Give alternate subscription sources something in return

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, July 1, 1996

Alternate subscription sources (anything but direct mail) don't cost much and tend to be more targeted. One way to make them profitable is not to spend money on them. "Whatever you do, try not to pay anything yourself," Thomas Slater, director of circulation for Disney Magazine Publishing, told colleagues at a recent DMA Circulation Council meeting.

The secret is to approach the alternate sources with a plan that benefits the source or its customers. When Disney Adventures wanted to get subscription insert cards into Disney Home Videos, it offered to put a Lion King comic in the magazine to promote the video. To get insert cards in Angets in the Outfield, the magazine ran a promotion for the video. To convince the Disney credit-card division to add statement stuffers on a quarterly basis, Disney Adventures traded a list of its subscribers to promote to. Kathleen Canning, associate circulation manager at Nickelodeon, did a promotion with Blockbuster Video (both are owned by Viacom) offering a trial issue to people who rented three or more videos, compliments of Blockbuster. Slater and Canning recognize that not everyone has sister companies to work with, but they stress that you can do circulation marketing with advertisers and vendors where there is an affinity: Still, alternate-source promotions take a lot of time and can be very frustrating. You have to look not only at the hard costs per order, but at the soft costs--in management time--as well.