Promoting with the magazine

When I first came into publishing I spotted a flaw in the company’s marketing - we only promoted in English. We did well in the Commonwealth and the Americas, but we had few readers across the Channel. So I wrote two French language subscriptions promotions; one for France priced in francs, and one for French-speaking markets in Europe, Africa and beyond, with both franc and dollar rates.

What happened? We got half a per cent response from France and nearly five per cent elsewhere. Perhaps writing in the local language is not the key to promotional success, particularly when the product you are promoting is an English language magazine.

Nowadays the marketer has more promotional channels available. It is no longer prohibitively expensive to tele-market to foreign readers. Having native speakers can help because people are generally happier using their first language in a telephone conversation. Call charges on international telemarketing are still more expensive than for UK projects, but international subscription rates are that bit higher.

Integrated approach

In many B2B markets everything we do is effectively a test. We don’t carry a pool of spare contacts to play with. If you’ve built the definitive list for your industry across the world, then ideally you want everyone on it to send you the hundred dollars, pounds or euros, or to sign the registration card.

But they don’t. So your strategy has to take this into account. Pick off the easy ones with your carrier promotion. This helps ensure the publication is regularly seen and talked about in its market around the world. But rotate the promotional copies. Either, plan a campaign using a sequence of copies with varying messages and offers (possibly followed by the empty cover of the next issue), or just rotate by sending to those who haven’t seen the product for a while.

Isn’t it annoying when you’ve bought a subscription to something and then one of your colleagues continues to get it free? With a database controlled by sites you can stop promoting to sites with an existing payer on them. How about operating that rule according to the number of employees on the site? Small sites the rule applies. Larger sites get one promotional copy sent to the person who saw the publication least recently.

A single promotional approach is not going to secure a volume of subscriptions. It will not be enough to get over the messages "you have to pay for this", "we have no free riders", "sign up or we’ll let someone else have it".

So publishers may place several offers with an issue. The carrier sheet shows a 20% discount. Then there is a loose insert – "14 issues for the price of 12". And on a half page ad there’s a free pen offer.

The cash equivalent of these is similar, but different parts of the audience respond to different offers. Overall you have communicated the message – this is for a paying audience. And your advertisers are seeing the activity too. They will also appreciate that you are making real efforts to develop the publication. And the same applies with high visibility registration promotions.

By using carrier sheets you won’t have to invest in pre-printed mailing films. Plain films are cheaper – and if you change your logo or return address, you avoid wasting out-of-date plastic.

As well as changing the postmark according to the service level you want for different classes of reader, carriers make it easier to switch between postal operators to get the best price. Laser printing brings the freedom to vary the sales message. An association loans you its list? The text can be specific to that fact. You are writing to the people your editor met at a conference? Tell them that’s how you know they are important to the profession.

Hopefully, by these techniques the response rate has improved, but it’s still not the 100% we’d all like.

Acquisition cost

What have these responses cost you? Add up all the costs not normally incurred. If you have to send out 14,000 copies because it’s part of the advertising promise, then exclude the costs of doing that. But don’t overlook the additional costs of acquiring new lists and of personalising carriers. Divide all the costs by the responses banked for this campaign to find out how much each response has cost the business.

Working out the acquisition cost for everything you do will make it easier to decide which campaigns are worth running again. Look then at the overall average. Are some campaign types exorbitantly expensive compared to the rest ? Can you afford to stop that activity, or does it bring something you would be hard pressed to replace through other approaches?

Now you have banked the successes, removed the "gone aways" and the list can be tested on another approach. If you asked the right questions when collecting the data, you could now start an email campaign. Faxing is even more fraught with legal difficulties than emails. So unless you have asked people for the right to fax promotions to them it is probably a route best avoided within Europe. Outside Europe, fax and email are worth testing.

If you are looking for registrations rather than payments, back this up with messages inside the magazine. This is particularly useful where readers can be directed to an online form. Email promotions and online forms have acquisition costs that are not dependent on geography - as they are with post, phone and fax.

Telemarketing remains a possibility, but probably the most expensive per success. Although with the growth of telemarketing bureaux in low-wage economies it is becoming a channel you may want to test. My advice is to stick with payment by results and not to accept set-up charges for unproven campaigns. Any professional telemarketing bureau can quickly spot a poor campaign and advise on how to help improve it.

Pricing

Pricing is an important element in selling any product. If you are new to international pricing, try this. The base UK subscription rate is your starting point (assuming you are happy with it). Now add on the cost of overseas postage for the number of issues you actually mail (not forgetting that heavy exhibition preview each autumn). Assume each reader will need one replacement issue a year, so add that in, plus handling and postage. Are there any other things a reader gets with their subscription, like an annual directory?

How much does it cost to print and mail your renewal letters and invoices? Then there’s the cost of currency conversion, so include that. Now add the percentage you offer subscription agents, so that all the costs are covered even if the client pays indirectly. The result is the lowest economically viable overseas subscription price.

Whatever offers you devise should not come in lower than this minimum. So if 20% off is your standard discount, add that on as well to establish the book rate.

By all means try different prices, but just as with every other element in a promotion, keep a record of all the costs and of the number of successes. Only then can you decide whether your investment has been worthwhile.