Co-Marketing: Teaming Up to Drive Revenue

Have you started working with marketing partners to help drive traffic and/or revenue to your business? If not, you are leaving money on

Have you started working with marketing partners to help drive traffic and/or revenue to your business? If not, you are leaving money on the table! Even if you are a small shop, marketing partnerships can make a big difference for your business. Diane Pierson will outline the basics of marketing partnerships. Diane will draw on her experience helping top publishers expand their subscriber bases by working with other publishers.

In this one hour webinar – we will cover:

What is Co-marketing?
What types of partnerships should you consider?
Examples and case studies of different types of marketing partnerships
How do you start a partnership program?
Who is your target as a marketing partner and why?
What is the right way and the wrong way to do a marketing partnership, including sharing email lists!

ON DEMAND WEBINAR

TRANSCRIPT:

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Hello everybody. Welcome to Subscription Site Insider’s Co-Marketing 101: Teaming Up to Drive Revenue webinar. Hello. I am Kathy Greenler Sexton and I am the CEO and Publisher of Subscription Site Insider.

Diane Pierson: Hello.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: I’m here with Diane Pierson and I’ll get back to introducing Diane in just a second. If you don’t know Subscription Site Insider, we are a business focused on helping other businesses with subscription based products to basically run and operate their businesses more effectively. This is a webinar that helps do that and it’s focused on the subject of marketing partnership to help you drive more traffic and more revenue. The level of this webinar is a basic level, but we will be having Q&A to answer any and all basic and advanced questions at the end. Speaking of questions and answers, if you have any questions, there is a chat box to the right of the slides, so please put in any questions that you might have and we will answer your questions during or at the end of the webinar.

This webinar is being recorded and for all attendees, we will send you a link to the on-demand version after the webinar. That’s it for all my introductory remarks. I would actually like to now introduce Diane. Diane Pierson is Principal of Wheels-up Innovation. During her career in product management and marketing, Diane has delivered over $100 million in revenue opportunity to publishers and information companies that include Dun & Bradstreet, Verticalnet, LexisNexis, American Lawyer Media, and Copyright Clearance Center. Her efforts are recognized with numerous CODiE and Markham awards and more than one appearance in KMWorld’s list of trending products, trend-setting products.

Today, Diane’s an authority in marketing innovation and products. She is the Managing Principal of Wheels-up Innovation, a contractor consultancy enabling revenue growth through proven methods of finding and delivering market opportunities. She’s also a Principal of Innovation at Boundless Markets, a team of experts who mine data to deliver revenue-producing product and marketing insight. Her experience includes direct and indirect experience in co-marketing. In her role as a marketer, Diane creates alliances to market her products and specifically in her role at Infogroup and with Wheels-up Innovation, she has assisted other publishers in creating and executing on co-marketing strategies. Diane, welcome to our event here today.

Diane Pierson: Thank you so much Kathy. Thank you for inviting me to speak to your group. This is very exciting. I don’t know if you folks know Kathy’s illustrious history, but you probably seen her programs when she was working with the SIIA. She’s just a truly dynamic, resourceful, and valuable individual and I’m so pleased to be working with her today and know that you’re all going to be very thrilled with what she does with Subscription Site Insiders.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Thank you.

Diane Pierson: Thank you again for inviting me. We’ll go ahead and begin.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: If I can advance. There you go.

Diane Pierson: Okay. Today, we’re going to cover some very basic topics on co-marketing. First of all, what is it? Just so that we’re all working from the same definition. There are always several differences, so we’ll talk specifically about what we mean by co-marketing. Then, what are the options for co-marketing because there are a lot. Specifically, because so many of them come back to email, we will have a special discussion just about some of the high points on email that you really ought to be aware of before you approach co-marketing with a partner. How do you prepare to approach a partner? How do you prepare to begin to co-market? Finding those right partners. Then, how do you take your first steps and how do you measure success?

What is co-marketing anyway? When Kathy and I were talking about this, she said, “You know I had this boss, she said it was other people’s money,” and I said, “That’s kind of a good phrase to use because it’s also barter.” I think that that’s one of the things to think about when you’re thinking about co-marketing and what it is versus what it’s not. That is, it has to do with trading skill sets to keep cost down for mutual benefit. It’s reciprocal. It can be advocacy or endorsement. It can also be brand extension. It can be marketing or sales or customer service or education. It’s barter-oriented and it’s “give to get”. If you’re paying, whether it’s cost per lead, cost per click, cost per impression, if you’re paying for space on someone else’s website or publication, that’s not co-marketing.

