50 dumb things publishers stopped - gregkrehbiel.com · louise white, incisive media. direct mail...

50 Dumb Things

Publishers Stopped Doing

and So Should You

50 Dumb Things

Publishers Stopped Doing

and So Should You

Denise Elliott, delliott@kiplinger.com

Greg Krehbiel, gkrehbiel@kiplinger.com

Publishing

Dumb Habit – At the end of each year we were sending all subscribers a “love offering” that was the same as the premium each new subscriber received with their order. It cost about $100,000 in printing and mailing every year.

What we did – Instead of sending it, we asked the subscribers how many of them wanted it, either as a download or in print. Only 7% wanted it in any format.

Result – We quit sending it and there has been no effect on renewals.

Denise Elliott, Kiplinger

Editorial

Dumb Habit – Paid editors a base plus royalties based on new sales and renewals.

What we did – Switched to paying them just a higher percentage of renewal sales.

Outcome – It’s simpler for them and for accounting. It ties them more closely to the long-term health of their products. It relieves acquisition campaigns of additional expense.

Phil Ash, National Institute of Business Management

Web

Worst Practice – Having the wrong people in charge of web analytics

Solution – Moved my head of marketing into a new role - head of online commercial development and gave him responsibility for web analytics and education across the group

Louise White, Incisive Media

Direct Mail - Lists

Dumb Habit – Participated in only one co-op on the assumption that everyone has the same names.

It ain’t so. My clients that get the most out of co-ops, participate in many different co-ops and increase their mail volume.

Jeff Kobil, LDS Group

Audio Conferences

B-list “celebrity experts” don’t guarantee the success of an audio conference or newsletter launch.

Deirdre Hackett, Kiplinger

Marketing - Lists

Dumb Idea – Refuse to partner with competing publications for list exchanges, thinking that if we don’t let them reach our customers they’ll never be able to find these customers.

What we did – We actively exchange lists and even co-market with some competitors – both associations and trade publications.

Results – It’s been very fruitful for both sides.

Anonymous

Social Media

Worst Practice – Treating social media as a broadcast mechanism rather than a conversation.

Louise White, Incisive Media

Audio Conferences

Dumb Habit – Thinking what works in print will work in a conference.

Deirdre Hackett, Kiplinger

Marketing

Dumb habit – Our Marketing Coordinator was folding, inserting, and mailing our renewal notices internally from our office each week.

What we did – We found a local mail house that could process them quickly every week so we could stop doing them ourselves.

Result – Our Marketing Coordinator can now send additional marketing campaigns each week – instead of doing clerical work – and each campaign generates thousands in revenue.

Liz Alvarez, EB Medicine

Web

Dumb Idea – Created a membership portal for accountants with three access levels: free, registered, and premium, based on 3-, 6- and 12-month subscriptions. Tried to put everything inside, connected: articles, legislation, cases studies, examples to create a perfect tool. It confused everybody and we had no profit for 2 years.

What We Did – We changed the focus of the portal and we started to collect emails and promote our products and services.

Results – The traffic increased dramatically and the project works very well. We've duplicated the success elsewhere, having other 10 free portals on various topics: labor law, business ideas, juridical,management etc. Additionally, we recycled the premium content from the former membership portal, we added new content and made everything very, very simple: Question & Answers for accountants. Break even in 4 months!

Florin Campeanu, Rentrop & Straton

Publishing

Dumb Habit – Insisting that the value of a piece is dictated by the effort taken to create it, rather than a calculation based on the reader's needs.

Graham Ruddick, NEC Group

Conferences

Dumb Idea – Starting a conference on Sunday, which is supposed to be a day of rest.

Greg Krehbiel, Kiplinger

Direct Mail - Lists

Dumb Habit – Believing old list history is law.

Mailers need to look at historical "facts" they think they know but haven't validated for their offer in years. Such as why/how they select gender, or at what level they preselect HHI or employee size.

Dave Nelson, MeritDirect

Publishing

Dumb Idea – Insisting that because an editor can create a publication he is capable of running a business based on that publication.

