Online advertising - Haymarket and Google

18 April 2009

‘Is there money out there? Then go and get it.’

The advertisement director at Haymarket Publishing was giving a typically blunt command to a classified advertisement sales person working on one of its consumer magazines.

Classified advertising, like marketing, is a backwater zone for most publishers – its potential is neither fully understood nor exploited. At Haymarket, however, the classified sales person well understands that his income and job depend on his performance – at Haymarket, all advertising is treated like classified.

Classified is a tough and exciting business – like direct marketing. If performance is lacking you go bust and get fired. How’s that for excitement? And that brings us to a company that has combined the two disciplines of direct marketing and classified advertising to become the greatest success story in publishing history: Google.

In issue number 72 of Subscriptions Strategy, we look at how Google exploits its advertisers – and how we publishers can exploit Google to create highly effective headlines, concepts and copy. Oh – and build hot lists too.

How publishers view Google
When publishers discuss Google, they are mostly concerned with search engine optimisation and copyright issues. They see Google as a way of distributing and publicising their web offerings, or as a competitor. Those publishers are missing the point.

Because Google’s operation is digital and originates outside mainstream publishing, many publishers don’t realise that Google is a publisher just like themselves, and has pulled off the greatest classified advertising success story in history.

Luckily, we publishers can exploit that success for our own ends.

How Google got rich
The founders of Google became absurdly rich not just by inventing a different kind of search engine (others have done that and remain struggling) but also by exploiting the effectiveness and earnings potential of classified advertising. Any of the other search engines could have done the same, but didn’t. Likewise, any publisher could have done the same, but didn’t.

So what does Google do that others don’t?

It is both fascinating and puzzling to discover how novel Google’s approach is. Fascinating (to me, anyway) because it’s clear there are mountains of money to be earned through classified advertising – and puzzling because the majority of publishers just don’t get it.

Classified advertising sales
For those who don’t know, classified advertising sales (generally lineage and smaller ads bundled into subject categories) are usually consigned by traditional publishers to junior and ‘hard-nosed’ sales staff and managers. Classified is treated either as a training ground or somewhere to put people who can sell but don’t quite belong in the world of major advertising agencies and clients. When a new launch of a consumer title is announced, you won’t hear much talk of classified revenue. It’s just not seen as an important or mainstream field to work in.

The exception to the rule among big consumer publishers is the Guardian newspaper, where the managing director is appointed from a classified advertising background. Perhaps that is because the newspaper began as a regional publication in Manchester where classified advertising was always a major source of revenue. Whatever the reason, it’s why the Guardian makes so much money while other big media owners don’t.

The equivalent in the world of traditional advertising would be if the Independent newspaper began to carry lineage and other classified ads in the borders of editorial pages and developed editorial to match demand. The newspaper would suddenly break into enormous profit and overtake the Guardian. Instead, the Independent loses an estimated £10m a year.

To read the whole article, click here for your free trial: Subscriptions Strategy free trial

How much does a subscriptions copywriter cost?

13 April 2009

A subscriptions marketing copywriter delivers far more than just copy. His marketing advice can include techniques for:

Too much to do – too little time
Often, a business owner hasn’t the time or experience to do all these things. 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. It’s only a matter of time before that happens …

An editor, for example, through day-to-day pressure, may not find the time to talk regularly to readers and investigate changes in what they want to read.

A 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.)

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 marketing and copywriting people – to keep fresh and ahead of the field. Unlike with the usual kind of ‘consultant’, it is clear as soon as the response comes in what kind of value your marketing copywriter can bring to your business. Those cheques, direct debits and credit card orders tell their own story.

Freelance subscriptions marketers see more
Remember – a freelance subscriptions marketing expert knows better than most what is pulling the most reponse in the market today. He works across many disciplines 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 = $12,688 a month

Total annual revenue: $152,250

Supposing the subscription marketing promotion pulls half the response?

The email promotion response figures shown above are for copy created by an expert freelance subscription copywriter.

Let’s look at what happens if the promotional email you send out to your new prospects pulls in half the response, 90 subs.

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

$75,600

So you with your best in-house effort, you have $75,600 less annual revenue. Now I will turn our original question “How much does a copywriter cost” on its head:

How much would you pay an expert subscription copywriter to create copy that brings in an extra $75,600 a year?

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Subscriptions marketing: confidential information for sale

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

In our particular niche 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.

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 can order sample issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter now on free trial:

Please click on one of the options below to place your trial order. You receive:

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

2. Subscription Marketing Workbook worth £66: 15 Subscriptions Marketing Innovations Every Publisher Should Know

3. Subscriptions marketing ‘rapid update’: three special issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter worth a total of £105 to bring you up to date with best practice marketing procedures for online and traditional subscription marketing

Option A: 7 day free trial by Paypal

Your first month’s payment is delayed by seven days, so if you cancel your trial subscription in the first week, you pay nothing. If you decide to continue using our marketing services, we’ll keep your subscription rate down to £12 / $20 a month for your first complete year.

