Have a plan for implementing your database marketing strategy.
I don’t know why you chose a career in publishing, but for me, it has been my mission and my passion. I believe the information we provide our readers/users/customers really makes their lives better, and that conviction both excites and motivates me.
After more than 30 years in the business, having met and worked with literally thousands of journalists and publishers, I truly believe this is a primary motivator for most of my colleagues.
They aren’t simply focused on making money. If they were only interested in making money, they would have chosen another career path.
Nevertheless, publishing is not merely a public service. We live in a capitalist society. We recognize and applaud the profit motive.
Publishing, like all businesses, involves some financial risk. The entry stakes can be substantial. By the end of Year Two, the business plan usually requires a publication to achieve economic break-even or better.
These goals can be more easily attained by embracing the Mequoda Publishing System and by marketing your publication online to a targeted audience of enthusiastic users. But if revenue does not exceed expenses, your ability to serve any audience will eventually disappear.
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Content marketing principle #5: Maximize Customer Value
There are two aspects to maximizing subscriber value. The first, is contact frequency.
How many times per year will you contact the individuals in your database, via email, or phone, or website post, with a marketing offer that can generate revenue for your organization?
The first result you’ll measure is the amount of revenue you generate, per thousand names, either in direct product sales or through sponsorships.
The second result of primary importance is the number of subscriber names that opt out.
For convenience, we count the amount of revenue, and the number of opt-outs generated from any marketing message, in the “per-thousand” unit of measure. It’s easier to conceptualize $100 of revenue per 1,000 emails, than to imagine an average of 10 cents per subscriber name.
Similarly, generating 30 opt-outs per thousand is easier to conceptualize than .03 percent opt-outs per message sent. The values are equal, but the “per-thousand” is a more convenient metric.
How many times did you contact your subscribers during the year? How much revenue did that generate via your own products and through sponsorships, per effort? Multiply those two numbers and the product is the average, per-subscriber value.
Of course, every time you contact your customers, some will unsubscribe, and you will lose your ability and permission to communicate with those names in the future.
So, while every contact generates income, it also diminishes the size of the database. As a result, contact frequency, message targeting, message quality, and message segmentation are all important factors in maximizing customer value.
In my next blog post we’ll discuss content marketing principle #6: Empower Your Organization.
