Grassroots Growth Campaign

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, July 1, 1999 by Jamie Trowbridge

Jamie Trowbridge is publishing director of Yankee, a monthly regional magazine about New England.

Yankee's Community Partners program links with 250 organizations to sell subscriptions, promote the magazine's brand and attract new advertisers.

Do you worry that direct mail and agent business can be too impersonal, and not provide a strong enough link to your magazine to make an effective pitch? Three years ago, we realized that a down-home regional magazine like ours needed more of a community touch to reach subscribers. That's when we developed Yankee magazine's Community Partners, which allows local organizations and their members to forge a close relationship with us by doing cross-promotions and selling subscriptions.

This fundraising subscription-sales program now benefits more than 250 groups in New England. The groups sell subscriptions for $20 to consumers, and we credit the groups $10 for each sale. A regular subscription to Yankee costs $24 a year. While we cannot justify the cost of the program simply on subscriptions (since they can range from 10 at a bake sale to hundreds at a week-long festival), this endeavor gives us brand exposure.

Other publishers interested in grassroots subscription sales need to understand that our program had to grow into much more than an innovative subscription effort to be sustainable. The money from subscriptions--about 2,400 orders are expected through Community Partners this year--covers only about a third of the program s cost. But using the circulation component of the program as a foundation gave us the confidence to extend into other areas.

Community Partners is now integrated into all aspects of our operation. Not only are we selling subscriptions, we're selling advertising sponsorships, promoting the brand in marketing, publicizing the program in editorial and preparing materials in production. While the number of subscribers is low compared to our total circulation of 700,000, we find that this group's retention rate is about 20 percent higher than for customers who answer direct mail offers.

Make your program inclusive

Because Yankee is, at its essence, a magazine about the communities of New England, we decided to define the program broadly so that local organizations of all types could participate. We started in the fall of 1996. When one of our first groups, an organization that was raising money to re-open its church, sold hundreds of subscriptions in its first months, we knew we were on to something.

We now have four full-time staff members working to recruit groups and support our active members. We've learned that organizations will not be successful at selling subscriptions without our support. We work with them to recommend ways they can extend the subscription offer in their communities--in their newsletter, through partnerships with local businesses and at events they attend. We help publicize their efforts through our magazine and Web site, NewEngland.com. We recently held our first conference and awards event to help the groups implement the program better and to recognize them for the work they do.

Expanding into sponsorships

To expand the program, we recently started to sell presenting sponsorships. Our aim is to have five category-exclusive sponsors, each paying $140,000. In turn, the sponsors are promoted each time the fundraising program is advertised.

The first sponsor is Salada Tea, based in Boston. The company, which was not an existing advertiser in Yankee, joined the program to help promote itself as a regional company. Only after Salada Tea signed up as a sponsor did the company agree to advertise in the magazine.

Moving the program beyond subscriptions also involves our advertising sales and marketing staff, with ad reps now able to sell ads, sponsorships or a package of both. Including marketing sponsorships has opened doors for our advertising staff and given us direct access to potential advertisers.