Option B: Annual payment by credit card

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.

*Credit card: click here to order an annual subscription




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Press Gazette closes: no marketing

6 April 2009

There is a lot of affection in publishing for what has always been known as the UK Press Gazette.

More than one publisher thought he could buy-it-up-and-turn-it-around.

Media magazines, like the local press, have terminal problems

The Press Gazette couldn’t attract enough advertising. It was too focused on journalists and there just are not a lot of advertisements for them anymore.

That is one of the reasons, by the way, the other media magazine Media Week was launched all those years ago around 1984/5: ‘media’ had separated to become a huge budget area for companies – and advertising agencies were dividing to specialise. Tim Brooks, Media Week’s editor, and the publishers were ahead of their time, but unlike their close rivals Marketing Week, had overlooked and misunderstood an important revenue source: classified advertising. Publishers and editors often do.

The original idea for Media Week was being touted around to prospective investors three years earlier. The idea was to achieve a broad advertising base to take on The Guardian. The Guardian in the 80s was taking the Mickey by carrying ten or more pages of media vacancies supported by just one page of editorial. (These days, most newspapers write about the media but don’t carry much advertising. Talking to yourself isn’t going anywhere is it?).

Media Week also struggles. Like the Press Gazette, Media Week has become just a body, passed from one company to another, motivation to motivation, make-over to make-over. It has never been able to exist alone, never earned its own pay packet, always relying on others for support. Why? It’s a great idea, looks good too. But if we hark back to its parents we find neither Media Week nor Press Gazette were ever able to take their rightful place in the world.

Media Week failed because the young turks who originated the concept and touted the idea to prospective investors back in 1980 had inserted a ‘poison pill’ in their launch plans in case the idea was ‘borrowed’ and launched without them by a prospective investor. Which it was.

Ripped from its natural parents, Media Week became a foster child. And like Press Gazette, isolated from proper medical (marketing) attention.

Press Gazette moved parents regularly: Timothy Benn; Maclean Hunter; Emap; Quantum; Piers Morgan/ Matthew Freud; Wilmington.

Press Gazette grew up damaged.

Wilmington Publishing and Press Gazette
Wilmington Publishing is an advertisement sales company. Subscriptions marketing is mostly outside its remit. That kind of marketing is a specialist task. To show what I mean, I have put a link below to the Press Gazette subscription marketing page. Whoever decided this page of copy would appear on the Press Gazette’s website was instrumental in the death of the magazine.

Press Gazette, Quantum and Piers Morgan
Before Wilmington, Press Gazette was owned by Quantum. Quantum’s marketing people were highly regarded and we carried a piece on their subscriptions marketing team and their promotions in issue 50 of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter.

Quantum sold Press Gazette in 2004/05 to a Piers Morgan consortium. The marketing supremo at Quantum tried to meet with those responsible for taking on the marketing and circulation functions but was ignored. So the Piers Morgan people were never given the database built up over many years to market the title.

The new owners didn’t even have the renewal series the previous team had written and knew nothing of the subs marketing planned. Apart from the list of existing subscribers, they didn’t bother to take anything.

This is why the medical analogy serves us well: Press Gazette came with its vital organs removed, so how was it supposed to survive?

For a product that was 90% dependent on circulation revenue, the new owners ignored the most important element. Pretty much the same can be said for the newstrade distribution, albeit this was very low.

Anecdotal evidence is that over a year after the sale a piece of subscription marketing went out offering to convert free copies into a discounted subscription. It appeared the new team didn’t know who they were sending free copies out to.

Investigating the murder of the Press Gazette
I would recommend sending for Lieutenant Columbo, Homicide, to investigate this death, but he has Alzheimer’s according to Hollywood gossip.

Press Gazette RIP

Why is Wilmington’s Press Gazette subscription page a killer? Because it offers a monthly magazine for £115 (around £10 a copy) and fails to explain why it is worth it. The only real attempt to sell the content is to claim the magazine contains editorial ‘not found on the free website’. That’s not a bad line at all – other magazines should use it – but it’s not enough to defeat the Alzheimer’s our patient the Press Gazette has now developed.

A magic cure was needed. More ‘selling the benefits’: the lifeblood – and restorative – of any marketing strategy.

The title needed a marketing doctor, but all it got was quack after quack.

So – a slow death brought on by ignorance. Watch this website for more of these announcements over 2009 as we wend our way through the headstones of recently dead publications and dig them up for a grisly autopsy.

Click here for more about Press Gazette from Journalism.co.uk

Click here for the Press Gazette subscription page. Try not to cry

Why copywriters must convey the truth

5 April 2009

The actor, singer and copywriter have one thing in common: his words will never be accepted unless he conveys the truth.

Sinatra was a top singer and Oscar winning actor because people believed his words whether he spoke or sung them.

David Ogilvy was a top advertising copywriter because readers recognised the truth in his headlines. Ogilvy created perhaps the most famous headline in the car business:

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”.

