Let Us Come to You! The Mequoda Marketing Secrets Workshop is Going on the Road
You don’t need me to tell you about all the challenges facing magazine publishers today—and, as you know, it didn’t just start yesterday.
Marketing. Circulation. Advertising. Production. Postage. Fulfillment. Customer Service. Revenue. Accounting. Websites. Technology. Hiring. Training. Retention (customers and staff). And
Since most magazine publishers are competing for these dollars and losing the battle, the need for revenue from subscriptions increases every day.
Attend Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop and Walk Away With a Powerful Playbook and Game Plan
Ever fear that your competitors are one step ahead of you? Or that you’re just falling behind on the latest and hottest magazine publishing trends?
Don’t let the competition eat your lunch—that’s where a new event comes in to help you
At Mequoda, we’ve crunched the numbers and discovered how beautifully email newsletters work to drive revenue. It’s not the traffic that comes to your site, which is the prevailing view among folks in all industries who jumped on the bandwagon early. Back in those days, it was all about impressions! Eyeballs on your page! After all, if they show up on your website, they’re bound to subscribe to your magazine, right?
Wrong.
Become the Next Great Success Story at Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop
If you’re a magazine publisher in the digital age, you’re certainly savvy enough to succeed. And perhaps you’re satisfied with your revenue and business growth as they are.
But do you know the secrets to boosting revenues by as much as 20% or more over
An effective technique in information marketing is “self-liquidating premiums”—having the value of the premiums exceed the entire purchase price.
For example, let’s assume you have a product, perhaps a downloadable ebook, with a list price of $49.95. You’re selling it online at a discounted purchase price of $29.95.
Meet the Experts at Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop
You might be wondering, how does one become a membership marketing expert? And how can these experts tell you how to run your company more profitably, without ever having walked a day in your shoes?
Widely recognized as the leader in membership marketing for magazine publishers, Mequoda Systems
Online magazine design has taken a number of steps forward in recent years, starting with the launch of the first-ever web magazine in 2014 called I Like Crochet. An online magazine, also known as a web magazine, is a premium publication that is read through a magazine subscription website. In our definition, it is not the same as the homepage of a magazine, where content is freely distributed, unless that content is metered by a paywall.
This Intense Two-Day Workshop Was Developed for Publishers Like You
Right now, we’re inviting only the most elite publishing executives to join us for an intimate two-day event—this must-attend event is only for those who are dying to know how your most direct competitors are succeeding online.
Does two days surrounded by like-minded peers, in a picturesque
These days, when people talk about newsletter best practices, they’re usually referring to free email newsletters, used as a marketing tool to drive inbound traffic to websites. But because some of us are old-time journalists here at Mequoda, we also think fondly of paid newsletters, a classic journalistic form that survives today in the digital era.
You’ve Been Gifted: $500 Off Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop, the publishing industry’s event of the year!
As a reader of Mequoda’s daily membership marketing secrets, you’re eligible to receive $500 off your registration to our Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop on May 20-21, 2020 when you accept our invitation to attend today.
This is THE event
These subscription business model facts will help you take a new look at your current approach to subscription marketing.
Most of the subscription business model facts you usually hear likely pertain to percentages and numbers that don’t apply to you and instead reflect someone else’s business. But the ten facts below give you permission to take a step
In digital marketing, you might have been told “free” is a dirty word. In subject lines, it could get you blacklisted (it won’t) or in social media, it’s over-used (free is still better than paid). However, giving away something for free is one of the best ways to start a relationship, and when it comes to selling products, this strategy has proven to be a huge asset to the marketing mix especially when the free product is assigned a value.
Web libraries, collections and editions provide a profitable opportunity for global subscribers, and for special-interest publishers.
“Our global audience is not interested in another local news source…Our signature journalism is the biggest draw.” These were the words of a former associate managing editor at The New York Times back in 2017 who also oversaw NYT Global. And despite
Secure your spot at this must-attend publishing industry event!
We are pleased to announce that the Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop is now open for registration.
This two-day workshop is intense—it’s not for the faint-of-heart, and it’s only for magazine publishing senior executives who have the vision and resources to grow their businesses. Those who want to
Magazines are designed to be read from front to back. They have covers and a table of contents. Magazines are arranged in a series of articles. Portals are not meant to be read from front to back, and are in no way linear. Users may begin on an article they found through search and hyperlink their way across the site in a matter of seconds. There is no true table of contents, although there is arrangement in the form of categories, topic pages and related articles.
So what is a digital magazine? It’s a bit of a hybrid.
Creating an abundance of value within your subscription products is the key to subscription marketing and transforming your publishing business in the digital age
From time to time, it’s a good idea to sit down and think about the value proposition you provide prospective buyers in your subscription marketing efforts. When you are running a Six Sigma
In subscription marketing, the type of magazine content you sell, matters. However, the strategies you use to sell it, work across niches and industries.
In our last bi-annual Mequoda Magazine Consumer Study, we discovered that out of all the paid types of magazine content available online, adults in the US pay for news, most. If you’re in
The best way to bring people back to your web magazine is through curated special collections. Here’s how one publisher is doing it well.