The benefits of co-marketing especially for a smaller publication are phenomenal and probably pretty intuitive. It’s going to expand your visibility. It’s going to tie you to somebody else’s brand so that by doing so, the brands of both of you are even stronger. It also gives you an opportunity to engage your own subscribers with extended values, so you may not be an expert in one area, but if you partner with somebody who is, you’re providing added value to your existing subscribers and building a loyalty. It’s an opportunity to address an audience that’s already bought in to another subscription or another product. This audience is already got a relationship with the person you co-market with, so that’s just a great added benefit because they’re ready to listen because the people they know have bought you in to talk to them.

Again, the key here is, there are no placement costs. You may, at some point, share revenue. Some of the examples that we’ll have later. Some of these options include co-registration or co-subscription, which is basically product bundling, sponsoring events, create embedded offerings, so your offering meets within somebody else’s or vice versa. One of the very common ones is list-sharing and probably something everybody thinks of right away when they think of co-marketing. We’ll talk a little bit about that. Maybe advertising inserts, ad swaps, or it may be again that co-sharing of education, knowledge, content. It might be an endorsement. You may well have knowledge or somebody else may have knowledge that you feel really comfortable saying, “Hey, you know what, these are the folks you should go to for that,” and then hopefully, convincing them to do the same for you.

One of the questions is how do I choose among all these options? It’s because everything’s on the table for co-marketing, how do I pick? We’re going to go through these on more depth, but knowing what your goals are is very important. Start in there by saying, “What I’m trying do with co-marketing is to build awareness of my product. I’m very new. My subscription is brand new. I don’t have a lot of subscribers yet.” Or, “My subscriber base is very deep in, for example, the legal community, but I could really reach out to pharmaceuticals too because I that’s a great extension.” As you start to understand what your roles are, some of these are going to come off the list and some of them are going to pop up as real opportunities.

The other thing we always have to remember when we’re co-marketing is, it’s not a one-way street. Yes, it’s other people’s money. Yes, it’s something for at least a little bit less expensive versus nothing, but there is a give to get. What can you give? What do you have to offer? Because if you’re going to approach somebody, you should come bearing gifts. Think about what it is you have to offer the person you’re approaching. I’ll tell you, one of the things that I always tell smaller clients is, “Copy the big guys.” They’re not really doing anything we can’t do. It’s just that they pay a lot of people sitting around thinking about it when we’re probably out doing everything for our businesses and just don’t have a bandwidth. Be inspired by what you see the larger publisher’s doing. Can it be done? Can you do it? The answer is probably yes.

Lots of options. Just to give you a couple of examples of some of these options, and again, a lot of them are bigger companies, bigger publishers, bigger product companies because they’re already doing so much as this, but we do have some example of smaller companies doing this all the time that are very successful. I recently moved to Austin, Texas and I’m really excited about it. One of the things my husband and I were doing is sitting down and reading good old print newspaper. Now, we also read a lot of online. Particularly, my husband reads the Wall Street Journal online all the time. We have a lot of online and print publications.

What we noticed when we got down here was the Wall Street Journal weekend edition was plotted right into the Austin American-Statesman. This is something you can do both in a hard copy, but also virtually. Though the virtual application just doesn’t look as good, frankly, on a visual example, but the Austin Statesman and the Wall Street Journal weekend edition are tied very closely together in a very natural progression workflow online. Both online editions and the print editions are doing this. Now again, these are two very big examples, but could you do this? Absolutely.

The other way is that you can partner with publications is either to endorse someone or to be endorsed. Now, again, this is something that is very popular within large publishers who have multiple in-prints, multiple publishing houses that’s published under multiple brands, but it can be done by two separate organizations, again, just as easily. You reach out, you approach somebody and if there’s a good fit, you can endorse each other. At Copyright Clearance Center, we actually did us a great deal with many organizations including SIIA, Outsell, Free Pints. I’m doing this right here today with Kathy and Subscription Site Insider. Anybody can do this. It’s not hard.

