In a discussion over at LinkedIn’s Circulation Network Group, a networking group of mainly print publication circulation marketers, the question came up, “What are your conversion rates for trial issues marketed online?” Print newspapers, newsletters and magazines all now fairly routinely offer a trial print subscription online. However, most don’t require a credit card number for a trial — instead they rely on heavy follow-up marketing to close the deal and “convert” the trial to a paid subscriber.
The circulation execs in question cited ranges between 13-35% for this type of conversion, often dependent on how much marketing follow-up they invested in. Most said they used a combination of telemarketing and direct postal mail to get the conversion.
Worth noting, very, very few subscription sites (aside from high ticket b2b content) use any offline marketing to encourage conversions from trials to regular subscribers. Most just depend on email and hope for return site visits. Perhaps they should be a bit more proactive?
The good news is Outsell Inc’s 2008 B2B Trade Publishing Market Size Report, published in April 2009, showed 2008 wasn’t as bad a year as expected. B2B trade publications have seen a steady loss of ad dollars to Google for the past six years, and recessions are infamous for crushing trade show revenues. Yet, overall the market held steady. In this universe, holding steady might be counted as a major win.
I have a pet peeve about the way most “media analysts” cover b2b. For example, if you look at some online ad data from Price Waterhouse, you’ll see a small section called “b2b”. It’s not. Usually it’s personal finance and investing publications — with a mass consumer bent.
The $26 billion B2B trade publishing world includes trade shows, print magazines, online magazines, online directories and subscription offerings. That’s not including market research, reports and services — much of which is sold these days via online subscription to a database — which is in total an additional $33.1 billion market according to Outsell.
Look, I know consumer content and advertising is sexier. Almost every college marketing class in the country discusses Nike’s famous swoosh. They hardly ever mention b2b. That’s too bad. It’s worthy.
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