Make Your Web Site Special for Subscribers

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, March, 2000

You want to drive subscribers to your Web site and to encourage visitors there to become subscribers. One way to do that, suggests Fayne Erickson, publisher of Ms., is to do something special for your subscribers on your Web site. For example, while anyone can visit your Web site, give subscribers a discount when they shop there.

At a recent Fulfillment Management Association seminar on new directions in alternate media marketing, Erickson explained that Executive Female has a deal with a shopping mall that lets subscribers key in their subscription number (from the top of the label on the back of the magazine) to get the discount for subscribers only. Visitors who are not subscribers can still purchase whatever they want, but don't receive the back-end discount. They can, however, sign up immediately online, get a number and be entitled to the special discount. "I would encourage you to somehow make your site more special for people who are subscribers as opposed to people who are just browsing the site, esp ecially if you can allow people to enroll online, take their credit card and issue an immediate number that they can use," Erickson advised. "In the end, let's face it, we all have to get the money in."