When you do this, you ask yourself, “Where am I a leader? Where do I have subject matter expertise? What kind of value do I add? What’s my story in the first place for the subscription that I’m offering today?” Whatever that is, it’s your bargaining chip. If you call that with your best audience, you say, “You know, I’m really reaching the scientific community today. I’m really reaching specifically medical science. This looks lovely, they know me. I know these other folks are trying to reach that same market, not the same way I am, but it might be a great fit.” If you can walk up to them and say, “You know, this is what I think the opportunity is and here’s what I’m willing to offer you.” It can be a win-win. If somebody else has a larger scope, a larger visibility to that audience, it’s a great fit. Just so …

Kathy Greenler Sexton: I think that’s an important point Diane. A lot of people on this webinar has expertise that they could lend, so when you’re thinking of your assets, don’t limit yourselves to just your product, expand outside that box and think of your personal expertise or your team’s expertise that might be able to help you achieve awareness, branding, and traffic beyond just your product asset. I think that’s a tremendous point Diane.

Diane Pierson: I think so too, Kathy. I mean, especially when you’re just starting out with the subscription business, you’ve got a lot of value to add. Some of that, you may want to distribute out with some potential partners who can give you the visibility you need. That’s not just with endorsements, but it’s with co-sponsored webinars. This particular example shows HubSpot and Twitter. Again, very big companies we’ve all heard of and some of you are doing this already. I can think of a small business example. I wonder of anybody else can. This is a very, very good way for you to create content that is both participative sort of event where people are coming in listening live, but then also, to put it off on your subscription site either before or behind your firewall so that people can see your expertise and again drive that visibility both for your company and your partner.

Co-registration or bundling of products, this is not particularly good example, but basically, if you know somebody who’s offering a subscription or even if it’s a … whether it’s free or paid, if during their validation process, they offer subscriptions to other similar types of publications or complementary publications as part of their registration process, this may be an option for you. Some people like this, some people don’t, but basically if I’m signing up for ABC subscription and during that registration process, once I filled out my information, some companies and publishers are willing to say, “Hey, you know what, here are some valued vendors that we are willing to show to you because we think they’re good enough for you to possibly be interested in.” It may be products. It may be subscriptions. It may be services. It could be really anything, but frequently they offer a list, it’s a checkbox and you can always do that. It’s an option.

Don’t forget product partners. When we partner with other subscriptions, I think it’s great for all of us because it illustrates the power of the subscription and subscriptions bending together. It reaches readers. I mean, people who read whether it’s online in-prints, podcasts, whatever the venue is, readers read and so that’s always a very logical extension in co-marketing, but don’t forget product partners. In this example, you’re a wine-love subscription and you want to subscribe or co-market with events or distributors of wine or even distributors of beer, something like that. You can certainly work with product companies. Often, they’re interested in reaching your audience as well.

I’m not going to go through these. These are basically the same sort of thing. What I will say and I know that this is something we all think about, we certainly don’t want to be endorsing products if we’re also writing about them or being critical, that is something to think about certainly. There may be areas where that isn’t going to be an issue. You just have to think through what you’re looking for and what makes sense. Just got this yesterday, an email from Direct Marketing News. It was a giant publication with Yes Mail. Again, this is something that is sort of an endorsement. It’s sort of a publication. It’s a little bit of both, but because I am already sort of a subscriber of this marketing news, this is something they thought might be of interest to me.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: So, the corollary for the people participating is maybe some of their vendors, maybe other types of technology or content vendors or other partners you might be able to strike up some co-marketing deal or arrangement of some sort to be able to do these things because your customers might be interested in this.

Diane Pierson: Yeah. I think that one of the things … For example, if you are a publication that writes reviews on the equipment used in an engineering process, for example, its heating and cooling systems or temperature gauges or whatever it happens to be, if you’re writing a subscription on those types of products, you’re probably not going to want to partner with those folks, but you might want to partner with your subscription or a provider of software for their organization. Maybe it’s materials management software. Maybe it’s customer software or maybe it’s Yes Mail installed because they sell into those markets. You could certainly work with those companies without the conflict of interest. That’s a good question. Thanks Kathy.

Now, for many of these things we’ve talked about, whether they’re co-sponsorships, they’re webinars, they start with email. Chances are, whatever you come up with as your strategy for co-marketing and whoever you approach, it’s going to come down to, we need to market this, we need to send out an email. I think we’re all aware of the fact that email over the past, oh gosh, really 15 years, the rules are changing all the time, the values and the culture of email recipients has been evolving and changing very rapidly. Is it good to send an email? Is it bad to send an email? What’s the right way to send an email? It looks like Kathy, I think you’re having a webinar and this is a deep dive in mid-November, correct?