Ogilvy also said:

“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create”

Creating and selling are the two fundamentals of business. If you are not doing either of those you are merely a bystander.

Drayton Bird, the UK’s pre-eminent direct marketing expert puts it like this:

“The art of persuasion starts with saying something so clearly true that people believe what you say next”*

As Drayton Bird explains in his headline above, the words in a promotion must be believed or they won’t sell much product. You may sell a few here and there, but what usually happens is mediocre response and just enough sales, maybe, to keep business level.

And Peter Hobday, subscriptions marketing copywriter says:

“Truth is the world’s best motivator”

A great copywriter must do much better than keep business level. His words must make the client’s business richer.

Here then, is a link to an example of an ad created by Drayton Bird that made tons of money. Usually, no-one gets to know who created an advertisement – they are perhaps the only works of art that never have a signature. So save these files in case you ever want or need to learn how to sell ..

Drayton Bird advertisement

Here is a link to an advertisement created by Peter Hobday. It helped take Right Start magazine to the number three magazine for parents.

Peter Hobday’s Right Start advertisement

You can find more about Drayton Bird here:

Drayton Bird marketing tips

Drayton Bird blog

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Subscriptions marketing: confidential information for sale

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

In our particular niche 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.

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 can order sample issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter now on free trial:

Please click on one of the options below to place your trial order. You receive:

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

2. Subscription Marketing Workbook worth £66: 15 Subscriptions Marketing Innovations Every Publisher Should Know

3. Subscriptions marketing ‘rapid update’: three special issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter worth a total of £105 to bring you up to date with best practice marketing procedures for online and traditional subscription marketing

Option A: 7 day free trial by Paypal

Your first month’s payment is delayed by seven days, so if you cancel your trial subscription in the first week, you pay nothing. If you decide to continue using our marketing services, we’ll keep your subscription rate down to £12 / $20 a month for your first complete year.

Option B: Annual payment by credit card

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.

*Credit card: click here to order an annual subscription




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Autoresponders - how they work

26 March 2009

Subscription delivery

Many visitors to websites opt-in to receive a free newsletter.

The newsletter is delivered as a subscription by email. Most professional sites use a ‘sequential autoresponder’ to collect the leads and deliver the subscription.

The free subscription you offer is a series of newsletters written to build a relationship and promote your products. An autoresponder is one of the most effective subscription marketing tools a publisher can own because it removes the usual worry and stress over deadlines and copy.

You can create your copy whenever you feel ready. And there is no prescribed length – you decide how much to write. You also decide what to write about. You can file 10 articles in one day, go on holiday and write nothing until you get back. Or, like me, you do it the other way around: you go on holiday, write all your articles, come back and put them on the autoresponder.

The only problem with doing that is a laptop screen is difficult to read in the sunshine – all those pics of guys using a computer on the beach must be staged..

What – no editorial deadline?
If you have ever worked in a publishing environment, you will see all that as totally anarchistic! All those decisions and deadlines are laid out months in advance by the editor and must be followed to the letter!

Yes, an autoresponder has changed the way we work. You build a stronger, more lasting relationship with your customers and increase your income too with an autoresponder. Let’s take a look at how the subscription marketing process works and how to use the service to turn visitors into real prospects.

How autoresponders are used in subscription marketing
Many small-business owners are intimidated by the thought of putting out a regular newsletter simply because of the perceived effort required. They may be too busy to learn HTML.

The autoresponder has become an indispensable feature of the top marketing sites. They automatically collect and manage email lists and the messages you send out to the lists. This is an essential ingredient in the four steps to establishing a profitable, long-term business:

1. Attract quality prospects

2. Get to know them

3. Get them stay

4. Sell to them

Attracting quality prospects and establishing a relationship with them is, of course, a perquisite to all business.

Knowing your customers and how your product can help them is a fundamental early lesson in every sales training book or course.

You can read more about how an autoresponder is an essential element in converting people who register on your website in the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter.

Autoresponder conversion rates
The Subscriptions Strategy articles show some typical websites, how many visitors they receive, how many sign up for the free newsletter and how many of those convert to paying customers.

So it’s a three-part process.

That three-part process is fully automatic and is the basis of most successful websites today. Not all the websites we analyse are from publishers (unless you count every website as a ‘publication’). But all use subscription marketing to maintain constant contact.

Some sites are selling one-off items such as software, a book, report or information product. Some have just a one page ‘landing page’ or ‘squeeze page’ to capture the name and send follow up messages.

If you plan your website with subscriptions marketing and autoresponder coversions in mind, you can create dozens of landing pages, each with a product, quoting various prices and emphasising different benefits, all with the same purpose: maximising profits.

This follows one of the basic corner stones of good marketing: test to find the best price your market will bear.

You can learn more about how it’s done, with live examples, when you take out a free trial to our paid-for newsletter Subscriptions Strategy below.

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Subscriptions marketing: confidential information for sale

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

In our particular niche 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.

