Selling subscriptions to online content may have slipped on the Internet hype meter, supplanted by Web 2.0 and a rebounding online advertising market, but being outside the spotlight didn’t diminish the excitement among industry execs who gathered for the seventh annual MarketingSherpa Selling Online Subscriptions Summit.
Several themes emerged throughout the event, along with key insights for the online subscriptions industry. Here are our top six take-aways:
1. Testing is essential
Josef Mandelbaum, CEO, AmericanGreetings.com, stressed the importance of creating a formal testing group but also suggested dividing that team between two goals:
- One to test small items that add incremental value
- The other to test big ideas that could have a huge impact
2. Make it easy for consumers
Whether you’re creating new products or coaxing existing customers to complete tasks, such as updating their credit card information, there’s huge value in reducing the customers’ pain.ForeclosuresDaily.com, a subscription-based service for real-estate investors, has grown its service 3000% since 2004 by aggregating publicly available foreclosure information. Instead of investors having to comb through filings at courthouses around the country, ForeclosuresDaily.com does the work for them, aggregating new filings to a searchable online database.
3. Affiliates and Web 2.0 influencers
Although some attendees raised questions about the value of affiliate marketing when selling subscriptions, several presenters discussed ways to make affiliates a powerful resource.One important tip is to protect your brand when employing affiliates with simple tests, such as making sure they all have adequate privacy policies. Figueredo said his team rejects 80% to 90% of affiliates who apply because they don’t a privacy policy in place. “Getting a couple of cheap orders through the channel isn’t worth it if your brand is damaged.�
4. Payment issues
Credit card expirations and charge-backs are a fact of life for subscription marketers, and presenters had their share of ideas to deal with the situation:Cynthia O’Brien, Director Consumer Marketing & Operations ConsumerReports.org, uses a system that tells subscribers when the credit card they have on file with the site has expired. One contact method was a home page intercept that alerts users that their card has expired when they log in and gives them a direct link to update their card information. 39% of the users who received the alert updated their cards.
5. Long copy vs short
From the very first presentation, attendees debated whether long marketing copy or short calls to action were more effective. Ari Gersen, Web Marketing Director, Boardroom Inc., said his team relies on long marketing letters and detailed promotional copy because the company’s newsletter subscribers have proven themselves to be readers.For more details, go here.
Photo by MSDesign.
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