As the curator of the INSIDER Guide to New Product Development (NPD), I’m constantly keeping an eye out for bite-size information that will help you develop and scale better subscription products. Here’s my “Five on Friday” compilation for January 8th, featuring the five best trends, tips, quotes or stats from my reading this week.
As promised in the last “Five on Friday,” below are some New Year’s Resolutions from your colleagues:
1. Reduce Costs While Maintaining Quality
“We’re looking at any way to cut costs that won’t impact our offering top-quality content.”
– Founder, Mid-Size B2B Journal Group
Balancing costs with quality is a challenge in any growing business. Some ideas to consider:
- Offer free trials of publications in online versions only.
- Ensure that you have the rights to use submitted content (including graphs, charts and images) in any media and for any purpose, so that you can extend the value of articles with the option to re-purpose the individual elements.
- Experiment with outsourcing, even of editorial tasks. If a lower-cost option is reliable, less expensive and yet still meets the standards expected from your subscribers, then consider it. Don’t, however, make a complete changeover without validating quality and reliability through comparison testing over several weeks or even months.
2. Reduce Publication Backlogs
“My resolution is to reduce the volume-plus [over 1 year] backlog in one of my highly visible medical journals. This will benefit both authors and readers.”
– Senior Editor, Global Publisher of Medical Journals
But isn’t a full pipeline of articles a good thing? “High submission numbers are a happy benefit of any highly-respected medical journal” says this editor, “but accepting every good article can dilute the mission of the journal, not to mention putting the author in a no-man’s-land of being ‘sort-of’ published.”
“Sort of” published? The editor went on to explain, “While materials that have been reviewed and accepted are available online as soon as they complete the production process, many don’t consider the publication ‘official’ until being assigned to an Issue/Volume. This can be a key consideration of authors (and their institutions), whose professional status can depend on regular and timely publication. It’s also a competitive advantage for journals that have an efficient publication process and effective author experience.”
3. Increase Subscriber Engagement
“We’re going to focus on increasing article engagement, primarily to validate that this will increase renewal rates.”
– Editorial Director, Mid-Size Trade and Technical Publisher
While measuring engagement can be challenging, the correlation between it and subscriber loyalty is widely recognized. Here are some ways to increase engagement:
- Add “Share” buttons to every article (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn).
- Enable copyright-protected sharing and republication through Copyright Clearance Center or Creative Commons.
- Add video. While practically prehistoric, given that it was performed in 2012, research by Wistia shows that videos longer than a minute or two lose nearly 80% of their viewers.
4. Expand the Product Beyond a Subscription
“A 2016 goal of ours is to host at least one regionally-attended event that pays for itself and drives new subscriptions to our monthly parenting publication.”
– CMO, Online Magazines for Parents and Families
Below are a couple ideas to get the word out – and defray expenses:
Find a large company partner to shoulder some of the expense. Depending on your theme, reach and other criteria, you may find a large company interested in underwriting some of your expenses for significant brand visibility on signs and other materials. Some ideas include software-as-a-service (e.g., QuickBooks), credit card, insurance and major consumer packaged goods organizations. If you go after the big fish, however, start early and be prepared to do a lot of convincing!
- Offer affordable sponsorship opportunities too. Maybe even a chance for the sponsor to include their product in your gift bag, or in a raffle. Such alliances could grow into larger partnership opportunities in the future.
- Get your current subscribers to promote the event to friends. Perhaps offer them prizes for bringing along their pals, or sharing the event information on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
5. Manage Rapid Growth on a Budget
“This year we need to keep the momentum going, but without spending a lot of money or working 24 hours a day instead of ‘just’ 20!”
– Founder of a startup subscription box business
Congratulations! And – we feel your pain. It’s great to grow, but trying to do it all yourself can lead to major burnout. How can you get more done with very limited resources?
- Use Buffer or other tool that allows you to schedule updates to multiple social media sites at once. This way, you create a presence on multiple social media platforms, with posts at the right time of day to reach your audience, but you do it on your schedule.
- Leverage “just in time” – and inexpensive – staffing through fiverr, 99designs and upwork to get projects completed without hiring a full-time employee or looking for a contractor. Need someone to pack all those boxes of cool goodies? Try Goodwill Manufacturing; they do good work, and you do good working with them. How good is that?
Some great resolutions. Thank you to everyone who submitted, and good luck in 2016! Have a great weekend.
Diane
Diane Pierson has deep experience in product management and marketing, having delivered results to companies including Dun & Bradstreet, LexisNexis, American Lawyer Media and Copyright Clearance Center. She has built products & services that have delivered over $100 million in revenue and knows what works, and what doesn’t, when executing product plans and strategies. She is also a contributor to Subscription Insider. (Read Diane’s full Bio)
