletters, magazines, books and reports etc.

It means you are not isolated in the marketing work you do. You know what currently works and what doesn’t. And Subscriptions Strategy is a great resource for staff training too.

We dig deep to uncover what’s working. We explain what works and why – and how to apply each technique to build repeat business.

Build valuable repeat business: download these special issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter

As a new subscriber to the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter, you receive the following special reports worth £132, completely FREE of charge:

1. Double internet sales: how a split-test doubles revenue

Ref: SS 60. Free of charge. Usual cost £33

2. Building paid subscribers

Ref: SS 61. Free of charge. Usual cost £33

3. Copywriting: creating a sales letter

Ref: SS 62. Free of charge. Usual cost £33

4. Fifteen Marketing Innovations every Publisher Should Know
This ebook is packed with marketing examples and colour illustrations. Each device you use will easily repay the cost of your subscription by lifting response and boosting profits.

Ref: Special report. Free of charge. Usual cost £33

Among the innovations you’ll discover in your starter pack are: an email capture programme that is building thousands of new subscribers; a clever, low-cost direct mail pack; an insert card that pulls in three times more response; or a new headline that has transformed the profitability of an advertisement.

These are not ‘ideas’ but tried and tested techniques
Each issue of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter carries at least ten creative techniques most publishers can use. We give full page illustrations and analyse each promotion – with links to websites. You’ll immediately start to improve response and reduce your costs because:

We are publishers and active direct markers and have tested each technique on one of our publications or websites

You get consultancy-level advice on the whole business of profitable marketing. The editor and advisory panel are pre-eminent in their fields — all are heavily involved in direct and Internet marketing. For example: would you like to know about:

1. Successful models for bringing in and renewing subscriptions for your website?

2. Converting free registrations and subscriptions into paid?

3. Building a huge list of registrants via your website to convert to paid-subscribers for your titles?

4. Tweaking your current email promotions to boost revenue?

This is vital marketing knowledge ready for you to use now to boost revenue!

We test-market so you don’t have to go to the expense

Our guarantee

If Subscriptions Strategy doesn’t pay for itself with the very first tip you use, just cancel your subscription. This is an unlimited guarantee and can be exercised at any time during your subscription.

Please click on the link below to place your trial order. This what you receive:

20% off the full price of an annual 6-issue subscription to the digital edition of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter (a saving of £40)

15 Subscriptions Marketing Innovations Every Publisher Should Know

PLUS three special issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter to bring you up to date with best practice marketing procedures for online and traditional subscription marketing

You pay just £157, a total saving of £132 all ready for immediate download in pdf format.

If the material does not come up to expectations, email, write or phone for a full refund. This guarantee is valid for the lifetime of your subscription and can be exercised at any time.

..
Peter Hobday
Editor
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

email: hobday@subscriptionsstrategy.co.uk

Accelerated direct marketing

Direct marketing doesn’t change. The internet has changed the speed and ease with which things happen, but not the principles and rules that govern the process:

What about the costs of direct marketing?
Some might say: “But the cost of sending out mail has dropped!”, which is true – but only means something to those who don’t understand profit.

Yes, emails are cheaper to transmit than direct mail, but the response and the Return on Investment, which drives all your businesses growth and profit, is around ten times less.

Accelerated direct marketing
What has really changed for the better is that the internet offers ‘accelerated marketing’ — all the processes, the testing, the despatch, the results, all the information you need to make informed choices, is returned to you within hours.

Wonderful!

Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

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Subscriptions copywriting and marketing: confidential information for sale, with four special reports free of charge

The Subscriptions Strategy newsletter publishes international case studies of ‘best practice’ copywriting and marketing for the Internet, websites, newsletters, books and magazines etc.

As publishers ourselves, we live or die by results. If a promotion doesn’t work, we lose money. If it works we record the results and use it on our own, and our clients’ websites and publications.

Every issue of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter carries examples of successful subscriptions and membership marketing.

