Shifting Sources

Circulation Management, May 1, 2003

He also tests furiously. "You've got to test - that's more true than ever. We've learned some amazing things." For instance, a series of subscription price tests based on a control of $159 revealed that the response rate on a $149 subscription was equal to that for $99. "We were ready to take $50 off the price," he said. "As it turns out we can take $10 off the price and get the same response."

"I've always been successful with direct mail," says another circulator of paid B-to-B books. "Our audience knows us, our prospects are very targeted and they already know my title. I don't have to say much," she says. But a bigger source for her books, she says, is agencies, which account for 25 percent of a typical title's subscriptions. Again, familiarity and targeting is key. "Our agencies know us," she says. "They don't go after what I don't need."

MAKING THE INTERNET PAY

The Internet has not been the chief source of new subscribers for the controlled books Lebhar-Friedman's Bushell oversees, but it makes a significant contribution - as much as 25 percent - to the publisher's paid restaurant title. "A lot of it comes through our pop-up box," Bushell says. "It's critical to making our numbers." But she notes that at the same time response through the Internet pop-up is increasing, response on bind-ins is declining, and wonders if they are simply trading one source for another.

Online agents haven't clicked for Bushell. "I haven't really found any agents that are going to give me a deal that's going to make it work for me," she said. "The remit they want is not what I want to pay. I do better with the classic agencies."

While his books get some paid subscriptions off their own Web sites, Chemical Week's Turtoro thinks a better job needs to be done. "The focus of Web sites has always been more about getting revenue through advertising than circulation. The responsibility of people like me is to be more of a thorn in the side of the Webmaster and the publisher and say, 'We're over here, too.' We have to learn better how to use this for circulation."

PERSONAL CALLS FOR GROUP SUBS

It was, interestingly enough, an advertising strategy that Turtoro turned to in 2002 to help combat a shrinking pool of new subscribers. "Our universe is pretty much dominated by a lot of large companies - the DuPonts, the Eastmans - so we are trying to treat circulation in much the way we treat advertising - with personal calls," he says. The magazine deployed an in-house rep to forge relationships with companies who had multiple subscribers, offering group subscriptions at discounted price points. Turtoro said the strategy was succeeding. But the effort was pre-empted when Chemical Week's own universe contracted, and the staffer working on the accounts was laid off.

Still, he remains a believer. "The silver lining in the cloud is, I think, that I found something that works - the personal interaction. We've always mass-marketed, but things are so bad now, you have to establish a relationship with the key companies that make up the universe you deal with."