Graham Ruddick, NEC Group

Admin

Stopped paying for off site storage when there is unused office space.

Phil Ash, National Institute of Business Management

E-mail

Dumb Habit – Worrying about Can-Span requirements when you don’t have to – like in a transactional email.

Greg Krehbiel, Kiplinger

Audio Conferences

Dumb Idea – Made audio conferences and webinars complicated with several speakers and lots of handouts.

One well-trained, experienced speaker with a decent set of slides works best.

Compiled from several comments

Editorial

Dumb Habit – We were using a complicated spreadsheet to keep track of the editorial process for our monthly articles, but it was impossible to put every step in the spreadsheet, so the missing steps often got skipped, resulting in errors.

What we did – We implemented a step-by-step system that could be used for every article.

Result – This has saved our editors a lot of time and effort and has significantly reduced errors.

Robin Williford, EB Medicine

Web

Dumb Idea – Put content only one place on your web site. Not everyone comes to your site the same way.

What we did – We post the same story on multiple channel pages or at least put a link “above the fold.”

Anonymous

Note – There are SEO implications to posting the same content in multiple places. Posting a link is another matter.

HR

Dumb Idea – We made hiring mistakes and kept the people around too long.

What we did – Let the people go.

Results – We saved money, learned how to do more with less, or eliminated tasks that we really didn’t need anyway, and hired better employees.

Anonymous

E-mail

Dumb Habit – Making all your calls to action images.

(When images are turned off there’s nothing to do!)

Greg Krehbiel, Kiplinger

Web

Dumb Habit – Weighing down your web page with unnecessary images, technology, plug-ins, flash.

Christopher Moffa, Kiplinger

Marketing

Dumb Habit – Set up a promo code for every single little thing.

What we did – Set up a reporting system that can identify results by list and source within on code.

Outcome – Saved lots of time and churn.

Phil Ash, National Institute of Business Management

Admin

Stopped printing many regular staff reports and let people run them online themselves.

Phil Ash, National Institute of Business Management

Audio Conferences

Dumb Habit – Failure to emphasize post-event sales.

Deirdre Hackett, Kiplinger

Publishing

Stopped publishing some newsletters that were losing money. Duh!

Phil Ash, National Institute of Business Management

Marketing – Direct Mail

Dumb Idea – Trying to save money with a courtesy-reply envelope. In most markets, the cost-savings aren’t worth the lift you get from a business-reply envelope.

Denise Elliott, Kiplinger

Marketing – Direct Mail

Stopped sending out monthly direct mail campaigns. Reverted to quarterly as quantities dried up and flat fees ate up too much of a mailing’s profit.

Phil Ash, National Institute of Business Management

Technology

When it comes to web development, “Agile programming” and “Rapid prototyping” are poor substitutes for being very clear about your business requirements.

Robin Crumby, Melcrum Publishing

Audio Conferences

Dumb Idea – Marketing an audio conference to a rented list. They never buy.

Christopher Morin, Thompson

Tele-Marketing

Dumb Habit – Paying TM reps for placement of soft offers. Tying their compensation to payup decreases junk orders.

Denise Elliott, Kiplinger

Audio Conferences

Dumb Idea – Thinking our solid brand name justified being the audio conference price leader in our industry.

What we did – Dropped our price from $249 to $99.

Results – AC revenue increased about 10%, but the larger “new customer” pipeline gave many more active leads to the inside sales department and helped the business overall.

Lucretia Lyons, Business Valuation Resources

Web

Worst practice – Failure to view the e-newsletter as part of the online commerce strategy.

Louise White, Incisive Media

Publishing

Dumb Idea – Creating products exclusively for an online market and for online delivery.

What we did – Created a new print on demand product portfolio at a lower price point.

Results – Sales are brisk, especially to new customers who are willing to "try us on for size" at $99 to $129.

Lucretia Lyons, Business Valuation Resources

Direct Mail

Worst Practice – Co-mingling direct mail to reduce DM postage expense. It did save on postage, but DM response rates declined. Was the decline in response rates due to the economy, bad lists, offers, package, etc. or co-mingling?