How you benefit by removing risk
As far as we are concerned, our testing means the difficult and costly part is over. As far as you are concerned, you can benefit from this tried and tested knowledge because the risk of failure has been removed and profitability is assured.

You will also find Subscriptions Strategy a great resource for training staff in all aspects of subscriptions marketing.

Please click on the link below for instant access to your subscriptions marketing starter pack. You receive:

1. 20% off the full price of an annual 6-issue subscription to the digital edition of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter (a saving of £40)

2. Subscription Marketing Workbook worth £33: 15 Subscriptions Marketing Innovations Every Publisher Should Know

3. Subscriptions marketing ‘rapid update’: three special Subscriptions Strategy reports worth a total of £99 to bring you up to date with best practice marketing procedures for online and traditional subscription marketing

*Start now! Click here to order an annual subscription and collect your four special reports worth £132

You pay just £157, a total saving of £211. If the material does not come up to expectations, email, write or phone for a full refund. This guarantee is valid for the lifetime of your subscription and can be exercised at any time.

Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

Peter Hobday

Subscriptions copywriter

Peter Hobday, the founder and managing director of Subscriptions Strategy, runs his own successful subscriptions copywriting and publishing company – and so keeps up with what works in today’s rapidly changing marketplace.

For a quote on subscriptions copywriting, strategic advice, email promotions, website copy, list building, subscriptions renewal marketing or any other aspect of revenue building, contact Peter using the email address below:

hobday@subscriptionsstrategy.co.uk

Subscriptions Copywriter

Send brief details of your project (in confidence) and we’ll send a ‘shopping list’ of ideas back. If you like them, get in touch to talk about building subscriptions.

Peter’s 30 years of experience spans more than 50 websites, newsletters and other publications, creating promotions and building subscriptions for: Under Five, Property Secrets, Right Start, Public Service Publications, Planned Savings, The Savings Market, Optimus Education, Insurance Age, Infrastructure Investor, the Grocer, Peak Performance, Running Magazine, Sports Injury Bulletin, Cannon EOS Magazine, New Start magazine, Endodontic Practice Magazine and Fitness.

Peter writes regular marketing columns in media magazines and other publications.

“Nobody knows more about the theory and practice of getting and keeping subscriptions than Peter Hobday. He’s the man.” Drayton Bird, Drayton Bird Direct

Peter Hobday’s clients include magazine, newsletter, newspaper and website publishers, both large and small.

Peter currently focuses on the specialised field of Internet marketing and periodical publishing, and has helped pioneer some of the Internet’s first successful publishing business models.

Peter Hobday’s own publications include Right Start, Fitness magazine, Under Five magazine and the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter. He is the author of the Successful Subscriptions Marketing workbook, The Encyclopaedia of Subscriptions Marketing and The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.

“We’ve been using Peter Hobday as our main copywriter for several years now and he has helped us make our sports science list very profitable. We’re still using copy Peter wrote four years ago – and it works every time. Plus he consistently comes up with new ways to sell to our list.” Mark Edwards,
On-line Marketing Manager Electric Word plc

Peter Hobday holds eight Periodical Publisher’s Association and other industry awards for publishing and subscriptions promotions.

EADIM - how subscription marketing builds repeat business

European Academy of Direct and Interactive Marketing

I was the final speaker at the European Academy of Direct and Interactive Marketing – EADIM – conference in London.

My topic was ‘How subscriptions marketing can build profitable, repeat business’.

Although I had the ‘graveyard shift’ on the final day, it was clear the Eadim delegates were wide awake and very interested — I was thrown many questions both during and after the presentation.

At lunch, the delegates were asked “What is the main lesson you will take back from the conference?”

Each delegate at the Eadim conference gave a similar answer: they loved the idea of using a free newsletter subscription to capture and convert visitors to their website. They wanted to build all those visitors and enquiries into paying customers.

All they needed, it appeared, were some ideas for newsletter content.

Subscription and membership marketing websites
The delegates were from all kinds of business areas, consultants, all kinds of websites, car hire, finance etc. They could see the enormous possibilities a subscription and membership website would deliver.