How you benefit by removing risk
As far as we are concerned, the tests we run 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 benefit directly from our costly market testing.

You can order sample issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter now on free trial:

Please click on one of the options below to place your trial order. You receive:

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

2. Subscription Marketing Workbook worth £66: 15 Subscriptions Marketing Innovations Every Publisher Should Know

3. Subscriptions marketing ‘rapid update’: three special issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter worth a total of £105 to bring you up to date with best practice marketing procedures for online and traditional subscription marketing

Option A: 7 day free trial by Paypal

Your first month’s payment is delayed by seven days, so if you cancel your trial subscription in the first week, you pay nothing. If you decide to continue using our marketing services, we’ll keep your subscription rate down to £12 / $20 a month for your first complete year.

Option B: Annual payment by credit card

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.

*Credit card: click here to order an annual subscription




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Lies publishers tell themselves to avoid marketing

11 March 2009

Business plans for publishers are easy. You set out your projected revenue and estimate the costs to deliver your product.

But how did you arrive at your revenue estimates? What market testing have you done to support your income projections?

Publishers who put forward business plans without a marketing plan are usually rejected by company directors, seasoned investors, bankers, accountancy firms, other publishers and successful entrepreneurs. Backers need to see the figures.

But usually, the ‘marketing plan’ lacks the ‘real’ component: scientifically conducted research.

In other words, market-testing on real people.

Who will believe your figures?
The marketing plan must show where the money comes from, how much it costs to get it and how much people will pay for your product.

If you ‘estimate’ (make up) those figures no-one will believe them. People may like you and your team, and maybe you can get the money based on your experience and likability. But a good marketing plan needs more substance.

Marketing lies at the core of any business because unless you understand how people are likely to respond to your offer, and can show evidence, no professional is likely to be convinced.

How to be convincing
A simple measure of your believability is this: if it takes longer than around 120 seconds – two minutes – to prove your case, you’ll fail.

It’s is called the ‘elevator pitch’, because it’s about how long it takes to ride the elevator. Two minutes, and the benefactor or investor will make his mind up.

Without a tested marketing plan that shows how many and how much people are prepared to pay your forward projections are unlikely to be accepted.

The wrong kind of market research is no better than no research at all. The very best position is to have research results that you can take to the bank – and that means cheques, credit card and direct debit orders in your hand to show your prospective partners-in-business.

That is what real test-marketing gives you – handfuls of orders. Numbers that can be prudently extrapolated to show real revenue when you roll-out.

Test marketing – a real example
The best way to test if a proto-type vacuum cleaner will sell is to use it on the prospect’s carpet. The sale takes around 120 seconds. The proof of sale, the money, quickly follows.

No-one, not even your harshest critic, can argue with the hard cash that comes from sales.

Testing your market
Luckily, in our business of publishing we have methods of testing markets that are:

1. Inexpensive
2. Fast
3. Easy
4. Convincing
5. Backed by years of test-case studies

In case you think money will flow into your business without doing any marketing, or that you ‘cannot afford marketing at the moment’ here are some questions you will be asked:

1. Does your business plan contain a marketing plan?

2. Does your marketing plan contain real test-results that are indisputable?

3. Are you a recognised marketing and sales expert in your field? If not, where is he / she?

4. Do you think you are saving money by not marketing?

5. Do you confuse marketing with ‘promoting’ your product?

6. Are you ‘waiting until later’ to do your marketing?

7. Do you think your prospects will see the virtues of your product and buy it without promotion?

8. Is having a ‘better’ or cheaper product enough to be successful?

9. Will prospects automatically buy your product rather than another?

10. Should you involve someone who knows as much about marketing as you do about your business?

11. Have you tested an integrated Internet strategy into your plan?

These questions are the ones you should also be asking yourself. The answers should be the basis of your rationale for your new venture.

You think your product is best?
If you think that providing exceptional or cheaper products to a consumer is sufficient to have a successful business then you’re in big trouble.

There are fifteen common marketing mistakes even experienced publishers make when launching or promoting a publication. So if you have fallen into one, two or even all fifteen of the traps you are not alone. Many more companies fail than succeed.

To avoid trouble, create a marketing plan with an expert who knows as much about marketing as you do about your business.

Unless, of course, you already know such things as how to plan and execute a test-marketing programme, how to write copy, the difference between Web and direct mail copy, how to build a list of leads and how to combine online and offline marketing tactics.

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Subscriptions marketing: confidential information for sale

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

In our particular niche 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.

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 can order sample issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter now on free trial:

Please click on one of the options below to place your trial order. You receive:

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

2. Subscription Marketing Workbook worth £66: 15 Subscriptions Marketing Innovations Every Publisher Should Know

3. Subscriptions marketing ‘rapid update’: three special issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter worth a total of £105 to bring you up to date with best practice marketing procedures for online and traditional subscription marketing

Option A: 7 day free trial by Paypal

Your first month’s payment is delayed by seven days, so if you cancel your trial subscription in the first week, you pay nothing. If you decide to continue using our marketing services, we’ll keep your subscription rate down to £12 / $20 a month for your first complete year.