When walking in to a massive library or bookstore, it’s hard to decide what to look at without becoming instantly overwhelmed by all the possibilities. The same goes for an online web
We often hear about predictions for digital magazines; how they will grow, the revenue generation expected throughout the industry and the time frames associated with these numbers.
These predictions are important, as they help publishers better prepare for the future. What’s more interesting, however, is discovering how people who are already consuming digital magazines are enjoying their experiences.
5 Reasons to Attend Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop, the publishing industry’s event of the year!
Have you registered to attend the two-day Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop next spring, yet? It’s designed exclusively for magazine publishing senior executives who have the vision and resources to grow their businesses. Those who want to transform their organization into
“I simply don’t understand the opportunity,” one veteran magazine publisher told me at a recent industry conference. “My magazines are sponsor-driven. My issue archive includes hundreds of back issues. I have all these vendors and partners offering to digitize my back issue archive and make it available online. But I don’t have a clue how I make any money if I do it. Near as I can figure, my digital magazine archive is worthless.”
The magazine industry feels it is on the edge of a Renaissance. Digital magazines are the hot topic of industry events, digital magazine software platforms abound, and massive retail partners including Apple, Amazon, and Google are seducing magazine publishers with their siren songs.
“I simply don’t understand the opportunity,” one veteran magazine publisher told me at a recent industry conference. “My magazines are sponsor-driven. My issue archive includes hundreds of back issues. I have all these vendors and partners offering to digitize my back issue archive and make it available online. But I don’t have a clue how I make any money if I do it. Near as I can figure, my digital magazine archive is worthless.”
Join Us at Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop, the publishing industry’s must-attend event of the year!
So, where do I start to explain our Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop?
First, I should tell you up front what isn’t a secret—having a metered paywall at your website. Yes, thanks to many news-oriented publishers, metered paywalls have become commonplace
How to use web editions, collections and libraries to double your revenue
Are you still selling your magazine on one platform? Sure, print magazines smell good and even look good on a coffee table, but the most successful subscription and membership marketers we know are leveraging more than paper to increase profits.
What are they doing exactly? They’re
Last week I was emailing back and forth with my friend and colleague Jack Edmonston, who often sends interesting news my way with some thoughts to pontificate on. This time it was an article from Politico by Jack Schaefer called, “Do Readers Own the New York Times?” Although the article is about newspaper and not magazine subscribers, it’s an interesting concept to think about for our industry, too.
One of the biggest moving targets in Mequoda best practices is the metered paywall.
The biggest question we get is, how much free content is enough? And you have to be careful when you’re a special interest publisher comparing your own paywall model to the New York Times or the Financial Times who have historically given away a lot of free content. Why? Because they publish a lot more content than you. But even the New York Times recently scaled back from giving away ten articles, to giving away five articles, and their reasoning was to increase subscriptions.
In theory, it should be very easy to use basic subscription marketing principles and write a direct mail campaign for content that already exists, rather than content that does not. But we find that copywriters don’t typically love to work that way.
Twenty years ago, “above the fold” only referred to the upper half portion of a newspaper. Now, above the fold can be applied to many things, especially a website or web magazine, and the first screen of content a user will see when they go to your website.
How to write Spotlight emails that win your Six Sigma subscription marketing testing efforts
In the past we have reviewed how to use the concepts of Six Sigma in subscription marketing and testing and then creative offer testing for subscription pricing. We have shared the success that one of our publishing partners has experienced after launching a high-frequency
In the words of David Ogilvy, “a good advertisement is one that sells the product without drawing attention to itself.” And when selling a web magazine, one of the best ways to do so, is by giving away enough content that it basically sells itself, but not so much that visitors don’t convert into subscribers.
Over the past two decades, we’ve guided more than 300 niche publishers through the process of transforming themselves from legacy print publishers into multiplatform operations that often dominate their industry niche and generate operating margins that surpass those created by their legacy print business. Learn more about how we can help you apply these strategies
Meet Us in Plymouth and Learn
How to Double Your Publishing Revenue
Join other senior publishing executives at the Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop—where you’ll learn how to plan, execute, and optimize a profitable magazine-driven membership marketing system. And how to double your publishing revenue!
Secure your registration now, while seats are available and Early-Bird Registration is open.
Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020
Few things fascinate subscription website publishers more than the relationship between cost and revenue for the various operational centers inside their business. We have long known for instance, that editorial or product costs are typically 8 to 12% of revenue for a niche media business. The number can run higher for very small operations and lower for very large operations.
Using back-issues and other types of media to create a more robust and valuable magazine library
If magazine libraries and magazine memberships are being combined with magazine subscriptions to transform the publishing industry into a growth medium, magazine libraries are the nexus of this trend.
In this post, we’ll look at how two savvy magazine publishers have
How to use the principles of economic behaviorism, contrast pricing, and Six Sigma marketing to maximize magazine membership revenue and renewals
Earlier this week, we discussed how savvy publishers are combining their legacy magazine subscriptions with magazine libraries to create magazine memberships using the Internet.
