Quick Overview
Launched in 2001, eRobertParker.com is a great example of a guru-branded site, as well as a successful spin-off from a traditional print subscription newsletter. The site generates well over $1 million a year in subscription revenues, with tens of thousands of wine lovers paying $99 per year; plus, it has income from cross-sales, such as branded books and an educational program it developed with noted educator, Kevin Zraly.We interviewed managing director Mark Braunstein for this exclusive Case Study.
Company Snapshot
Founded: Site 2001
Business Model: 80% subscriptions
# Paid Members: “tens of thousands”
Est. Revenue: $1+ million year
HQ: Monkton MD
http://www.erobertparker.com
Target Market
eRobertParker.com targets serious wine lovers and collectors, as well as relevant professionals.
Content Model
Guru-branded, high-quality, “you’ve gotta have it” information for its audience.
“We’re not just a web publication, but a highly interactive wine-information source,” explained Braunstein.
The site includes a searchable database of nearly 20 years of past reviews published in The Wine Advocate print newsletter. However, it goes far beyond shovelware by adding extensive web-only content.
“The bi-monthly publication is 128 pages and typically reviews 2-3,000 wines. Each time it’s not uncommon for us to post a few hundred additional reviews that there was not enough room for in the publication. We also post many original articles written just for the site by our team of wine reviewers.”
The web team has also added videos and a discussion group. A rapidly growing group of subscribers use a .mobi (mobile device) version of the site. “This continues to rapidly expand over time as people adopt smart phones with Internet access. Wine reviews are uniquely valuable content when you’re in a restaurant or a wine store. As a result, we believe smart phones are really the platform of the future,” said Braunstein.
His advice to other publishers is “Don’t just rush into it. Think about the intersection of mobility and what you can offer that adds value.”
In the past, the site offered a Palm app and then an extra cost mobile service through mFoundry; “It wasn’t worth the effort.” Braunstein added, “We had to maintain a database for use on mobile devices and we were limited to certain phones. The newer .mobi version of the site was created by in-house staff, content updates are automatic and it works on any phone with Internet access.”
In recent years more and more fine wine is being made around the world, so in order to cover all of them, the site has expanded to include six additional reviewers, branded as “Robert Parker’s Wine Advocates.” Braunstein explained that “We now have writers based in Europe and Asia. We use Quantcast to track usage of the site by demographic group and we’re seeing evidence that their individual styles and approaches to wine appeal to a broader range of people.”
Revenue Streams
At $99 per year per subscription, with tens of thousands of subscribers, the site pulls in well over $1 million.
It does not accept any ads, but it does run house ads for other Robert Parker-branded offerings — mainly books, print magazine subscriptions and print back issues.
“When people hear it’s subscription-only and we don’t take ads, they sometimes look at me like we’re nuts,” said Braunstein. “People think the internet is all about free. Well, ultimately it’s about delivering value. Many people think ‘Oh I just have to come up with some gimmick to get a lot of eyeballs and sell ads.’ I don’t think there’s a demand for ads that’s great enough to support all the content creation in the world. Moreover, there is always a market for an independent voice, one that is not for sale and has no commercial ties to the products or services it is reviewing or commenting on. That has been Robert Parker’s philosophy since he started his newsletter in 1978 and we see no reason to deviate from it just because we’ve morphed to an electronic medium.”
Marketing Tactics
Branding
The branded-guru angle has a big impact on traffic and conversions. “We’re lucky Robert Parker is world-famous. I wouldn’t go out and buy a pricey wine without knowing what Parker has to say about it. We get an incredible Google clickthough rate on his name and phrases like ‘wine rating,'” said Braunstein.
Online Marketing
“We get a ton of search traffic and our biggest advertising expense is Google. It all comes down to picking keywords,” Braunstein said. The site offers considerable free content as SEO bait — including a keyword search rich glossary, some reviews and Parker’s famous wine vintage chart.
