Capturing Email Addresses: The Quest For Cost-Effective Methods

Circulation Management, July 1, 2002

Obviously, exchanges offer one attractive means of building email address levels at lower cost. But many owners - particularly on the consumer publishing side - still tend to be skittish about this because of concerns about annoying valuable prospects and subscribers, even if they've secured permission to email third-party messages. Many are very cautious even about email promotions for their own purposes.

Still, business-to-business publishers seem to be warming up to exchanges. "The new thing is that people are amenable to trading email addresses because it lowers their cost to solicit new subscriptions," says Barry Green, VP, director of circulation, Hearst Business Magazines. "Some people have been very protective of email names, but that's changing because of the high costs. We all need to work together as an industry for B-to-B publishers to stay in business. That means operating as economically as possible."

Green says he's seeing some trades of email names for telemarketing names. "If somebody wants to use a competitive publication's telemarketing names, they might trade two or three email names for each telemarketing number, because of the higher response from telemarketing lists," he says.

SOLICITING YOUR OWN EMAIL ADDRESSES

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that gathering your own email addresses is a lot cheaper than buying them. And, although this poses real challenges, circulators are quickly becoming savvy about finding ways to do this without alienating subscribers or depressing response to offers.

Certainly, B-to-B circulators are asking for email addresses on almost every conventional acquisition and renewal mailing, as well as on wraps and fax efforts. "We include a large space on the qualification card to allow people to write their email addresses down clearly, rather than jamming it in," notes Serra. (Many titles supply empty boxes to write in each letter or numeral in an email address, to reduce reading and inputting errors by fulfillment keying operators.)

Another obvious method of securing permission-based email addresses is through registrations on a magazine's Web site. Lightwave, from PennWell's Advanced Technology Division, is one of hundreds of B-to-B titles that have begun sending out email acquisition blasts to site registrants, with great success. One such effort pulled a 12 percent response, at a CPO of just 43 cents, reports Lightwave circulation manager Michelle Blake. "These were free names," she stresses. (See Circulation Excellence Awards capsule, page 41.)

Requiring email addresses on registrations for email newsletters has become an important source for a growing number of consumer, as well as B-to-B, titles. The Atlantic Monthly has used this technique with excellent results with its weekly email newsletter, according to Cohen.

Customer service is another place to ask for email addresses. TAM, which is trying to find ways to make traditional and electronic channels work together, uses its 800 numbers to ask for email addresses in a customer-friendly way. "When people call for anything, we ask for their email address," says Cohen. "But we don't want people to be mad at us. We say, 'Please give us your email address so we can serve you better.'"