Shifting Sources

Circulation Management, May 1, 2003

"I think the Internet subscription services have made a huge difference," said PennWell's Adams. "It's totally amazing how well they perform for some of our titles." But the results vary widely - as many as 35 a month to as many as 1,000 - depending on the magazine's audience. "With Computer Graphics World, I get more names than I know what to do with," Adams says. "On others I get hardly anything at all."

Freebizmag.com, a subsidiary of the Synapse Group, has made a significant contribution to Edgell's circulation, says Gardberg - between 10 and 20 percent. But for Lebhar-Friedman, broad-based online agents don't seem worth it. "We've looked into them, but our market is very specific and it doesn't appear to fit," Bushell says.

Rutter, at Reed, looks at online agents in two ways. "It costs us several bucks to acquire a sub through them, and it costs us zero to get a subscriber on our own site," he says. "But the question is (without the agent) would we have gotten him at all? Right now the equation still makes fiscal sense."

Still, being offered on an equal footing with similar magazines - the case at most online agents - gives Rutter pause. "I think the issue we're grappling with is in the case of the Freebizmag.com's, in many instances your competitors are offered right there. It certainly doesn't offer a unique point of differentiation. Just in terms of exclusivity of circulation, I'm not sure it works."

Part of Rutter's answer is to focus more on Reed's own Web sites. "That's where the people who should be subscribing to our publications are," he notes. Overall, he attributes about 25 percent of new subscriptions to the Internet. "If we could get 100 percent of our new subs through our Web site we'd be very happy - it is a continually growing piece of our sub volume," he said. "While I can't realistically imagine other sources going away, if the last five years are any indication, I would not be surprised if the Web site and Internet accounted for the majority of our new subscriptions."

PAID B-TO-B: BATTLING ON TWO FRONTS

B-to-b magazines with paid circulations are having an increasingly difficult time getting people to subscribe. They are not only up against competing controlled books for attention, but free Web content as well.

If the shrinking corporate universe has made it tough for controlled books to expand their ranks, it's made subscription gains nearly impossible for paid B-to-B titles. "Now more than ever, with the universes in several markets totally depleted, the biggest challenge that we're going up against is publications that are controlled," says Turtoro of Chemical Week Associates. And the availability of free technical information on the Web has made the challenge even more formidable, Turtoro adds. "It's so much easier to get that information off the Net - so when you're trying to market a B-to-B publication that's paid, you're really spitting into the wind."

When he came to Chemical Week a little over a year ago, Turtoro shifted the emphasis from cold-call telemarketing to direct mail, which is now his primary source. Declining response rates "only means you have to be that much more diligent about the costs of your packages and the lists that you rent," he says. Turtoro recommends piggybacking print orders with other magazines as one way to control package costs.