4 Tips for Online Acquisition

March 2008 By Kate DeBevois

multipage

While many New Yorkers were navigating the snow and freezing rain, circulation and marketing professionals were swapping acquisition tactics at the Marriott Marquis last month during the Direct Marketing Association’s Circulation Day. The conference provided a peek at trends publishers are using to generate revenue and build circulation, and between sessions the halls were buzzing with circulators sharing tips for integrating direct mail and Web-based marketing. During the panel discussion, “Online: E-marketing, New Business and Acquisition Tactics,” Cary S. Zel, president of ProCirc Circulation Management, highlighted tools marketers are using for e-mail marketing, SEO and crafting Web-based offers. Here, Zel discusses the strategies covered by the panel and provides four tips for marketers to generate new business:

For online acquisition, positioning is paramount when working to maximize orders and generate new business. According to Zel, once the traffic is there, it is the circulation director’s job to convert as many consumers as possible using the available real estate to generate orders. For example, he says, “When Maxim moved the test link on the top of the page navigation bar from the right to the left, they got a 25 percent response.” Positioning is operational, Zel says. “For example, a test link on the far right may not show up on all screens,” and when determining subscriber ad placement, a placement above the fold is more effective.

Keep up with rapidly emerging technology trends for online acquisition. According to Zel, technologies such as one-click ordering save ordering information, thus providing ample opportunities to cross-sell. A multi-title publisher easily has “the ability to cross-sell using one-click ordering,” Zel says. For example, he cited an example from Conde Nast, which had a 40 percent take on the upsell when they started using one click ordering. One-click ordering temporarily saves consumer’s credit card information for cross sells, eliminating the need to enter credit card information move than once. He adds, “I haven’t seen other magazines employ that technology before. Magazines are starting to catch up with e-tailers like Amazon.”

Test and re-test, then zero in on a few streamlined strategies to maximize your results. Zel says, “For the Wine Enthusiast, we are doing search word sponsorships that are generating traffic directly to the main order page. We are not driving huge volume there, but the volume we do get is profitable for us and we are not spending a huge amount of money on sponsorship words. It’s good to include the search word sponsorship mix because the volume we are getting there is gravy, and something we probably wouldn’t get otherwise. It’s one thing to convert people who already come to your site, but generating this outside traffic is incremental.”