Kathy Greenler Sexton: That’s right. There are a lot of things that if you are co-marketing and sending email on behalf of a partner, you need to be thinking about with CAN-SPAM, European Privacy Laws, the newer Canadian laws, so you need to keep in mind how to do that effectively with the proper opt-out. On November 18th, we are going to be having an email focus webinar and I’ll be putting that link on the thank you followup for everybody, so you can just sign up if you’re interested in.

Diane Pierson: Right. I think that that’s something that’s … Anybody who’s interested in co-marketing, anybody who’s looking to build subscriptions is going to want to know about the CAN-SPAM rules, about cultural aspects of what works and doesn’t work in email. The obvious benefit, of course, is that everybody is using email. Even young people, even people who are very mobile, very social, use Facebook all the time. Almost everybody is using email at some point during their daily life. If you’re a B2B publication, that even more true. Social media is very, very valuable in social interactions. Email is still the mode of communication internally and most importantly, externally with the world, that people are still using and they still are expecting and are accepting email marketing. It’s something, again, it’s a little bit different when you’re B2C versus B2B.

You need to be a little bit more careful. So many people are in email so much of the time that it is critical to use email and build email acquisition processes, but to be careful when you do it. One of the places you can go right away to look for information, although like any regulatory site is a little dense, but business.ftc.gov is good. If you just Google CAN-SPAM, you’ll see a lot of helpful information. You can speak to your vendors if you’re purchasing email addresses at this point, if you’re doing email deployments, they can certainly help you out. Again, I would recommend coming to the SSI webinar next month.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Yeah. We have tools and information on email marketing if anybody is interested. I would also recommend purchase list and traded list, there’s very … For the most sophisticated companies, it doesn’t matter if they’re small, medium or large, they’ll use their email service provider for their known opted-in list and then they leverage other strategies to make sure that whatever list they’re trading or have gotten out through their own direct access and permission that there’s services that can help you send out your communications to them. It’s gotten fairly complicated but just keep in mind, and we can certainly send you information on that if you have any questions.

Diane Pierson: Yeah. Kathy, I think the thing that you mentioned there, it is complicated and it’s a little scary, and I think that that’s sort of make people a little bit frightened of doing it. It’s like, “Oh gosh. I don’t need … The last thing I need is to be labeled a spammer.” The companies you can work with, and they work with small subscribers all the time. I mean, most emails are deployed through some sort of software or possibly even a third party. It’s very complex, but that’s why as a general rule, you may rely on somebody else to help you with it. It is something that’s at least reasonably cost effective. If you’re working on a co-marketing program, again, if you’re providing the content and they’re providing the list, as long as you’re working with a good partner, then we’ll talk a little bit about that in a few minutes.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Or the partner can send it to their list as well. That’s always an option.

Diane Pierson: Yeah.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: That’s the easiest way to do it, actually.

Diane Pierson: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Okay.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: It really depends on the partner and the business arrangement you have.

Diane Pierson: Very much so. Yeah, I agree. We talked about this a little bit a few minutes ago, but before you begin, it’s the work you do ahead of time that’s going to make this successful or be very … result in co-marketing efforts that are very frustrating for you. Taking the time to think about what it is you have to offer and putting that story together for a co-marketing partner versus your subscriber base really saying, “Here’s what I can offer a partner. Here’s what I’m bringing to the table and here’s what my goals are. My goals are to grow in this market. My goals are to extend into a new market, whatever it may be.” Articulating those goals in a Word document or some place in the plan is a good idea. That way you’ll have it.

You can look at it. You can come back to it. Be very sure you’re willing to give to get. If you’re going to ask someone to send out one of your whitepapers for example or a description of your subscription and what you offer to their clients, are you willing to do the same for them? Are you willing to open up your client-base to what they offer? That may not always be what’s requested but probably it’s what’s going to be requested and so you should be prepared and really think about if you’re ready to do that.