Option B: Annual payment by credit card

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.

*Credit card: click here to order an annual subscription




Subscriptions renewal marketing: are you up to date?

7 March 2009

Subscriptions renewal marketing is a specialised and vital business, but it exists in a kind of ‘publishers never-never land’.

It’s easy to see why renewals are left until it’s too late to achieve anything worthwhile – they are seen as a pension, forgotten until it’s time to collect.

That’s because publishing is a deadline business – we all work to tight schedules and that means waiting until the last minute to do our work. But it’s foolish to take a deadline attitude with renewals. Here’s why:

Renewal income is the basis on which your whole subscription business is measured. The rate at which your subscribers renew determines:

1. Your profits

2. The number of new subscribers you need to attract each year

3. The value of your business

4. Your marketing and staff costs

Renewals are the most important aspect of subscriptions marketing and publishing. Professional subscription publishers take big profits from renewals and base the financial viability of their promotions on the second and subsequent years.

The main difference between the usual direct marketing and subscription marketing is this:

For subscription marketing to be successful all planning and creative work must maximise the life-time profitability of the customer

How to maximise the value of each new subscriber
If you are not using up-to-date renewal techniques you are losing money. It’s as simple as that. Automatic renewals for print and web-based publications are well established, and, if used correctly, will push your renewal rates upwards. But the latest techniques go even further. They cost little to implement and will take the profitability of your subscriber file to new levels.

Updating your renewal marketing is the easy way to boost your publication’s profits. Here are two questions that will reveal how you are currently doing:

1. How to do you keep up-to-date with best practice renewal marketing? If you are not reviewing and implementing the latest methods at least annually, you are losing money

2. Do you use at least an eight-part, state-of-the-art upgrade and renewal series? It’s this that will keep your subscribers with you for longer

If you are implementing the latest techniques, then rest assured you are probably the only publisher in your market using a progressive and effective upgrade program!

This is how you build the ‘high renewal factor’ into every promotion and subscriptions renewal series:

1. Create early-bird renewals and extension offers to bring cash forward

2. Use premiums to lift renewals and know when to avoid them!

3. Introduce continuous authority payment methods to lift renewals to 90% and beyond (there is a special technique that works for b2b titles)

4. Isolate and cure your higher ‘reader turnover’ problems

5. Regularly create a complete renewal series for your title, from conception to expiry

Most promotional innovations in the UK come from newsletter publishers. They are the publishers who rely on subscriptions marketing to make money. They regularly test techniques that can be used to promote both consumer and business publications.

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Subscriptions marketing: confidential information for sale

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

In our particular niche 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.

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 can order sample issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter now on free trial:

Please click on one of the options below to place your trial order. You receive:

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

2. Subscription Marketing Workbook worth £66: 15 Subscriptions Marketing Innovations Every Publisher Should Know

3. Subscriptions marketing ‘rapid update’: three special issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter worth a total of £105 to bring you up to date with best practice marketing procedures for online and traditional subscription marketing

Option A: 7 day free trial by Paypal

Your first month’s payment is delayed by seven days, so if you cancel your trial subscription in the first week, you pay nothing. If you decide to continue using our marketing services, we’ll keep your subscription rate down to £12 / $20 a month for your first complete year.

Option B: Annual payment by credit card

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.

*Credit card: click here to order an annual subscription




What is a subscription copywriter?

20 February 2009


www.watblog.com
What does a subscription copywriter do? How different from ordinary copywriting is subscription copywriting?

There are, broadly, two kinds of copywriters: business copywriters and marketing copywriters. A subscription copywriter must go a step further ..

What is a business copywriter?
A business copywriter will reduce text to avoid repetition or unnecessary deviations from the subject. In other words, his work is businesslike. An example of this is someone who writes product descriptions for a website or brochure. Most businesses employ an outside copywriter because they don’t have the time or ability to create compelling and creative text for their websites and brochures. They hire a copywriter to write it for them because, among other things, to make a mistake in a brochure can cost the company embarrassment and lots of money in recalled mailings. It’s far safer for a marketing department to outsource the work – and the responsibility – to a specialist advertising agency or freelance.

What is a direct marketing copywriter?
A marketing copywriter writes in sales language. His copy has one purpose: to elicit a response from the reader. He or she is judged on the response a promotion receives -the higher the percentage who respond, the more he can charge. There are some very rich and talented copywriters, famous in their fields, for example: David Ogilvy, Drayton Bird, Gary Halbert, William Bernbach, Leo Burnett and John Caples.

What is a subscription copywriter?
A subscription copywriter must go a step further. He or she is a direct marketing copywriter who specialises in bringing in customers via recurring payment such as Direct Debit, Continuous Credit Card or Standing Order. The difference between a subscription copywriter and any other kind of copywriter is that he is not simply writing to obtain a response – he is asking the reader to sign up for years ahead — for as long as possible.

