Stanford Social Innovation Review Makes $1 Million Catering to Emerging Niche

Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) made $1 million last year by catering to the growing number of professionals interested in social innovation. Publishing Director

Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) made $1 million last year by catering to the growing number of professionals interested in social innovation. Publishing Director Regina Starr Ridley shared how the 5-person staff has optimized its revenues by mimicking The Economist’s pricing and subscription plan structure and by upselling Webinars through annual-access packages. This Case Study also includes great screenshots and creative samples of how to optimize subscription conversion through tabs, links and offers.

Company Profile

Founded:  2003
No. of Publications: 1
Employees: 5 full-time staff members
Business Model: Hybrid — subscriptions, events, advertising, one-offs.
Paying Subscribers: About 8000
Location: San Francisco
Website: http://www.ssireview.org/

Target Market

SSIR targets executives at nonprofits, foundations, socially-responsible businesses, as well as professionals in academia and government involved with social change.  They have more female than male readers (64%vs. 36%), and the average reader is between 40 and 50 years of age. 60% of subscribers work in foundations or nonprofits, and 39% of subscribers make between$100,00 and $199,000 a year.

The publication also has some student subscribers.

Content

SSIR caters to the social change sector, i.e., , professionals working at organizations that are doing good, both nonprofits and for-profits. The publication bridges academic theory and practice with ideas about achieving social change, and covers a wide range of subjects, from microfinance and green businesses to social networks and human rights.

The print magazine–which mainly contains articles and essays by thought leaders in academia and in the field — is published on a quarterly basis, and about 20% of magazine content is available for free online — the rest is behind the paywall. The decision as to which articles are behind the paywall and which are free is up to the editors. Web content is added on an incremental basis, and the marquee section of the homepage changes daily.

In addition to paid digital subscriptions for content, the website hosts paid Webinars every four to six weeks, which are also available on-demand. About 270 people attend the live Webinars. These Webinars are sold individually and customers can access them for up to 12 months (see Revenues section for more details).

Ridley told us that the main reason the site is payworthy is that the content is a unique combination of academic and practitioner content, edited for a professional audience. To that end, the three editors on staff spend a lot of time making the content lively and accessible. The site is also pay-worthy because of the Stanford brand.

In addition to working with thought leaders and academics, the site also assigns freelance articles, such as mini-Case Studies and book reviews.

Revenue Streams

SSIR generates over $1 million in revenues annually.

Of their annual income, approximately 45% is from paid subscriptions, 25% is from events, and the remaining 30% is derived from a mix of services that include paid Webinars, print and online advertising, advertorial supplements (like “Advancing Evaluation Practices in Philanthropy,” sponsored by the Aspen Institute), and newsstand sales and reprints.

Event revenue is primarily derived from the site’s Nonprofit Management Institute event, a two-day event with tickets priced at around $900. In addition, attendees can add on half-day sessions on the third day for $295 a pop. (SSIR was limited by space for its event, but instead of increasing expenses by looking for another venue, the organization increased revenues with these half-day sessions on the third day.) SSIR also occasionally does bespoke events for organizations or partners with a consulting company to design an event.

While advertising, reprint and advertorial supplement is incremental and irregular, SSIR does offer a nice alternate revenue stream — paid Webinars sold individually with 12 months of access. 2011/2012 Webinars are $49/each, or 2009/2010 Webinars are $19/each.

SSIR has multiple subscription plans for its magazine content, both in terms of access (print, digital, print + digital) and term length (1, 2 or 3 years):

Print + digital subscribers make up 85% of subscriptions; about 12% of subscribers are digital-only. Print-only is 3%.

The site has not conducted formal pricing tests, but it did change its subscription plan offerings and prices last year. Previously, the site priced its print+digital bundle at $39.95, and had no digital-only offer. When it increased the bundle price to $49.95 and offered a digital-only plan, Ridley reports that revenues increased by 25% and there was no drop-off in subscriptions (some bundle subscribers changed to digital-only, but the publication still has 85% of its subscribers taking the bundle package).

The site also has higher-priced international subscriptions, offered in US dollars:

International subscriptions make up 12% of subscriptions overall and are processed with a credit card. Ridley told us the site tries to avoid online bank transfers, but will make an exception for government institutions and libraries that can’t provide a credit card.

SSIR also offers group subscriptions/site licenses to institutions, and has about 300 group subscribers, making up a marginal part of subscription revenues. Currently, site licenses are priced at $240 per IP address in the US and $260 for international subscribers. An academic campus is asked to pay $450. Ridley admits that this pricing structure does not make much sense, so SSIR is looking into other pricing options.

Marketing Tactics

Traffic Sources
Organic search results are responsible for 43% of new traffic to the site, and an additional 23% is direct. The site does not use PPC, but external websites refer about 24% of traffic (these are not affiliates).