My talk lasted around an hour. You can download my EADIM presentation free by registering through the form below. I will send you an email with details of the next Eadim conference, and who the speakers are for EADIM 2012.

Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

PPA Customer Direct awards: what a shame!

If the Periodical Publishers Association awarded prizes for fiction, Julian Barnes wouldn’t have won.

Sounds amazingly unfair, but it’s true. The PPA award would not have gone to the author but to Jonathan Cape, the company publishing the book.

PPA Customer Direct Awards

Each year, the PPA holds the Customer Direct Awards for the best direct marketing promotions of the year. The PPA awards are a great and exciting event in the media calendar, held at the Brewery in Chiswell Street, London, in November.

But nowhere on the PPA award entry is the name of the creator of the work requested.

So who wins? No-one. It’s the company that wins. The 2010 winner of the PPA Best Subscriptions Promotion on a Small Budget for example, went to ‘IPC Media’.

Copywriting in publishing, it seems, is the only creative area where the author is unknown.

Even graffiti artists sign their names.

A constructive solution to the PPA’s problem
As we always like to offer a constructive solution to marketing problems, here is the answer to today’s conundrum:

Under the PPA’s ‘Questions’ for entries, insert:

“Name the person or persons who created the campaign or promotion.”

Here is the link to this year’s event so you can judge for yourself. What a shame:

PPA Customer direct awards 2011

And here, for those who have got this far, is the counter argument, from Helen Rekhi, Time Magazine:

Peter, You raise an interesting point about the PPA but I am not sure that I agree.
To my mind, the PPA Customer Direct Awards are there to recognise and encourage the talent of young marketeers and the part that they play in the creation of a really good campaign. Copywriters and designers are very important, but they need a good brief to work with, plus they do not decide the offer, pricing, plan the media or list selections, identify the optimal timing for drop, or control the overall cost. In all these areas the Marketing Managers play a vital role and that is what I believe the PPA is recognising here.
Obviously I can’t speak for other publishers but the copywriter and designer behind our campaigns do get our recognition. They will be there with us at the awards ceremony, they get a great networking opportunity at the event and are quite welcome to use the award in their publicity to gain more business, but I do not believe their names should go on the entry
Helen Rekhi, Head of Subscriptions Marketing, TIME Magazine

What about other advertising awards?
So what do you think? Should the person who writes the promotion be recognised?

Lets be clear: I am writing about sales and marketing copy. The kind of copy that sells things.

The copywriting for items such as loose inserts, unless it is ground-breaking, isn’t really writing. It’s more about coupon design. We are talking about real, more meaty subscription promotions for new business, upgrading and converting, home pages etc.

I wonder what the people at the D&AD Advertising Awards would say about this? Their awards are the biggest in the UK, so are an excellent comparison. In their list of credits, D&AD put the designer first and copywriter second. Then all the other agency people involved follow:

D&AD Advertising Awards

Sounds about right to me. Tell the world. Credit where credit is due.

I am wary of secrets. They usually exist to hide something not very nice …

Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

Renewals: upgrading your subscribers

The best renewal series start when the subscriber first comes aboard. Below is a link to a label carrier we created to go out to subscribers.

This ‘early-bird’ effort is designed to upgrade and extend the subscriber. Current upgrade techniques can lift average subscriber revenue by between 50 and 150 %.

Subscription renewals

Simply by creating a state-of-the-art renewal series you can boost subscriber revenue by:

1. Increasing the percentage who convert into second and third year subscribers

2. Increase subscribers who take up a direct debit option

3. Sell all kinds of ancillary products in the knowledge that the subscriber will probably welcome more of what he or she has already bought

Click on the link below to see our subscription renewal invention. The format can be changed to fit your market. The label carrier can be used also as a leaflet, loose insert or attached to a publisher’s ‘lift letter’.

The label carrier has the subscriber’s name and address merged into the address box in the usual way.

This carrier is just one in a series of subscription renewal efforts we can create for your title. Contact us for a quotation at hobday@subscriptionsStrategy.co.uk.

Example renewal carrier

Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd

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