Why is our subscriptions marketing so poor? Part 2

Successful subscriptions marketing
When we look at BRAD or the *ABC*’s excellent website it is clear from the circulation figures that most publishers’ subscriptions marketing is ineffective. Otherwise the numbers would have grown two or three times since 1993. The reason, whatever the title, is usually the same — a lack of commitment from the top.

So why are some publishers producing good work, while others stand still? Those companies with creative and successful marketing departments all have one thing in common. They have a senior decision-maker who has given subscriptions marketing the same status as editorial and advertisement sales. This doesn’t just mean handing over more money. Which? magazine’s marketing, for example, is pretty weak. So is the marketing for the Economist, neither of which has produced a good benefit-led promotion in years. Most of the best work comes from companies that need to make every penny count — and these are the ones to follow.

The key to subscriptions success
It isn’t our aim at Subscriptions Strategy to deliver criticism without constructive advice and encouragement. So now we have shaken things up, lets apply some of the lessons we have learned through constant monitoring of the top subscriptions publishers. All publishers can use or adapt these techniques to increase revenue from their subscribers.

(And if, by the way, you have a promotion you are particularly proud of, do please send it in. We’d love to see some good work to include in our next review.)

The first lesson is, to achieve success, a company must give its marketing people the encouragement and freedom to create and test new promotions. Fortunately this doesn’t mean inventing a string of new ideas; it’s already being done for you. Innovative and highly active publishers are constantly developing and testing techniques that are lifting response to new levels, through web, direct mail, advertisements and email promotions.

Email Marketing
Email promotions, for example, are a very exciting area. Response is currently breaking through to new levels, because (a) new copy writing techniques are being employed and (b) conventional return-on-investment restrictions don’t apply. Currently successful techniques can be adapted for almost any market. It’s just a short step from discovering what’s currently working to creating a series of promotions to successfully sell subscriptions to your own publication.

So what’s working? Who can we learn from? The top UK marketers are generally the smaller companies such as The Ecologist, History Today, Peak Performance and Sports Injury Bulletin.

Response performance
When asked to quantify the difference in performance between an ‘average’ and a ‘top performing’ promotion, publishers report increases of double the response for their best-performing direct mail pack when compared to their previous control. When queried about internet techniques, for example, *Electric Word plc*’s Peak Performance newsletter reported a ground-breaking ten-fold increase in response for web and email promotions, confirming that this highly innovative publisher has discovered how to transform the effectiveness of internet marketing.

So what ingredients go into an effective marketing programme? We have identified five common elements:

1. Creative freedom for the marketing department

2. An understanding of what motivates the reader

3. Benefit-led promotions

4. Price testing

5. Upgrading, upselling and extending subscribers

Creative freedom: without creative freedom, even the best marketer will fail to build many subscriptions. In this respect, subscription marketing is similar to selling advertisement space. If the publisher reduces the number of pages available for advertisements, or limits the number of calls the sales team can make, a drop in revenue results. The same applies to a magazine’s subscriptions department. If the marketer is unable to create, test and roll-out new subscription promotions, the number of subscribers and the revenue achieved will remain static or reduce each year. The more creative freedom the marketer has, the more money and profit he or she can bring in. Financial targets should be based on return on investment achieved, not some arbitrarily fixed amount to be spent through the year.

Understanding your readers: if the person writing the copy has little or no contact with his prospects, he will not be able to uncover what motivates them. He won’t be able to create – or recognise – the kind of benefit-filled copy that will strike a cord and compel prospects to respond. This is the first fundamental of marketing and the one that is most overlooked by marketers. It is the key to the exponential leaps in response witnessed by the publishers featured in this article.

Price testing: if the marketer is not price testing regularly, he will not know how much the reader is prepared to pay for the information he is offering. At the moment the value people are putting on their favourite reading is changing rapidly. Current price tests show it is usually possible to increase revenue by between 10 and 100 per cent.

Upselling, upgrading and extending: every publication should have a portfolio of extra services and products it can offer in order to upgrade subscribers and increase the revenue received from each one. Examples of products include newsletters, books, reports, seminars, exhibitions and access to specialist information through the internet. If you are still thinking in terms of renewals you are way behind the times — top marketers ceased to talk of renewals around five years ago. All have now established programmes to upgrade and extend their subscriber’s term as soon as he or she comes aboard. This can double or treble the revenue you receive over the subscriber’s lifetime. You’ll find that with each new purchase comes a longer commitment.

Failure to get the most from your subscribers is equivalent to a shopkeeper refusing to sell a customer another product until his first purchase has worn out. And he wouldn’t be so foolish as to do that, would he?