Solution – Test staggering DM by “library” rather than co-mingling DM and improving the DM presort with a new vendor to reduce postage costs.

Anonymous

Audio Conferences

Tried a weekly audio conference at a scheduled time –like a staff meeting. It didn’t work. People aren’t going to schedule their lives around your program.

Anonymous

Editorial

Worst Practice – Creating content for one-time use.

“Create once, sell many times.”

Summarized from many comments

Publishing

Worst practice – Thinking of delivery mechanism (print, online) as an end rather than a means.

This seems to cut both ways. “Traditional” publishers who seem “stuck on print” vs. online-only advocates who want to force customers to read on a computer screen.

Solution – Let your market decide how they want to consume your information.

Summarized from many comments

Web

Worst Practice – The pursuit of meaningless web traffic

Solution – Align what you measure to your company goals, including website analytics and KPIs for staff reviews.

Louise White, Incisive Media

Editorial

Dumb Habit – We use a proofreader to do the medical editing of our journals, including the text and references, but our in-house editors were also editing the references.

What we did – We stopped having the outside proofreader edit the references.

Result – This will save us thousands of dollars this year because they charge based on word count and each of our articles has over 100 references.

Dorothy Whisenhunt, EB Medicine

Marketing

Dumb Habit – Printing the price on your ancillary products.

You can’t raise the price until you sell all of your stock.

Deirdre Hackett, Kiplinger

Publishing

Dumb Habit – Neglecting to include some kind of offer in all your mailings.

What we did – Our client mail was content only. No marketing. We added inserts and have increased sales.

Denise Elliott, Kiplinger

Marketing

Worst Practice – Thinking “market research” means sending out a survey

Louise White, Incisive Media

Publishing

Dumb idea – Not recognizing that each channel has a fundamentally different set of demands for content architecture, definition and style.

What we did – Emap appointed web editors to handle the content online. Eventually they realized online was the best place to break news and that some stories would be held back for print.

Result – In 12 months Emap doubled unique users and page views rose 400%.

Graham Ruddick, NEC Group

Marketing

Dumb Idea – Allowing the art department to design your promotions or landing pages.

“Art” and “response” are different animals.

Christopher Moffa, Kiplinger

Marketing

Dumb Habit – We tried a new marketing campaign this year for one of our new books. We sent one to each of our 500 best customers as a “courtesy” to enable them to review the book and pay the invoice if they wanted to keep it.

Result – We received hundreds of calls from customers who were extremely upset about receiving a book they hadn’t ordered. We ended up letting everyone keep the books at no charge. This is definitely a campaign we won’t do again!

Robert Williford, EB Medicine

Publishing

Dumb Habit – Being scared of a 100% money-back guarantee.

Is your product that bad?

Result – It helps tremendously with the offer, and very few people take advantage of it.

Christopher Moffa, Kiplinger

Marketing

Failing to test something in every campaign.

Denise Elliott, Kiplinger

Publishing

Worst Practice – Thinking publishers and ad sales managers can effectively sell and renew site license deals

Solution – Hired lots of site license specialists and set clear rules for what publishers can and can't do

Louise White, Incisive Media

E-mail Marketing

Dumb Habit – Trying to be too clever in the subject line.

Buzz words are more important than a “turn of phrase.”Obama in the subject line about a healthcare conference boosted open rates 35%.

Christopher Moffa, Kiplinger

Editorial

Dumb Habit – We were printing a one-page “key points summary” with each of our monthly articles. It cost us thousands of dollars per year.

What we did – In January 2010 we stopped printing the summary and made it available online.

Result – There have been no complaints from subscribers and significant savings.

Jennifer Pai, EB Medicine

E-mail

Dumb Habit – Not checking to see if you’re blacklisted.

Deirdre Hackett, Kiplinger

You can find this list at:

gregkrehbiel.com/50dumbthings.pdf

Thank You for Your TimeThank You for Your Time