January 10, 2001
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*** MarketingSherpa’s ContentBiz.com ***
Practical News & Case Studies on Marketing, Syndicating &
Selling Content Online
Jan 10, 2001 Volume 2, Issue 2
THANKS for telling your pals to get their own free
subscriptions at http://www.contentbiz.com P.S. Please only
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1. NEWS: Keen.com, Fearful Brits, YellowBrix & ScreamingMedia,
Largo, Germany's CampusBooks
2. More Headlines
3. CASE STUDY: How Moreover Got 100,000 Web Sites to Carry its
Headline News Service
4. INTERVIEW: CEO Brian Hecht Talks about Being a "Post-Bubble
Dot-Com CEO" and the Future of eNews
*****
NEWS
*****
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* Keen.com Helps Online Trade & Advisory Publishers Sell
Telephoned Consulting
Bill Bettancourt, VP Marketing for Keen.com, says he's eager
to help trade and advisory-topic publishers make more money
online by selling telephoned consulting. Here's how it works:
the publisher chooses a number of experts who wouldn't mind
answering visitor questions by phone, and adds "Call Now"
buttons and other promotions to its site. Keen.com then
powers the buttons, enabling visitors to select and phone the
experts while collecting cash for billable minutes. The
experts, Keen and publishers all split the receipts.
While Bettancourt couldn't give any specific numbers, he did
say this arrangement, "can be very lucrative." Potential
partners can contact Keen's VP Biz Dev, John Somorjai at
john@keen.com. He's most interested in working with consumer
legal, health, financial and B-to-B publishers.
http://www.keen.com
* Survey Shows British Business Publishers Still Wary of
Syndication
Survey results from Grist Online, an Internet content
consultancy in the UK, reveal that less than a quarter of
Britain's business publishers are distributing content via
resellers and syndicators, although this is common practice
among their American counterparts.
Grist Online claims Brits can add 5-10% to their direct
revenues by syndicating, which would represent a significant
contribution to the bottom lines of publishers operating on
typically thin margins. However publishers may be fearful of
the risks of sales cannibalization. Grist Online hopes to
spread the pro-syndication word with a new report,
"Cannibalization or free lunch?" which is available for free
at the link below.
BTW: how does Grist know so much? Co-Founder Andrew Rogerson,
was formerly in charge of content distribution for the
Economist Intelligence Unit.
http://www.gristonline.com/bestpractice/story1.asp
* Leading Online Content Syndicators Uninterested in Deals
with Smaller Publishers
Representatives of both YellowBrix and ScreamingMedia have
confirmed they are not interested in carrying content from
smaller publishers. ScreamingMedia, which has not always been
as picky, recently changed rules to only accept new deals with
publishers providing at least 10 stories a day. YellowBrix VP
Product Development, Andrea Buckley told ContentBiz, "Some
smaller publishers I won't do deals with." She was careful to
add that YellowBrix will help site clients integrate content
from smaller publishers they've done deals with directly.
So, it looks like more and more these days smaller publishers
will need to do their own content syndication deals. And Web
sites depending on syndicators for content, may get a
progressively more mainstream product.
ContentBiz will feature exclusive interviews with executives
from ScreamingMedia and YellowBrix in next week's issue.
http://www.yellowbrix.com
http://www.screamingmedia.com
* APDI Largo's 10X Rate Hike Takes Clients by Surprise
APDI Largo, an ASP used by more than a dozen subscription-
based print publishers to manage many aspects of their online
fulfillment and marketing, sent a letter to all clients last
week announcing pricing hikes reportedly up to ten times more
than clients previously paid. One client, who requested to
remain anonymous, said, "I'm angry. This is a complete
surprise, and in violation of their contract with us. I think
they're just doing this because they are running out of cash."
APDI Board Member Tim Baskerville was quick to point out, that
while unexpected, this price increase is the first since Largo
was launched more than two years ago, during which time its
services have substantially expanded and improved. He said,
"One metric should put it in perspective: Two years ago Largo
users received perhaps 10,000 e-mails a month as part of the
"Data Finds You" personalized-push service. Now more than a
half-million e-mails are sent per month--each of them unique,
mapping specific teaser-content to specific users. That takes
more infrastructure to support."
Perhaps the pricing problem is less one of value-for-money,
and more one of corporate communication skills.
Largo: http://www.apdi.net/
* Germany's CampusBooks Medien AG Seeks Investors
Jürgen Reuter, Director Business Development for CampusBooks
Medien AG contacted ContentBiz regarding last week's 2001
Predictions Report saying, "I am astonished that nearly every
prediction you made has been taken into account in our
business plan." Must be one heck of a plan.