Measuring the performance of the subscription copywriter
The subscriptions copywriter is judged on all the costs associated with readers signing up for a membership or subscription:

1. The initial response achieved, usually expressed as a percentage of readers who sign up

2. The profitability of the promotion – the mailing, fulfilment and other associated costs vs income from that mailing

3. How long the subscribers last – the average ‘lifetime value’

4. The return on investment –revenue vs cost of the promotion

It can be seen from this description that an effective subscription copywriter will keep the cost of designing and distributing the promotion as low as possible, to maximise the return on investment from the promotion. This is true whether the promotion is an email broadcast (low cost) or a mailing pack containing glossy brochure, letter and various other inserts (high cost). Keeping costs down is an important factor when comparing work produced by a subscription copywriter and an advertising agency. Advertising agency staff will usually want to drive design costs upwards because their work is judged mainly by its appearance, not solely on its performance.

The subscription copywriter will also be involved in creating renewal notices to improve the lifetime value of the subscriber list. The longer subscribers stay, the more revenue is received and the more the company can spend on recruiting them.

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Subscriptions marketing: confidential information for sale

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

In our particular niche 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.

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 can order sample issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter now on free trial:

Please click on one of the options below to place your trial order. You receive:

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

2. Subscription Marketing Workbook worth £66: 15 Subscriptions Marketing Innovations Every Publisher Should Know

3. Subscriptions marketing ‘rapid update’: three special issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter worth a total of £105 to bring you up to date with best practice marketing procedures for online and traditional subscription marketing

Option A: 7 day free trial by Paypal

Your first month’s payment is delayed by seven days, so if you cancel your trial subscription in the first week, you pay nothing. If you decide to continue using our marketing services, we’ll keep your subscription rate down to £12 / $20 a month for your first complete year.

Option B: Annual payment by credit card

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.

*Credit card: click here to order an annual subscription




Does long copy pull in more subscribers?

19 February 2009

Creating long copy is expensive, especially for publishers creating a subscription marketing promotion.

Some letters can run to 16 pages – even 32 pages (that’s a ‘magalogue’).

But should subscription copywriting have a limit?

The downside is that you have to pay a copywriter to create a long letter. It’s unlikely you will be able to use in-house staff to write an effective long letter — it takes around 5 days to produce.

The upside is the copy can run for years on websites, in email promotions and in direct mail packs – so it’s great value for money.

At the heart of the issue for most publishers (or any business for that matter) lies the question:

“Will my marketing budget run to commissioning long copy for my subscription marketing? And will it work?”

For those who still doubt, here is your answer:

Marketing and sales letter samples that are currently working

——————————————————————————————————————

Subscriptions marketing: confidential information for sale

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

In our particular niche 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.

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 can order sample issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter now on free trial:

Please click on one of the options below to place your trial order. You receive:

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

2. Subscription Marketing Workbook worth £66: 15 Subscriptions Marketing Innovations Every Publisher Should Know

3. Subscriptions marketing ‘rapid update’: three special issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter worth a total of £105 to bring you up to date with best practice marketing procedures for online and traditional subscription marketing

Option A: 7 day free trial by Paypal

Your first month’s payment is delayed by seven days, so if you cancel your trial subscription in the first week, you pay nothing. If you decide to continue using our marketing services, we’ll keep your subscription rate down to £12 / $20 a month for your first complete year.

Option B: Annual payment by credit card

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.

*Credit card: click here to order an annual subscription




Publishing in a recession

19 February 2009


Now that we are in a recession, what’s the best strategy for publishers and marketers? Here’s some subscription marketing advice we gave in the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter back in January 2008:

“If we do enter a consumer-led recession, there will be a risk that people will use price as their only marketing tool .. building brands in a recession relies on the same rules as at any other time.”

Amazingly, all the major magazine publishers have long used a cut-price marketing strategy — during the longest period of prosperity and economic growth in UK history. Now they have nowhere to go.

What went wrong? Why did they cut prices when people were well-off? And what’s the remedy?

How are you capturing names?
If you aren’t using the latest name and email address capturing techniques on your website, you are losing a lot of business. At the end of this article there is a link to show how the top Internet marketers do it.

Are you selling your magazines like airline tickets?
Monthly consumer magazine sales are dropping 10% or more each year. The big publishers respond by increasing cover prices by around 5% year on year. But it’s not working. Overall income continues to drop. Meanwhile newstrade wastage increases.

Falling sales is a problem for the marketers to solve. Unfortunately, their moves are sabotaged by bosses who ignore basic marketing principles.

Surveys always show that people are happy to order a magazine if they are told about it. A subscription promotion is a great way to catch those who (like most) don’t often browse in a newsagent. So where are all the subscription promotions telling people about the magazines they could be reading?

There aren’t any. It’s as though the magazine bosses are ashamed of what they are offering and just can’t bring themselves to ask for the proper amount of money. You see plenty of offers for cheap or free magazine subscriptions, but rarely do they mention much about the magazine’s editorial content.

