WEB INNOVATIONS BRING CHEER on the GIFT FRONT

Circulation Management, April, 2001 by Barbara Love

MORE AGGRESSIVE MARKETING, GRAPHIC ENHANCEMENTS AND EASIER ORDERING ARE ADDING UPTO STRONGER WEB GIFT PERFORMANCE WITH EACH PASSING HOLIDAY SEASON.

Holiday season 2000 brought much needed cheer to many consumer marketers, in the form of the best performance to date for Internet-generated gift subscriptions.

Major fulfillment bureaus confirm the upswing. Communications Data Services clients (not including Reader's Digest) collectively pulled in about 175,000 Web-generated gift subs last year. EDS clients yielded nearly 79,000, and production during the last four months of 2000 was 63 percent higher than during the same period in 1999. Palm Coast Data estimates that its clients doubled their numbers, and Kable Fulfillment clients saw a ten-fold jump.

Hot titles leveraged their well-trafficked Web sites to take already abundant gift subs to even higher levels.

Maxim's Web program was "unbelievably successful," according to Dennis Publishing group circulation director Jim Borth, who notes that the mix of individual-versus-gift subs from the Net was about 50/50 by December.

O, The Oprah Magazine yielded about 10 percent of its whopping 300,000-plus gift subs from the Net. ESPN The Magazine drew half of its gift subs from the Net, compared to 30 percent in 1999, reports circulation director Caroline Billela.

The Net also added holiday firepower for established titles that have significant gift components. Reader's Digest's Net-generated gift subs shot up by 35 percent, according to Dawn Zier, director of marketing for Reader's Digest Association's U.S. magazines. Cosmopolitan had 100,000 gift subs, about 10 percent of which were Web-generated, reports Chris Butler, VP, group circulation director for Cosmo, Cosmo Girl!, Harper's Bazaar and Talk. And Playboy upped Web gift orders from just 1,000 in 1999 to 7,000 in 2000, says VP, consumer marketing Phyllis Rotunno.

Clearly, even with last year's growth, Net-generated orders still represent a small portion of overall holiday subs, particularly for titles with highly developed direct mail gift programs.

But all gift orders are coveted for their high renewability and attractive economics, and any that can be generated (or renewed) with minimal or zero associated direct mail costs are a gift indeed, particularly in today's circulation climate.

Combine the Net's economics with its immediacy and user-friendliness for gift purposes--not to mention the built-in promotional boost provided by holiday urgency--and it's not hard to see why publishers are eager to leverage this channel on the gift front Building substantial volumes of standard subs from the Net has been slow going, on the whole, but incremental investments in Web and email gift efforts are yielding immediate, gratifying results.

Moreover, as Web usage continues to expand, fulfillment systems are honed, and marketers learn the nuances of selling gift subs on the Web, magazines have nowhere to go but up in the gift arena.

Titles with Net-oriented audiences and high gift appeal have big plans indeed. Although Net subs represented only 5 percent of Playboy's holiday haul in 2000, Rotunno thinks the magazine can increase last year's volume by about 20 percent per year for at least two years.

Meanwhile, Borth predicts that Maxim will up its Net gift sub sales by another 50 percent this year. "We're just getting started," he declares.

EMAIL BLASTS PUMP UP GIFT PRODUCTION

What pushed the needle upward in 2000? Like all online marketers, publishers saw some lift from consumers' increasing comfort with ordering on the Net. But most of the progress in the gift area came as a direct result of more aggressive email and Web marketing pushes, combined with improved ordering processes and fulfillment capabilities and nifty new offerings, such as email gift cards (sidebar, right).

While consumer publishers are still plugging away at building subscriber email address levels, some had enough addresses to do gift sub email promotions for the first time in 2000.

CDS manager, new media services, Annette Duffy reports that about a dozen clients did email blasts, capitalizing on the promotions' ability to generate significant volumes quickly.

"The basic message used was something along the lines of, 'We know you like this magazine. Why not give it as a gift? Click here and go directly to the order form,'" says Duffy. The blasts' effectiveness was apparent in production spikes at the fulfillment house. "We could really tell when they went out," she notes.

Palm Coast also saw a jump in client gift sub email campaigns last season. "Our clients have a lot more email addresses to work with now," says VP, Internet planning and corporate solutions Richard Hovey. "I expect to see more and more holiday email campaigns."

Most magazines are focusing on their point of greatest leverage by emailing to non-donor subscribers who've opted in to receive email communications. Finding targeted, cost-efficient outside email lists is still tough, and even non-subscriber opt-ins or registrants from a brand's own Web site aren't necessarily surefire prospects.