Reuter also let us know he's currently seeking outside
investors "to pour some money in." In this dot-com (or should
we say dot-de?) unfriendly climate, our sympathy goes out to
him. Interested parties can contact Reuter at
partner@campusbooks.de.
http://www.campusbooks.de
*****
MORE MARKETINGSHERPA.COM HEADLINES
*****
* How to Avoid the Most Common Myths and Blunders of Search
Engine Optimization
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1310
* Top 10 B-to-B Internet Marketing Tactics That Worked Best in
2000
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1300
* Special Report: Best Practices in Internet Marketing to
Small Businesses
http://www.marketingtosmallbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1309
* eFinance 2001 Outlook & Internet Marketing Trends Report
http://www.financialmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1303
* View past ContentBiz.com issue archives at:
http://www.contentbiz.com/archives.cfm
*****
CASE STUDY: MoreOver.com
*****
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* How Moreover Got 100,000 Web Sites to Carry its Headline
News Service
CHALLENGE
Business news headline distributor, Moreover,
launched in May 1999 with a big goal -- to get thousands of
Web sites to carry its headlines -- but a very small marketing
budget. (In fact the company received its first substantial
round of funding more than a year later in June 2000.) Thomas
Korte, Moreover's Director of Marketing told us how he and his
hardy band of marketers got the word out.
CAMPAIGN
After finding that banners were "too expensive as an
acquisition tool if you're not selling a high-priced product,"
Korte created a four-point strategy making the most of the
viral aspect of the Web.
1) Partnerships with sites Webmasters frequent: Korte offered
a variety of incentives to popular Webmaster destination sites
such as SitePoint.com, in order to get them to recommend
Moreover to their visitors. Incentives included free email
list hosting, a co-branded version of the Moreover Web-feed
wizard, and sometimes a straightforward cash payment of $1.30-
$2.00 per sign up.
2) Key site outreach: Korte's team proactively recruited sites
they determined to be highly influential ones in particular
industry verticals Moreover was trying to penetrate.
3) Viral call to action: As you may have noticed, the last
line of every Moreover news feed as seen on host sites
contains a hotlinked call to action such as "Put these
headlines on your site."
4) Aggressive personal email outreach: Korte hired two
staffers to spend 100% of their time identifying and emailing
hundreds of sites that should join the system. He stresses,
"We tried not to make it spam. We don't use a form letter.
They write a new letter every time they send one out. And we
try to find a name to email rather than just
webmaster@domainname.com"
Korte also implemented an integration support plan mid-way
though 2000 to increase the percent of webmasters who actually
implemented the headlines on their sites after they signed up
to do so. The plan included two follow-up emails to further
explain how to use the system; a biweekly "Web Tool Watch"
email newsletter; and a monthly palm pilot "Best Integration
of the Month" giveaway award.
In addition he did something so simple, yet essential that
many sites forget to do it. He looked over the shoulders of
typical implementers as they went through the process on
Moreover's site. He says, "I wanted to see for myself where
do people drop out and why do they drop out." Then Korte had
the design team change the interface to make things even
easier.
RESULTS
As of January 2001, about a year after the webmaster
outreach project started, 400,000 sites have signed up to
carry headlines and 100,000 of them have actually implemented
it.
The partner program bought in about 30%. Key sites and
general viral messages bought in about 30%. The remaining 40%
were from the email outreach program.
Korte's integration promotions have been equally successful.
He's seen a definite increase in the percent of sites that
implement after signing up. In fact, after simplifying the
interface, the number of webmasters who completed literally
doubled!
Example of a partner's co-branded version of the Moreover
Wizard
http://w.moreover.com/wizard
http://www.moreover.com
http://www.sitepoint.com
*****
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Brian Hecht, eNews
*****
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We remember back in 1994 when the eNews biz dev team was going
around cap in hand, trying to convince publishers that a Web-
based virtual newsstand could amount to something. Many
scoffed then, but these days eNews rules its niche of the Web.
Every single major US magazine publisher sells subscriptions
online through eNews, which carries over 100,000 titles.
ContentBiz spoke with CEO Brian Hecht to find out what's next
in this post-bubble Web world.
Q: Who are your biggest sales partners?
Hecht: BarnesandNoble.com. They are also one of our owners,
although it's worth noting they bought in after we'd been
working for over a year and a half. The BN.com account
receives senior management time -- our Chief Marketing Officer
and other marketers work on special programs and promotions.
We actually maintain their magazine site on our servers,
although it looks like theirs, and have one and half designers
just doing Web design and maintenance on it. Plus there are
technical and transactional people on the back end. So
there's the equivalent of five-six people just working on that
relationship. These are fixed costs that don't have to go up
as sales go up.
Since BN.com added the magazine section in late '98, my gut is
that the one trend on the BN site is people search a lot.
It's caused us to make sure our search capability is really
intuitive. If they do a common typo, for example if they
spell Playboy, "Playbyo", we don't both showing them the
search result page with "Playbyo" we just take them there.
Q: How's your relationship working with business publication
newsstand, Rowe.com?