That should always be the filter you put on partnerships because you never want to of course work with somebody who’s directly competitive to us. What about those complementary? Whether it’s again subscriptions or products. Create that story. Once you looked at these things and you feel comfortable with them, create the story. This is marketing to your co-marketers. Definitely, it’s something you want to think about and be prepared to sell what you’re trying to present to them and what you’d like to have. I believe we have a hand raised. Kathy, are you …

Kathy Greenler Sexton: I’m going to ask the person who raised their hand just to submit the question to the chat box.

Diane Pierson: Okay. I think this is an important bullet too is this here at the last, we could just sort of skip over it, but like any marketing programs, this kind of relationship will take time. You want to put a contact together. You want to make sure that everybody’s very clear on what the expectations are, and we’ll walk through some of the questions you should ask. Prepare to give this at bit of time to see if it’s working. It takes many many impressions as we all know to start to be even part of the decision process and to be become aware of your subscription. It’s going to take a while. It’s going to take multiple email, multiples events. The relationship is going to have to grow and develop. Be willing to put some time into this, let’s say at least a year, to see if it works.

This is kind of a basic slide, but I just think it was important just to illustrate when you’re trying to think about who you’re trying to reach and who might be optimal partners for you, it may not be a direct line up with your market. I mean, if your subscriber is a male wine-lover in California, you certainly want more of the same and you’ll probably be able to find many people, many potential partners who can get you more of the same. Of course, you probably could reach out to males and females who are foodies or maybe you talk to someone who has gaming subscription because they might be the type of gaming subscriptions that either these men or their children are interested in.

Take a minute or two when you’re going through this thought process to just think about all the relationships that can come out of your actual subscriber, whoever your core is. You can do the same thing in B2B. Again, if you are creating and your subscription is all about reviews and evaluations of electrical equipment, there’s probably a legal audience, there’s probably a human resources audience, there are probably other people around what you do who, first of all, have subscriptions of their own that you can co-market with who are also talking to a similar audience or maybe a very complementary audience to what you have today. Think about these relationships as you’re starting to think about what you’re going to do.

A good way to do this is competitive analysis or tracking software. If you want to find out, for example, who is offering industrial legal services or wine events, whatever it may be, just take a look at Alexa.com, type in a very common site or Compete.com, what it will show you is for example, what sites did people who visited that site go to before they came there? You’ll start to see the patterns of who’s related to whom, even though that’s not necessarily the intention of the Alexa software or the Compete software. Another good way is to just Google it. If you can think of a partner off the top of your head but you want to find five or six more like it, just Google it.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Yeah. One of my favorite tricks in Google is to use the pay-per-click tool to do research on where to find different companies and different demographic profiles. You can understand if you know that about your audience, that’s great. If you don’t, you can certainly use web analytics software or other means to understand your profile and your target. With Google and the pay-per-click tool, you can research and find what other websites and companies that are online or mobile can use that. You could also even do some research via hashtag searches and other things. There’s a lot of different ways online through the tools Diane mentioned and social to really find potential matches to what your particular goals will be.

Diane Pierson: I think that’s great Kathy. Asking others is always a good way to find new tips and tricks. Just as Kathy and I were walking through the presentation, we were sharing ideas and it’s kind of nice just to talk to somebody because everybody has different tricks that they use different ideas and thoughts and so the more you start having these conversations, the more you’re going to find out about good ideas for co-marketing and finding the right partners. Like any partnership, it has to be a good fit. It’s not just about the complementary audiences, but it’s also about the responsibility in reaching out to those audiences. You definitely want to work with somebody who you feel comfortable working with and they have to be willing to give as well as get.

If you’re talking to people who just don’t seem to be very willing to share, they’re probably not a good candidate for you in the co-marketing opportunity. When you start telling them the story you crafted, do they jump in with a complementary piece of a story? Are they excited? Are they able to see the vision and then build on it? From an emotional perspective, those are very important things to have in your corner. The other things you need to think about are, if not the legal, the regulatory aspects of what you are about to do. You are about to send out emails or communications or solicit clients who probably don’t know who you are and so you need to make sure that they have a good feel for CAN-SPAM.

They have a do-not-send list that you ask specific questions or have somebody who you’re working with ask them for you about their policies, procedures. Take a look at the sample list that they have. Does the data look clean? Does it look good? Are you spotting a lot of odd emails or partial data? Does the data need to be enriched by somebody else before it can be used? Do you really feel comfortable that they do have in fact the do-not-send list and if they’re maintaining it? When you look online, do you find any issues? Just the kinds of things you would do before any sort of partnership. It’s wise to do that here.