Now we’ll we take a look at how publishers can use contrast pricing and the principles of economic
How to transform your magazine subscription business into a magazine membership business with one new product, and three new types of recycled content.
A magazine membership includes two components; a magazine subscription and a magazine library.
Magazine subscriptions, of course, are quite familiar to you if you are a magazine publishing company— they are the future
Join us in Plymouth, Mass., at the Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop
I’ll keep this to the point, because I know you’re busy. On May 20-21, 2020, you’ll find us at the castle in Plymouth, for our Membership Marketing Secrets: 2020 Workshop.
If you join us, you’ll be among the publishing industry’s elite—those who are ahead of
Did you know that a sunflower is not just one flower, but more than a thousand small flowers, all stuck together on one head and a single stalk? Even what seems like the petals of a sunflower are considered individual ray flowers.
You might consider a publisher’s website the same way. You see TIME.com and think, oh that’s TIME’s website. But in fact, it’s a subscription marketing system. The site isn’t built just to give away free content, it’s built to collect new subscribers and generate revenue. Its web magazine alone, time.com/magazine, is just one petal of the sunflower that is attracting and converting new magazine subscribers, both free (email) and paid (digital and print).
If you struggle with determining paywall pricing and strategy, you’re not alone.
In recent years, publishers have been testing paywalls, and for good reason. Hearst, for example, tested a paywall that changed based on what the reader was consuming. Instead of letting editors choose which content was free, and which was premium, the habits of first-time readers predict
Headlines have been brimming lately with news publishers like The New York Times, The Guardian and Wired taking back their profits with paywalls and paid content. The New York Times made 60% of last year’s revenue from subscription sales, The Guardian’s 800,000 subscribers are now accounting for more revenue than advertisers, and Wired has followed their lead by instituting a new $20 annual subscription. It’s clear that publishers are no longer afraid to charge for content, and subscription revenue goals are at the forefront. And I think there are three reasons for it.
Your membership site developer should be more than just a technological jester, they should be your sherpa.
If you’re a publisher, or are selling a subscription-based information product, it’s likely that at some point you’ll be looking for a new membership site developer. We know this because most of our clients have come to us after years
Three ways membership offers beat subscription marketing offers
We are big proponents of both web magazines and web libraries, plus various collections and special issues that can be derived from them to create robust membership products.
We recently had the privilege of taking over all membership and subscription marketing for a long time publishing partner and winner of numerous community awards.
Would you like to triple the response to your current email promotions and sales pages? Because that’s exactly what we’re seeing happen when publishers stop promoting their magazines and start promoting their web library.
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One of the biggest secrets to success in subscription marketing is leveraging the word “free” in your copy
Unlike most other marketers, those in subscription marketing can sell the same product at different prices each time it’s purchased. Our customers buy a new subscription from us at one price, and then we can use a different
How to turn single products into bundled subscription products that can be sold as a membership club for substantially higher profits
Some of your customers will want one of your products, and others will want more. But how many will buy the first and never return, and how can you generate continuous revenue through subscription products
If you think that your website should be the main driver of your revenue, think again. Email subscribers are responsible for between 60 and 80% of all digital revenue generation, while passing website visitors and social followers make up the balance.
Over and over again, we’ve found that passing website visitors don’t immediately turn into buyers. They simply remain
When walking in to a massive library or bookstore, it’s hard to decide what to look at without becoming instantly overwhelmed by all the possibilities. The same goes for an online web library for your magazine or newsletter, and if you aren’t effectively capturing subscribers’ attention regularly, renewal rates can slip. Reminding them of what they have access to on a regular basis can increase engagement, especially if you curate the content for them.
How to turn six email analytics metrics into a big picture about the performance and plans for digitally marketing your publication
When most people think of digital magazines, they narrow their focus on digital magazine apps that can be found in a digital newsstand or app store, but data shows that apps aren’t where users want to digest premium magazine content.
“We have used the Mequoda System to create five successful membership programs that leverage our 227-year-old brand and the many books, calendars and issues we produce."
- Paul Belliveau, Vice President New Media and Production, The Old Farmer’s Almanac
“We partnered with Mequoda to create two successful all-access membership programs that are completely independent of our legacy advertising driven business.”
- Stuart Hochwert, Founder and CEO, Prime Publishing
“Even though we are a digital-only publisher, we’ve been able to adapt the Mequoda strategies to dramatically increase our revenues in less than 12 months.”
- Hampton Stephens, Publisher, World Politics Review
“Our all-access membership program includes our print edition, our amazing New England Travel Library, and our new PBS television series. We may have been founded in 1935, but our current strategy is fully multiplatform and digital.”
- Brook Holmberg, Publisher, Yankee Magazine
"We leveraged the Mequoda System and software to create two new capstone membership programs that have reignited our revenue growth."
- Ed Coburn President Cabot Wealth Network