Hecht: Our integration with Rowe.com is still a little
awkward. Our logic for the starting the relationship was to
provide our users with the broadest choice possible. The
first choice would be to do so in a seamless environment, but
it's probably not worth the dedicated resources. Sure we
could work a year to make a great integrated environment, but
it's not a sensible resource allocation. So, in general it
bolsters our claim that we have every magazine, but someone
looking for a business journal is going to have to click two
extra times to find it.
Q: You've been testing carrying non-magazine subscription
products such as newspapers and print newsletters. How's that
going?
Hecht: It's safe to say we're dabbling. We go through an
awful lot of effort and expense to attract targeted users to
the site to buy magazines. It only makes good business sense
to see what else they might buy from us. We are definitely
exploring plans for other thematic items, but we're cautious.
Like all other direct marketing companies we like to test
before we launch. There will probably be new things in 2001
but we haven't committed yet.
In terms of sales, they are exceeding expectations, but
expectations were very low! We're not getting anyone who
balks at the concept of our selling them. However, the
underlying economics for newspapers and newsletters are that
the margins are not as compelling for us. So, we're looking
to see if consumers like it. There hasn't been organ
rejection, but we're not changing our business model just yet
to go for it.
Q: What about the whole free email newsletter marketplace?
There are an increasing number of newsletter publishers who
are willing to pay for qualified opt-ins.
Hecht: We're interested in it, more in a sense of providing a
complete solution to the consumer. We experimented with it a
few times. The economics are not as compelling as consumer
magazines.
We're also cautious about it because free email newsletters
fit into a different slot than paid magazines on paper. I
think there's a difference in perceived value by the consumer,
and if we've made our niche on $20 paids it confuses the value
proposition. If there are some breakout titles consumers
think of in the same breath as the best, biggest magazines, we
haven't found those yet. And technically it's a little
difficult....
Boy! I really sound like a post-bubble dot-com CEO. A year
ago I would have said, "Oh we're going whole hog into this."
Now you have to focus on what you do best, and be sparing in
expanding to concepts a little further away from your core
strength.
Q: Are you considering competing with FreeBizMags who put
controlled circ trade magazine newsstands on business sites?
Hecht: I don't know if we are going to be. The model is
intriguing in paper but real execution might be a difficulty.
It's an interesting idea. I'm happy to have them pay to
experiment with it -- and if it turns into a profitable
business idea, we'll be happy to try our own spin on it.
Q: You guys are famous for the aggressiveness of your
affiliate program. How many do you have now and how's it
working?
Hecht: 85,000 -- which is a lot for a site that's not Amazon!
On any scale, though, it's easy to find affiliates and really
hard to find great affiliates.
About 10-20% of our affiliates are active sellers and my guess
is that's in line with the industry standard, maybe a little
higher. We break up accounts scientifically on a graph and
treat it like any other type of account management. One-two
people specialize in the top 20 sites, another two people go
for 20-120 and two more people for 121 on down. We also have
someone whose specialty is taking sites that aren't selling
and getting them to sell. Often it's because they haven't
built in the newsstand yet.
Q: What types of tactics would you use to help affiliates
raise sales?
Hecht: Some affiliate sites have a big opt-in email list they
send a newsletter to. They might put magazines in there as a
category -- but marketing magazines for circulation is a
particular craft. We have people on staff who know how to do
it well. An email newsletter about pets might just repeat
what's on our site about related magazines. But if it's worth
the time and effort, our marketers can actually craft custom
offers and work with publishers to get a custom offer that
will really fuel sales.
For example, if you say "Subscribe to Dog Fancy" you'll get a
very low response. When you say, "Try Dog Fancy free for 90
days money-back-guarantee and get this exclusive free gift: a
Dog Fancy dog collar" you'll get much higher response rates.
Q: Aside from your affiliate deals and BN.com partnership,
what tactics are you using to drive traffic to your site?
Hecht: We do very little pure advertising now. We rely on our
marketing partners with whom we have sensible business
relationships. It's almost always a revenue share arrangement
with the host property and almost never a paid ad arrangement.
We still work with all the big portals in one way or another.
However, the incarnation of the deals in the original press
releases have all been terminated or phased out. For example,
we prefer to work on a campaign basis with Yahoo. If they see
an opportunity, we run the numbers like a direct mail campaign
to see if the deal makes financial sense. Sometimes it does
and sometimes it doesn't.
Q: What are the demographic differences between people who buy
magazine subscriptions online and people who buy offline?
Hecht: The most shocking thing is they're almost the same.
Demographics are converging.
Q: Do you revert to snail mail for renewals?
Hecht: When we sell a magazine, the publisher turns off the
regular renewal series. You should never receive a piece of
paper in the mail. We offer easy continuous renewal service
that's very clearly explained online. Almost all our sales
are on a 'til forbid basis. We always send an email letter
with a link in case they want to cancel 30 days before we
recharge a card. Very few people cancel.
Q: How are sales going?
Hecht: Our sales are showing astronomical year-over-year
growth. If I can just keep this up, then great!
http://www.enews.com
*****
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