Welcome Back: Publishers mine their databases to reactivate expires

When publishers go digging for gold on their magazines’ expire lists, a little database intelligence can help make the excavation worthwhile.

At Conde Nast, data originally compiled to benefit advertisers is now being used to recruit new subscribers and reactivate those who have left. “Expire targeting has always been productive for us and we’re trying to make it more so,” says Tom Burke, the company’s director of consumer marketing databases.

Though this effort has been under way for only a few months, it has been “very productive” – particular, in moving expires on one magazine’s list to actives on another Conde Nast title, according to Burke. “There’s a significant number of readers who move from one magazine to another in the course of their history with us,” he says. “When we see a pattern of migration that’s fairly obvious, then we refine our techniques to see where we can go with that.” That refinement includes overlays of demographic and lifestyle information that further pins down the individual who might be receptive to another subscription. The company then makes its pitch with direct mail.

Conde Nast may not qualify as an advanced one-to-one marketer based on this effort alone, but it clearly has taken a major step to differentiate former customers and reactivate them with highly targeted offers.

Although databases are useful tools to enhance circulation, Burke emphasizes that success begins with a solid, savvy marketing plan. “If people have been mailing wisely already, then by using a database you’re really looking at step improvements,” he says.

Aggressively mining past subscribers is one way magazines can regenerate lost circulation while cutting acquisition costs by as much as a third, says Sam Cardonsky, vice president of publishing services with Abacus Direct Corp., which matches magazine lists against recent purchase data from participating catalog companies.

Hal Oringer, vice president of consumer marketing and development at Meredith Corp., agrees, pointing out that ranked in terms of profitability, expire lists are often in the top 25 percent. “It’s been my experience time and again that they rise to the top,” he says.

But what kind of data is most helpful in identifying prospects? The first and simplest step is updating address information on expires. It’s painfully obvious, but it’s something too many circulation managers ignore, says Bob Kaslik, president of database marketing services for the Publications and Associations division of Centrobe. “I think a lot of people just don’t update the addresses of their expires,” he says. “If you could verify the address, those people would respond 20, 30 or 40 percent better than people you don’t update.”

Regardless of the age of the expire, recent buying activity is very important in rating prospects, Cardonsky adds. “When you think about someone who hasn’t had recency in 2 to 3 years, if we can match that person and see if they’ve done something in the last few months, and then they do something again on top of that, that’s good.”

Once recency is established, the second-most-important indicator of success is the vertical relationship of the individual’s purchase categories, according to Cardonsky. For example, a one-time subscriber who continues to purchase airline tickets, luggage and sandals in January may remain a good prospect for reactivation on a travel title. On the other hand, if you take an expire from a travel magazine’s list and find that person is out buying kitchen utensils, you target them with your cooking magazine.

Such transactional data is far more helpful in prospecting than demographic and pyschographic data. “In virtually everything I’ve done in direct marketing, primary response data is more valuable than demographic data,” Kaslik says. “My bias is very much toward primary survey data, purchase data or response data. It’s on their own accord. it’s how they spent their money.” An example of how demographic data may miss the boat subscription-wise would be in the case of the 55-year-old who subscribes to Rolling Stone rather than Modern Maturity.

In addition to purchase data, lifestyle data from direct mail or phone surveys gathered early on in the life of a subscriber can also be useful in retrieving those readers when they lapse down the road, Kaslik suggests. Meredith’s Oringer says his company continually surveys its current list, with questionnaires appearing along with bills, renewal notices, as bind-ins in the magazine, and occasionally through direct mail. Meredith’s goal is to grow its database by several million people a year. “Our goal is to add primary information,” Oringer says. The closer the surveys are tied to the editorial product, the more useful that information is, he says.

Likewise, natural affinities associated with particular titles are useful in moving an expire on one list to an active customer on another. Kaslik offers the example of a gardening magazine subscriber who has not renewed. “A gardener tends to own property, and maybe a lot of them have a woodshop on that property,” he says. That makes them, perhaps, a prospect for a woodworking magazine. “You can do research to see where the interest affinities are,” he continues. “Certainly with health and gardening there is an overlap; though certainly a health publication wouldn’t have a lot of overlap with an Internet publication. Just by testing, doing some sample mailing into different universes, is one obvious way to find out.”

At what point, though, are expires just too old to be of any use? Though Cardonsky says his firm usually works with expire lists that are 12 months or older, he acknowledges that the older the list is, the harder it is to match data. If files are not kept clean, he adds, matches against the Abacus database drop off after the second year at a rate of about 15 percent annually. For example, if the list matched at 60 percent two years after the subs expired, it would match only 45 percent in the third year, 30 percent in the fourth year, and so on.

Conde Nast, whose database of about 15 million names is maintained by Acxiom Corp., holds onto expires for about three years before they’re archived, Burke says. Rodale Press goes back eight years on Men’s Health expires and even further on lists for Prevention, says Joyce Shirer, senior consumer marketing director for Men’s Health. The company uses regression modeling along with data from its book files to identify reactivation prospects, she reports.

Rodale does not do the sorting that would allow a comparison between reactivation rates for recent as opposed to very old expires. “The lists always do well,” says Shirer. “They tend to be strong lists and they [subscribers] know our magazines.”

Subscribers may lapse, but once they’ve had a relationship with the magazine it’s a good bet they can be won back. “We find that people still retain their affinity with you,” says Oringer. “It’s good to remind them of their interest.”