Then, there’s the monetary aspect or the [vital 00:32:49] aspect of this and that is, can we deliver leads to you? It’s very easy to send out emails but sometimes it can be really difficult to distribute those leads in a timely way. Walk through that process. What’s going to happen when they get a lead? Are they going to show their system with you? Are you going to create a third party or a neutral lead CRM system? How are you going to handle those shared leads? How quickly will they guarantee they’ll get to you? What format are they going to come in …

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Those are all important questions, very important questions to work out, the timing the format. I would encourage everybody to really put their testing hat on here because it might be that you think you have the best partner and you put an offer in front of their customers and it’s just not a match, and you’re not getting the lead you expect. I’ve seen this happen. It could be the offer. It may be a technical glitch. You need to, if something is not working, dive-in in the spirit of openness and re-test, try different things, make sure it’s all working technically, but at the end of the day, maybe their audience just is not interested in what you have to offer. As hard as that might be, you might need to then walk away from something you’re initially really excited about. You just really have to keep an open mind and test, test, test.

Diane Pierson: Totally agree. The testing is very important. You get signals as you start to have these conversations. If you ask about a workflow and they can’t really describe a workflow, that’s a red flag.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: If they ask what a workflow is, that would be the first red flag.

Diane Pierson: That’s great big red flag. That’s probably the red flag with flames coming off of it. Absolutely. Asking the questions and then testing, two great stuffs. Okay. This is just I think more of the same, but can you do deduping these lists, it does come down to the email or the physical mail address list and I do say that in the fourth bullet here, we’ll get to that in a second, but make sure that you dedupe the lists if you’re merging lists. Make sure that you’re comfortable with the data quality. Also, make sure that you buttoned up in that workflow who’s going to do what or somebody through, whether it’s you or your partners to know folks of their own maybe sitting on something, sort of waiting for you to do the next piece.

Another part of that is to have regular update sessions to make sure the project moved ahead. Particularly, again, I know the smaller subscription sites, it can be tough to do this. I mean, this is very time-consuming and it is, but to the degree that you do this ahead of time, you’re setting yourself up for more success, so make sure that everybody knows what his responsibilities are and keep the meetings going, keep making sure deliverables are being executed, so a great program doesn’t just sort of wallow by the waves as we said.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Yup.

Diane Pierson: Is everybody who needs to be involved in this signed off on it? You don’t always have to have your finance folks, assuming you have finance folks, involved in the decision but you might. If you’re going to bundle subscriptions, you do. There are all sorts of legal …

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Accounting.

Diane Pierson: … and mostly accounting regulatory issues and again, this is for larger subscribers. If you’re smaller, this may be less of an issue. I would say, if you got less than probably $5 million in revenue, certainly less than a million in revenue or if you have fewer than 50 employees, as a general rule, you’re going to be allowed a little bit more leeway, but you always want to try to be responsible with bundled offers. Make sure the accounting practices are being followed. Make sure that legal practices are being followed. Make sure your customer service knows what’s happening. Again, if this is all you, that’s all about to check. If it’s not, make sure that everybody understands what’s about to happen, so again, they can all help with your success.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: That whole customer service, tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 issues, defining that ahead and educating everyone is very critical. Even sales teams and the marketing team. Again, depending on what type of partnership you’re creating, that will alleviate a lot of potential confusion if something happens to be widely successful, which is always your goal, isn’t it?

Diane Pierson: Which is always the hope. Also, it actually enables a success. Particularly sales. Again, for larger organizations, they may well come to you as potential partners. They may be coming back and offering those suggestions. It’s a great place to start if you’ve got a Salesforce system out talking to the marketplace all the time. When I say don’t rule out print, I mean print marketing. Particularly in B2C. I think a very good example is retail, but it happens even with subscriptions. People purchasing that are online interaction, whatever it may be, I very, very seldom, I don’t do it all. I mean, I don’t buy anything on the phone, but when I get a catalog, I might go online and purchase. It’s the same thing with marketing in print.

