Subscription marketing tips

We all know how difficult it is to get a publisher to tell us what’s working – that’s why it’s worth paying conference fees and taking a notepad.

I have stopped attending many conferences because they are too formal: there is usually some chap on the stage with slides and a fixed presentation and not much inside information is delivered. Audience questions are limited in scope and time. Answers are usually cagey.

But some conferences are different, and here are a couple of tips I can pass on from a conference I recently attended. The whole list of tips is published in the Subscriptions Strategy newsletter and they are worth the subscription price alone!

Example tips
These examples were delivered at the end of the conference as ‘bullet points’. Some delegates may have missed their significance, or may forget the advice, so it’s worth getting the lot and putting them on your office wall. Business can only benefit.

1. What’s the best day / hour to send out an email campaign? An Ebay survey found it’s 2.00 pm Tuesday.

Comment: timing is important because if you are running a test promotion, remember you need to use your best copy, best offer, best list, and despatch your email on the best day and at the best time. Otherwise, if your promotion fails, you just won’t know why. If you do your best, and need to make your promotion more profitable before rolling out the test to your complete list, it’s a simple process to make adjustments once those initial test results are in. This advice applies to your direct mail efforts too.

2. How many times can you re-use an email? If your email promotion works, re-mail it right away. It will work up to three times.

Comment: with traditional direct mail, the reason we don’t immediately re-mail a successful pack is because of the cost. Although it may work well on it’s first outing, response will drop by around 50% if you mail it out to the same people within 30 days. Because of print and production costs, this usually means your ROI (Return on Investment) will be too low to make it worthwhile. With email promotions, those print and production costs don’t apply. Time and trouble represent most of your outgoings. Once you know all this, you will notice how other publishers disguise those re-mailed emails!

Usually, once an email has been sent out a few times, it’s best to give it a rest for a month or two.

Most of the publishing colleagues I talk to are at the hard edge of marketing – their performance is measured on profits and how much new business comes in. They range from millionaire business owners through to new junior marketers – all wanting to pick up important information on what’s working in today’s tough market.

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