Social Media
Ridley says social media has been a “shockingly high” area of growth, with followers increasing by 157% on Twitter, 85% on Facebook, and by 199% on LinkedIn.  The site also has a presence on Google+. The site posts multiple times a day to each platform.

Postal Direct Mail
Ridley told us the publication was using postal direct mail up until last year, when the organization decided it would be wiser to put money into online marketing.

Email Marketing
SSIR has a big in-house list (obtained mainly through opt-ins on its own site), which it uses to promote its own products (subscriptions, Webinars and advertorial supplements). Email campaigns account for about 11% of traffic to the site.

Trade Show Speeches
SSIR exhibits or speaks at about 20 social innovation conferences a year.

Other Advertising
SSIR runs house ads for subscriptions in its print magazine, which is distributed quarterly. The print magazine also has some newsstand sales, which leads to new subscription sales.

Podcasts
Stanford’s business school had a podcast program called Social Innovations Conversations. Through a partnership with the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, SSIR records its events and turns the talks and interviews into free podcasts that are available through the channel or the SSIR website. They do 6-15 a year, and provide about 12% of podcasts for the Social Innovations Conversations channel.

Conversion Tactics

The strength of the SSIR website is that there are multiple places and opportunities for visitors to convert — a link in the top right-hand side of the navigation bar, a lightbox overlay offer, a link at the bottom of every article, and a “Subscribe/Help” tab on the left-hand side of the site that stays put as you scroll.

The site also publishes a free newsletter via email.

Group Subscriptions

Group subscription leads are often generated through event appearances (EBSCO, a major partner is securing group subscriptions for academic libraries, has a library conference and SSIR has a small presence there). Or the interested parties will contact the site. Ridley closes all group subscription sales herself.

Retention Tactics

SSIR’s renewal rate is around 60%, and the publication makes about seven efforts to retain subscribers, usually via email and print mail. The first email offer is a 25% discount, but that is the only discounted offer. Occasionally (3x per year), the site will offer a premium offer, such as a book closely related to social change and innovation that the site has received at a discounted rate from publishers. Renewals are about 50-50 web/eblast vs. snail/whitemail/telephone/bind-in-cards.

Upsales & Cross-Sales

The Webinars and events are cross-sold through the site’s email newsletter. The advertorial supplements are considered a separate feature of the publication, and sold in partnership with the sponsoring organizations.

When hosting a Webinar, SSIR will ask the guest speaker’s organization to also promote the event to their list.

About Regina Starr Ridley

Prior to joining Stanford, Ridley had a 22-year career in for-profit media. As a group president at CMP Media, during the height of the technology boom, she ran a $150 million media division and was profiled as one of the publishing industry’s most promising future CEOs in FOLIO:‘s “The Next CEOs, 15 Executives to Bet On.”

She says it was a big change going from a big media company to a small group (within a large institution), but the benefit is that she gets to understand how circulation works, in a lot more detail compared to having someone do it for her.

Her biggest surprise has been how hard the subscription business is to manage. “It’s a challenging business, because of all the components you have — pricing, new subscriber management, renewing, billing.”

Her advice to other publishers is to make sure your audience can get quality content in whatever format they desire. And understand that quality means “it’s useful content that’s important to your target customer.”

Vendors & Technology

Hosting — Engine Hosting
www.enginehosting.com

Payment processing — handled by Stanford University

Circulation fulfillment company — ICN
www.icnfull.com

Email management — Exact Target
www.exacttarget.com/

Web design & development — Hop Studios
www.hopstudios.com/

Content management — Expression Engine
http://ellislab.com/expressionengine

Creative/Editing– Art drection & design is David Herbick Design
www.herbickdesign.com

Audience development consulting — Next Steps Marketing
www.nextstepsmarketing.com

Subscription Site Insider Analysis

We love that SSIR is providing practical business advice to an emerging and growing niche — you’d be surprised how many B2B publishers get this first step wrong by launching publications for dying industries. We also like how the site has priced and sold Webinars separately from digital subscriptions — it shows an intuitive understanding about how desktop viewing is on a third screen and different from tablet and other digital content. Lastly, we really love how the site was able to increase its subscription price and raise revenues without seeing a drop-off in sales.

There are a few areas for improvement. One, the site should definitely require email registration for free access. This would allow them to better capitalize on its high traffic numbers. And while we love how the site is optimized to get visitors to convert to subscribers, the lightbox overlay ad should be re-designed so that the form is one-column not two (when tabbing, visitors are more likely to enter incorrect information in a two-column form) and includes more compelling button copy and color. The site should also consider taking online bank transfers or other alternative payment methods for international subscriptions — credit cards are not as popular abroad as they are in the US. And the publication should definitely start measuring average account lifetimes and employ retention marketing best practices, such as strong onboarding measures and auto-renewal.

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