That’s not subscription marketing – it’s selling stuff off cheap and any fool can do that.

Discounting may work for airline tickets, but magazines are different. You demean your product by cutting the price simply to put it in the hands of a prospect. Unless you give a very good reason for offering money off, your magazine will always be viewed as something cheap and short-term. With the recession upon us, guess what’s going to get cut from the family budget?

Publishing should have a profitable back end. We surely want long-term, committed readers we can sell other things to.

Free Recession Report – see below

How ‘logistics’ has replaced marketing
Good marketing isn’t easy so some publishers have simplified the job by cutting out the creative bits. Increasingly, magazines are sold via websites and the telephone. The volume of sales through these routes is rising fast, with some companies now selling most of their subscriptions via their own and third-party websites.

So the marketers and circulation people concentrate their attention on these new routes to market. That is what is keeping them busy. But when did you last see a good direct mail pack, email or web promotion? Most publisher websites don’t make money.

Where is the subscription copywriting?
The focus now is on the route to market. There is no marketing, no real subscription copywriting involved. It’s the route to market that receives all the attention and it’s a simple logistics exercise to get the order, process it and deliver the goods. Any renewals that come in a year or so down the line are processed without much effort, often automatically.

The ‘marketer’ may not be driving a delivery truck to deliver the magazine to the subscriber: he or she sits in the publishing office. But all he is doing is telling the truck driver where to go to make the delivery — no real selling is involved, as the order has probably come through without any sales effort.

This is not to say considerable effort isn’t involved in examining and adopting these new routes to market: Internet, tele-sales etc. On paper, the MDs can point to a great deal of expenditure and so claim commitment to magazine marketing. But in reality, order processing and fulfilment of cheap deals has replaced any real marketing activity – a dangerous and short-sighted strategy.

Let’s look at how cheap deals work for the airlines and why they won’t work for publishers.

What happens when you sell magazines like tickets?
The irony is that the publishers who can most afford to hire good marketers are selling their subscriptions off cheap, like airline tickets. While their advertisement sales departments are busy selling the concept of their publications to advertisers, the subscriptions marketers are not allowed to do the same to prospective readers.

Here are some average subscription discounts as a percent of full retail cover price:

Source: Wessenden Marketing

Why Internet and tele-sales dominate
Airlines sell cheap tickets via travel websites such as Ebookers and by telephone through Dial-a-Flight. Publishers do something similar through subscription sites such as http://www.letssubscribe.com (Subscriptions Marketing Ltd) and through their own sites such as http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk (Future) and http://www.greatmagazines.co.uk (Emap).

But there is a vital difference between the two markets. The marketing of airline tickets is done not by the airlines but by the tourist and travel industry. The publications you see carrying ads for ticket companies feature page upon page of articles describing travel and holiday destinations. Those articles save the airlines a fortune in marketing costs.

Marketing copywriting at its best
This is marketing at its best: the Sunday Times travel section looks like editorial and the reader sees it as such. But it’s pure publicity! It’s marketing copy generated by PR companies and paid for by the holiday companies that hand out complimentary holidays to the journalists who write about them. Subscriptions marketers and copywriters don’t have the benefit of that kind of media exposure.

Does discounting as a strategy work?
Selling too cheap has nothing to do with building a business – it leads to bankruptcy. To give some idea of how far the downward pricing spiral can lead you, here is a question:

Do you know how much a flight to New York costs? Would you guess around £250 and upwards?

Wrong.

It costs just £62.99 for a return flight to New York by Northwest Airlines. That’s £31 each way. The other £176.10 is for fees and taxes.

It’s almost impossible to attract profitable customers with a price-cutting strategy. In the USA, half of the airline industry’s capacity is on carriers that have recently operated under bankruptcy court oversight.

While all this busy website and telephone activity is going on, publishers have forgotten the core marketing principles. Instead they sell cheap – and that is all they do. Any marketing that takes place is between the magazine itself and the reader, a kind of do-it-yourself approach. Publishers simply hope that the reader will get to like the magazine and won’t get around to cancelling it.

How long will your magazine subscribers stay?
As far as running a normal business is concerned, you can’t sell much to a short-term customer. It’s widely believed that subscribers on CCC (continuous credit card) payments will stay longer than others. Credit card payments are used, for example, by the online store for the National Magazine Company:

National Magazine subscriptions

But at renewal time in around two years time the subscriber’s automatic credit card subscription payments will fail, usually because the card’s expiry date has passed. So that isn’t good business.

Readers making a one-off payment by cheque or credit card will simply not renew when the time comes unless they are given a strong reason to. If you look at the average poor-quality renewal forms for most consumer magazines you will know that the reader gets little encouragement to keep on subscribing.

Those who make payment by direct debit will last longer. But there is considerable resistance to giving personal bank details and that is why many of these offers come with expensive free gifts when you sign up. Consumers, however, have learned all about low-cost ‘three issues for £1’ trials and they expect the price hike a few months down the line. When the day comes they are ready with their phones and on-line banking and cancellations are high.