Don’t rule out print marketing. The downside is it can be more expensive, which is why some people avoid it, but it’s one of the very few print areas that is up over the past couple of years in terms of what people are doing and how they’re allocating their marketing spend according to pretty much everybody; eMarketer, Ad Age, everyone. Print advertising, particularly for B2C, less so for B2B, but particularly for B2C, if you’ve got a subscription for B2C, don’t rule it out because it does prove to be effective even for online publications. This is we were talking about being prepared ahead of time, knowing what you want, getting the story ready, finding the right partners, make sure you know what success is going to look like for you and that you can measure that success.

Kathy said a little bit more about this earlier that, are leads coming in? You may be a ways from the subscription. I mean, depending on how aware the market is of you, depending on how expensive your subscription is, how much competition you have, your sales cycle may be very long or extremely short. You may actually be expecting subscriptions to come in from the first email or the second or the third. Depending on, again, the type of subscription that you have, frequently B2B, enterprise sales are going to be longer. You need to know if the leads are coming in so you can begin that sales cycle.

Are the leads coming in? Are you building that relationship that’s going to move toward a sale, if even the sale hasn’t happened at this time? Is the partner what you’ve expected? It’s a lot like date versus a marriage. I mean, as a partner, as you start to get moving it may not be the right fit after all even if it looked good on paper, even if the businesses are very complementary. Are they willing to tweak and change and test the way that Kathy mentioned? For example, as you go forward and you see something isn’t working or the leads aren’t coming to you the way you think they should be or if subscriptions aren’t flowing in, are they willing to tweak? Is that relationship developing in a successful way?

Always employ partnership-oriented metrics. You’re going to need to be able to share information if you’re the one sending the email. Certainly use promo code. Definitely think about the time you’ve put in to the relationship versus the benefit because in this situation, if it is a barter, it’s going to be your time and less direct of them. If you’re thinking about, “Gosh, I’m spending 24 hours a week on this and I’m not getting much from it,” just because you’re not spending money …

Kathy Greenler Sexton: One of the things just to note, for the types of deals that may not be specifically subscription, it might be a lead or it might be traffic, if you’re not already, Google Analytics, A) it’s free, and B) has really great tracking capabilities, so you can track. It might be that you want your partner to report back what type of traffic so you can understand conversion or your partner’s going to require you. Make sure you think about that and there’s free tools out there if you’re not already leveraging them to help you understand what you’re getting in different KPIs out of what you’re trying to achieve from that partnership.

Diane Pierson: That’s a really good point Kathy. There are so many free solutions to measure engagement that you should definitely use them. Google Analytics, it’s a great place to start. Always a good idea to do that and knowing what metrics you’re looking for, again, is a very good idea. Just understanding what it is you think success looks like and how you’d measure that ahead of time, Google Analytics is a wonderful place to begin. Balance the increased subscription with customer alienation. Has this turned out to be the right partner for you? Are you finding that, yes, there’s some benefit but you’re also getting a negative reaction? This is a little bit more difficult to gauge, but it is important if you get emails from businesses who, for example, are contacting you saying, “You’ve been reaching out to me and I don’t like what you’re saying and I don’t like what you’re doing,” those warning signs should be taken very seriously, obviously.

Make sure that you’re asking your partner about those sorts of things. Are they getting emails? Are they getting responses? Are they getting an excessive do-not-send or unsubscribe? Unsubscribe is one of the most important things to watch during a new partnership. Measure twice, cut once. I know my Aunt Judy didn’t say that. She didn’t initiate it, but she is the person who said it to me most. Always measure twice and cut once.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: She gets the credit.

Diane Pierson: She gets the credit as far as I’m concerned. Aunt Judy always gets the credit for this one. Co-marketing is probably one of the most effective, inexpensive ways to extend your brand and build both your existing audience and delve into new markets. It’s something that I always recommend as part of a product mix. If you understand what you’re trying to do, you articulate your story, you reach out to the right partners and you measure for success giving it enough time to really give it a chance to work. Co-marketing is a very powerful tool. It starts with a goal. It expands with giving to get and succeeds with good planning and partner choice. I think this is just a wonderful way for both large and small publishers to grow their subscription base. Kathy, what else do you have to add at this point? I think we’re winding up and certainly looking forward to any questions that anybody has.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Yeah. Definitely winding up. I’m going to recommend we jump right in to a few questions here. I’ll just move to the next slide here. I just sent a note out to everybody on the webinar, if you have any questions, just please use your chat screen. We do have a couple of questions. Number one, “A number of companies leverage affiliate partners and I know in the past I have done co-registration and webinars and co-marketing programs with affiliate partners, do you consider those marketing programs or more like what we’re talking about today, just go after and figure out whatever you can do with those affiliate partners?”