As for other online ads, “We run a few banners on a few wine sites. We experimented with lots of vehicles, but unless they were very focused on fine wines, they don’t work well for us.” His lesson for other publishers considering advertising for traffic: “Don’t be impressed by a big circulation, be impressed by specificity.”
Offline Marketing
“We run a few print ads, again in very focused wine specialty magazines.” The site also took advantage of its great relations with retailers and got a number of upscale wine stores to give away a short informational booklet it printed.
Key — the content was useful, not marketing hype. “It has all the basic wine information people want to know; it’s nicely designed and colorful. It’s been a huge hit,” said Braunstein. The site is also giving a PDF version to subscribers.
Conversions
The vast majority of conversions are for annual subscriptions, although quarterly and monthly subscriptions are also offered.
The trial offer is not free; it’s $9.95 for a month. In the past, Braunstein said they tested a limited access free trial without a credit card requirement, “It wasn’t productive and it was difficult to maintain.”
The site does not feature overt conversion marketing, aside from a site tour that includes both free and paid content, a prominent search box that returns results for both free and paid content, hotlinks to both free and paid headlines on the homepage, and a small text link to gift subscriptions. There are no pop-ups or overlays and no prominent email or social media opt-in offers. The focus is on the brand and content quality. Visitors have to proactively look for the subscription form rather than being hit over the head with it.
“I don’t know if we’re terribly sophisticated,” Braunstein said. “We think if we give them lots of reasons to hang out there and things to read, over time they’ll see something and they’ll subscribe. We’re conservative. We do no special deals or offers. It’s all about quality — the quality of the information, the quality of the experience, and doing whatever we can to attract the right people in the first place.”
The site tracks both where traffic comes and whether traffic by source converts to paying subscribers. Therefore, the team can cut external marketing campaigns and ads that don’t give good enough ROI. “At the end of the day, we haven’t found any magic formula. We do the best job we can [with content value]. It’s the most highly respected wine publication in the world. There are no tricks we discovered, [we convert them] the old fashioned way,” Braunstein added.
Retention
The site does allow new subscribers to opt-out of autorenew during the sign-up process, but few people click the box. Renewal rates are high. “People are in the trade or they are serious collectors. We have a lot of subscribers who intend to subscribe forever and they don’t want to be bothered with renewals,” he said.
Technology and Vendors Used
Site hosting: “My advice is to pick a hosting company that specializes in a business like yours. We’re a relatively small company for our host. They’re tremendously reliable, and they recognize the prestige value that goes with our site,” Braunstein said.
Quantcast: Free service tracks demographic data for site including age, sex, and income.
http://www.quantcast.com
Kitcho: The online graphic design firm that handles the graphics for eRobertParker. “We’re very happy with them. They’re a small vendor. They do a great job,” said Braunstein.
http://www.kitcho.com/
About Mark Braunstein
Amazing, but true — being managing director of eRobertParker.com is just a part-time job for Braunstein. He’s been with the site since it launched in 2001, while also juggling a full-time career in health information technology. Currently, he’s professor at Georgia Tech. In his limited free time, “my wife and I like travel and we like fine dining and, of course, drinking great wine.”
Subscription Site Insider’s Analysis
We think there’s tremendous unplumbed opportunity in guru-branded sites. The site proves that you don’t have to rely on a guru for 100% of your content, but rather can bring in additional content resources to increase/sustain appeal and reduce the workload for the guru in question. However, if you’re a third-party publisher considering an alliance, content excellence is critical. You have to match the value — and voice — that made that guru famous in the first place. If the guru isn’t a managing editor by trade, you’ll need to hire an awfully good one.
If the eRobertParker.com team wanted to get more aggressive about on-site marketing, including running tests on barrier pages and adding clear conversion elements to open-access pages, they could probably lift subscription sales by 20% or more, without tarnishing their non-commercial-feeling brand. Is it worth the work and aggravation, given how well they’re doing in a fairly relaxed manner already? That’s up to them
http://www.erobertparker.com/
