Read and respond - Editor's Note

Communications News, Sept, 2003 by Ken Anderberg

Twenty-two years ago, I was involved in a reader service card effort that was extraordinarily successful, and demonstrated the value of putting the interests of readers first when considering editorial coverage. The small statewide monthly magazine in Georgia where I was editor did not regularly carry reader service cards. As an association magazine, it was more consumer oriented than trade.

That magazine did have an impressive circulation, however, with the January 1981 issue mailed to 500,000 Georgians in a one-time effort to generate opposition to an issue that was coming before the state Legislature. The magazine carried articles about the issue and a list of state legislators. It also included reader service cards that recipients could address, put a stamp on and mail to their state representatives--a way for readers to register their "vote" on an issue affecting their pocketbooks.

We had no idea the firestorm that would ensue.

Too often, editors get caught up in an unintended arrogance that assumes we know what is best for our subscribers, rather than reading the subscriber feedback signs that more accurately reflect reader interests. Such feedback can take on many forms--surveys, letters, phone and trade show conversations with readers, focus groups, and reader service cards among them. Some of those are more anecdotal than statistically relevant, but in combination they all can provide a useful tool for editorial and sales planning.

Today, however, there is a far better method for tracking reader interest--the Internet.

When they were first introduced, reader service cards were a great boon to trade magazine advertising sales efforts. At the zenith of the use of such cards, advertisers could expect hundreds of readers to respond with the cards, seeking additional information on products written about in a publication. Such response was an accepted way for advertisers to judge whether a magazine's audience was appropriate for their products or services.

Editors, however, generally hated the cards. The tagging of product announcements, and often features, with "bingo" numbers was considered somehow demeaning, suggesting that editorial was actually advertising in disguise. Often, it was. Few editors in those days considered analyzing the returns of those cards in terms of reader interest.

With the advent of 800 numbers on advertisements, and subsequently the addition of company Web addresses, readers began using reader service cards in lower numbers. Readers were now going directly and quickly to the companies who had products or services they were interested in, bypassing the slow reader service card option. Today, most trade magazine readers seek out advertisers' Web sites after seeing their ads in print.

The trouble is, most trade magazines have no way of tracking that Web traffic. Thus, their sales people cannot argue the effectiveness of ad campaigns to clients, and editors cannot analyze which topics are of most interest to readers. The latter is an extremely important metric for editors to have, allowing us to customize editorial content in future issues, based on what our readers are telling us they want to read, not what we "think" they want to read.

Twenty-two years ago, though, cards were king, and we used them successfully at that Georgia monthly to call our readers to action. An estimated 100,000 cards from readers swamped the Legislature shortly after the magazine was mailed to those 500,000 Georgians. Some state representatives and senators reported receiving as many as 5,000 cards each from their constituents. The association's lobbyist, whose office was just down the hall from mine, asked me how to shut off the cards. Yeah, right.

The speaker of the House ranted on television that the cards were "asinine and stupid." More cards came in, eventually totaling about 200,000. Nearly every newspaper in the state gave the card campaign coverage. The legislation never made it out of committee.

We obviously struck a nerve. The result was an unforgettable message about the power of voters, as well as the power of reader feedback.

Today, magazine readers have no desire to fill out a card for product information, and then wait for weeks before the material arrives in the mail. Research has shown that those readers will first go to the company's Web site if they are interested in products or services written about or advertised. Those readers also are expressing their interest in editorial topics--by going to the Web sites of companies mentioned in articles--but editors wanting to analyze that data generally have no way of doing so.

At Communications News, we have been tracking our readers' editorial interests for more than a year--through our RSLeads service, which tracks the number of readers using RSLeads but does not identify those readers. We know, for example, that 357 readers have visited one company's Web site to gather more information about an IP wireless phone we wrote about in the June issue. We know that 782 readers sought more information about wireless LAN security, as a result of an article in February. And we know that 347 visited a firm's Web page to learn more about its 10-Gbps optical fiber, following a product release we published in January.