It’s not easy getting new subscribers to renew at the regular price – in fact it’s one of the toughest jobs in marketing. Rather than wait for subscribers to expire, try to convert them into paying by direct debit with an early-bird promotion.

Specialist and B2B publishers – the real marketers
B2B and specialist titles take a very different approach to marketing and those are the areas where all the money is being made.

If you look at, say, Practical Fishkeeping, with 33% of circulation on subscription, you will see some pretty effective name gathering, which is the starting point for all good marketing.

Websites using this model offer a free monthly e-newsletter to those registering, which over the months builds a relationship that makes it far easer to convert that registrant to a paid customer. Promotions are sent by email, alternating with the e-newsletter.

The marketing model developed by specialist publishers is now used across various markets – it is effective selling all kinds of products from a £40 subscription to a £4,000 workshop.

Once the new subscriber is aboard, that relationship with the website continues to build. It is over and above whatever could be achieved by sending the magazine alone. An extra advantage is that more subscribers renew their paid subscription.

Some of our big consumer magazines are catching up. But many of the top selling magazines haven’t even started – the Cosmopolitan website, for example, shows little marketing input: name capturing involves completing 24 fields, which will shock most of our readers who know that asking visitors to complete more than two fields reduces response significantly. Go have a look:

Cosmopolitan magazine website
National Magazines appears to have adopted a template for its various magazine websites: Men’s Health, Runner’s World and Cosmopolitan have similar sites.

The Cosmopolitan registration page has 24 fields to complete to receive a free ‘passion pack’ and its ‘Sex News’ e-newsletter:

‘Cosmo Sex News fortnightly e-newsletter. Sex tips, mind-blowing moves, orgasm-boosting tricks, seduction secrets and relationship advice, all delivered to your desk.’

When you look at the current cut-price Cosmopolitan subscription promotions, the creative is enough to make any copywriter weep with frustration. Why sell your product for a 64% discount when you can build circulation to unseen heights simply by running extracts from sample articles?

‘Sex is a natural antihistamine and can help combat asthma and hay fever.’

‘… there’s a way to relight that fire, and it comes down to three
magic words: “shaky bridge” sex.’

As there are lots of people who would like to know a bit more about these snippets of information, you can be sure they would work well as headlines in any promotion. Cosmopolitan subscriptions stand at 38,491, just 8% of the total circulation.

Building lists – what to do with those names
What do publishers do with the names they capture from their websites? These are hot lists! If they follow the dismal lack of effort traditionally made with their direct mail names, they leave the list to fester without sending out any subscription promotions. That is, until someone shocks the MD into a creative meeting with his marketing team. The strategy to adopt is to create a sequence of strong email promotions to convert these prospects into paid subscribers.

Charge what your words are worth
If you don’t explain what’s special about your product, how can you expect to attract new readers? How can you expect them to pay a reasonable rate for a subscription? You should charge what your words are worth. Ask a subscriptions copywriter.

A four-part message to sell subscriptions fast
Here is a great example of how to build subscriptions fast using the four vital ingredients for any marketing strategy:

1. Here is the product

2. This is the price

3. This is why it is special

4. Buy it here

Free Recession report – see below

5 top tips

1. It’s almost impossible to attract profitable customers with a price-cutting strategy. Sell your publication for what it’s worth

2. B2B and specialist titles take a very different approach to marketing and they are the ones making all the money on the Internet

3. The strategy to adopt is to create a sequence of strong email promotions to convert your list of website visitors into paid subscribers

4. Why sell your product for a 64% discount when you can build circulation to unseen heights simply by running extracts from sample articles?

5. If you don’t explain what’s special about your product, how can you expect to attract new readers or get them to pay a reasonable rate for a subscription?

Good luck with your marketing in 2009!

Contact me at any time for advice on a strategy to get through this recession. Believe me, a good strategy costs far less than a poor one!

Peter Hobday

Email capture techniques

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Subscriptions marketing: confidential information for sale

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

In our particular niche 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.

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 can order sample issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter now on free trial:

Please click on one of the options below to place your trial order. You receive:

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

2. Subscription Marketing Workbook worth £66: 15 Subscriptions Marketing Innovations Every Publisher Should Know

3. Subscriptions marketing ‘rapid update’: three special issues of the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter worth a total of £105 to bring you up to date with best practice marketing procedures for online and traditional subscription marketing

4. Subscriptions Marketing in a Recession: How Innovative ‘Quick Fixes’ Lift Revenue and Reduce Costs’ our latest report, draft version to be published later this year at £26

Option A: 7 day free trial by Paypal

Your first month’s payment is delayed by seven days, so if you cancel your trial subscription in the first week, you pay nothing. If you decide to continue using our marketing services, we’ll keep your subscription rate down to £12 / $20 a month for your first complete year.

Option B: Annual payment by credit card

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.

*Credit card: click here to order an annual subscription




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