Diane Pierson: I think it’s one of those things that it depends on what your goals are. I think that affiliate partners is … As a general rule, I wouldn’t rule anybody out. I really wouldn’t. I would always look at whether the fit is right and if it’s a non-pay to play, it’s co-marketing. That’s the broadest definition. I would say don’t rule anybody out. If it’s a give to get situation then it is a co-marketing. What would you think?

Kathy Greenler Sexton: I think you heard it here folks. If you’ve got affiliate partners, there’s a lot of synergy already so think through how you can maybe boost up that relationship. I think it’s definitely something everybody should be looking at if you do have affiliate partners. That’s my humble opinion.

Diane Pierson: It’s just a step away, so yeah.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Yup. I’ve got another question. It’s about CAN-SPAM. Is CAN-SPAM different for B2C versus B2B?

Diane Pierson: The regulations around email are different B2B and B2C. As you probably suspect, they’re more stringent around B2C. Either way, what I recommend at this point from a business perspective is that whenever you’re approaching a new audience, if you’re trying to do email acquisition of new subscribers, I would always offer them something free in the email. A good example of that would be if you have a free premium sort of offering whether it’s a newsletter or free webinars or whatever it is you’re offering, and then allow them to sign up for other offers. That’s step one.

Step two is do the double verification. Most of you have had this happened. You sign up for something you’re interested in. The screen that [inaudible 00:48:13] you’re about to get an email, come back into that email and register. Then, you might even get another email that confirmed your registration. Going that extra mile with your email workflow even in B2C will help guarantee that you are being responsible, being viewed as responsible in offering people the option of something that’s a relationship builder versus a pure sale. I would recommend that always. What I would say is for more information on that, again, go to the FTC, consult with any of the marketing firms that you’re working with. Also, a great place to go is going to be the webinar that’s happening on the 18th.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Yup.

Diane Pierson: Diving into this in a deep way is a very good investment of time because it is a little complex, but there are lots of people who know how to do it, who can share their knowledge with you and get you up to speed enough so that you’re fine and you’re confident in going forward with email campaigns whether B2B or B2C.

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Yeah. I also encourage people to really think through. If you are going to be “trading list”, you could send a list on behalf of your partner, but you need to make sure that your opt-in and your opt-out capabilities support that. Otherwise, people might be opting out of a partner message and be opting out of all of your communications. You just need to make sure that you’re set up internally to do those types of things as well as your partners. I’m going to basically ask …

Diane Pierson: You know I … I was just going to add one more thing …

Kathy Greenler Sexton: Go ahead Diane.

Diane Pierson: … and then maybe this is a variation on what you’re saying Kathy. Your emails should not leave your premises to go to another publisher or product. If you send them to a third party email deployment, that’s one thing. Very seldom do people share their email physically with other companies, as a general rule. Kathy, do you feel the same way?

Kathy Greenler Sexton: I always treat things with the highest confidentiality. Really, that pulls in … From way back, there used to be entire businesses based on traditional marketing that would be a neutral ground for people to do co-marketing, direct marketing types of programs where the list would not be shared with a partner. There’s definitely ways to do that and you also want to make sure you don’t give the keys to your kingdom away which is your customer list. Absolutely, good point. I’m going to take one more question because I like to make sure people have time to wrap up and get ready for their next meeting during the day here. I think actually we touched upon this. It’s somebody asking, “I’m just starting out and I don’t have a lot of traffic and a lot of subscribers yet, so what can I offer in trade? What are the types of things I should be thinking about?”

Diane Pierson: We did touch on it, but I think it is a good thing to reiterate because so many of us in the SSI are just starting out. We have such a nice broad spectrum of subscriptions that it’s going to be great for this group to learn from each other and I know that that already happened. For the person starting out, you’ve got a small base, you’ve got a lot of expertise. Probably the reason you started your subscription is that you know a lot about the thing that you’re putting out there and that expertise is extremely valuable to your potential partners. Being a subject matter expert on a webinar or a whitepaper or even if it’s just some research statistics that you’ve done that could summarize in a free offering for them, that’s a great way. It’s a great win-win for an organization that may have a great diverse customer base but does not have the expertise you have. I would always, in those situations, offer my expertise.