Herman Group Newsletter Looks Into the Future

Not many of us can see into the future. But The Herman Trend Alert, an e-zine from The Herman Group, helps readers do just that in the area of workplace trends.

The Herman Group, based in Greensboro NC, is a firm of strategic business futurists who forecast the future and advise clients regarding relevant trends—say, the aging of the workforce, the emergence of skilled handicapped employees, and the profusion of young entrepreneurs who drain the labor pool.

“We are futurists and we study trends and factors that influence what’s happening,” says CEO Roger Herman. “We make forecasts and advise our clients about what’s coming and what they should do about it.”

Although the newsletter is read mostly by senior executives, it also attracts government employees, corporate owners, and housewives. The weekly e-zine is sent to over 25,000 people in 72 countries and is available in four languages: English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

The newsletter is free. But companies can send a co-branded version of The Herman Trend Alert to their customers, employees or dealers for a minimum of $2,500 a year, or $2.50 per person. Three mid-range businesses now send it to their own lists with personal advertising or promotional messages.

Editorial for the newsletter consists of one trend story that doesn’t exceed 350 words. “That’s the amount that fits on a page and is easy to read,” Herman says. “We want people to read it.” Within the e-newsletter, links are provided for internal advertising and archived newsletters.

When Herman began the newsletter in 1998, he had several objectives. One was to strengthen the company’s marketing position as a leading forecasters of workforce trends. The second was to receive exposure for company themes, products and services. And the third was to catalog research.

“That’s where it started,” Herman explains. “We got into a lot of research in the ‘90’s and wondered how on earth we could catalog it all. So we came up with idea of writing short pieces to capsulate the information.” From there, Herman decided to send out the information so others could benefit from the company’s research archive.

Some readers have signed up from overseas.

“We work with global trends,” Herman explains. “Even if it is a little more focused or applicable to the U.S. or Australia, other people are still interested in what’s happening. We have people from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Hong Kong that are very much interested in what we’re seeing here in the U.S. because we’re a trendsetter.”

And it can’t hurt to have a readers in Indonesia. Granted, they’re not adding anything to The Herman Group’s bottom line, but who’s to say they won’t host a conference and ask Herman or the company president, Joyce Gioia to speak? That has happened, says Herman.

In fact, global conferences are a good source of newsletters subscription s. “My partner Joyce and I are active in the speaking circuit and we offer The Alert to the audience,” Herman says. “So readers come to us in a continual process.”

Herman draws the line at accepting paid advertising. He has declined offers because his goal is to keep the e-zine “pure and a professional public service.”

In any event, success isn’t always measured monetarily. “Practically every audience we speak to, we’re told by people that they get the newsletter,” Herman continues. “We get calls from journalists who receive it and request more information or place orders from subscribers that read about promotional stuff. We get quoted frequently and when we go to professional conferences we’re much better known because of this.“

Herman says his biggest challenge was building and maintaining the subscriber list. Reckoning with the fact that a lot of people would change their e-mail addresses and oftentimes not forward that information to his attention left him with bounces.

“We’ve had thousands of people over the years that have changed addresses or their servers and we can’t reach them. That’s disappointing,” he says. “I like to keep in touch with subscribers.”

But that was prior to automation. DataBack Systems now hosts The Herman Trend Alert subscriber file.

Herman has three other newsletters for which he charges a nominal fee. They offer specific educational advice and learning opportunities whereas his free e-newsletter consists of “thought and research pieces.”

The three other e-zines are: Lessons in Leadership, Retention Reminders and Future Think. All three are weeklies and cost $47 for a year subscription. Each has between 100 and 200 subscribers.

And the future for The Herman Group?

“Every once in awhile we think about putting something out for C-level execs and charging a fee,” Herman says. “But we haven’t had the time to do it. And we’re planning some big activity next year to promote the preparation of tomorrow’s workforce. There’ll probably be a newsletter around that as well.”