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:
- Creating new products to sell to increase subscribers’ lifetime value, often from existing material, so no cost is involved
- Increasing website visitors and sales. The more email addresses you capture, the bigger your prospect list and revenue
- Market testing for new launches and enhancing existing products. If you are not regularly testing your market, then you simply won’t grow
- Price testing to see what your market will bear. If you are not doing this regularly, you are not really in marketing. It’s a vital area business owners can use to increase annual revenue, often significantly
- Promoting a business through the press or partnering with other companies that are more marketing and promotions-led. This is what companies link up with Richard Branson’s Virgin group to achieve
- Extending products to your portfolio that prospects want. If you are missing something, you are vulnerable to a competitor. This is how and why publishers launch new titles, websites, reports and newsletters
- Up-selling new and existing customers by selling ancillary products to increase customer life-time values. If you are not constantly selling products to your client list someone else will. You keep your customers alive by regularly selling to them
- Maintaining constant contact. Most companies and website owners are guilty – they do not stay in regular contact with their readers. Remember – it costs little to run an autoresponder series of messages to current readers
- Lifting profits by reducing unnecessary costs. This is one of the easiest ways to increase profitability and the one business owners are most blinkered to
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!
Peter Hobday
Subscriptions Strategy Ltd
