2008 Audience Development All-Stars

This year’s list is reflective of what CM strives to accomplish with each issue—highlighting the best people and strategies in the industry from a variety of backgrounds.

By AD Staff
Thursday, March 27, 2008

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Welcome to the 2008 Audience Development All-Stars. This is our second year into establishing a list of the circulation and audience development community’s most innovative professionals. The timing of the creation of this list couldn’t be better. The industry is going through undeniable and major change, and with it the jobs of everyone who has a hand in producing a magazine. For circulators and audience developers in particular, the world of maintaining and growing a customer base has become as fractured as media itself, and requires a perennially unique and inventive approach.

This year’s list is reflective of what CM strives to accomplish with each issue—highlighting the best people and strategies in the industry from a variety of backgrounds.

The 2008 All-Stars list is not all-inclusive, nor is it meant to be. There are countless success stories that could be on this list. Likewise, it is not a lifetime achievement-style award. The list represents a group of individuals that we’d want to recruit if we were creating a first-rate team of audience development superstars.

DATABASE INTEGRATION

Johnna Ayres
Consumer Marketing Director
Forbes Media
Johnna Ayres, consumer marketing director, Forbes Media, represents marketing on a relational database now under construction at Forbes Media. It’s her job to leverage the information generated by that database to drive additional revenues for the company.

Right now, all the Forbes units are providing information for a database, which includes Forbes, Forbes.com and conferences.

“But to leverage the information in smart, meaningful ways, a relational database is needed,” says Ayres. “We’re making it relational so we can see where we have multiple relationships. That’s the goal—to expand the number of relationships with people. We will then try and cross-sell additional products.”

The core database that Ayres and the relational database-product building team have to work with is the 900,000 subscribers to the print product, but obviously, there are many other Forbes customers to work with.

The base is the subscriber file to the print publication, and small print newsletters Forbes Special Situation Survey and The Prudent Speculator. Other customers in the database include Web site registrants and conference attendees.
Ayres says the plan is to add expire information and information on past relationships. The database carries data on expires over the past three years, but Ayres wants to expand that to five years and beyond.

While the relational database is an important focus right now, Ayres manages a team of 12 people in marketing as consumer marketing director at Forbes. She oversees direct mail, Web marketing, renewals and bills. A key responsibility is to leverage the data on these activities.

Ayres’s advice to those who come after her: “Use smart, targeted marketing. That’s the way you have to go. If you are efficient and use data wisely you will maximize your response.

“Publishers need to know more about their customers,” she says. “Customers are demanding that we be more transparent. It’s all about building a relationship and forming a bond with those who have a deep relationship with you so you can effectively segment your files and take good care of your very best customers.”   

Vital Stats: Ayres is managing the development of a relational database of more than 900,000 customers across a major media brand’s platforms.

DIRECT MAIL

Lynn Maziarz
Audience Development Coordinator
Diversified Business Communications
Lynn Maziarz only entered the controlled circulation world two years ago, but she’s already a rainmaker.

She has completely redesigned a tired direct mail piece, and implemented a strategy of segmenting lists by past response type so the company is targeting direct mail to direct mail respondents. The 2007 direct mail campaign was off the charts. Specifically, Maziarz decreased cost per subscriber by 39 percent for SeaFood Business and 36 percent for WorkBoat—and she increased the response rates 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively.

“I’ve only been in the circulation industry for two years, but I’ve worked in the publishing industry for quite a while,” says Maziarz.

Maziarz engineered her direct mail turnaround through two tactics. She researched the archives for pieces the magazines had used in the past. Secondly, she worked with designer Susan Sargent to completely re-do the direct mail piece. Also, production director Randy LeShane chipped in to make the piece not only look great, but come in under budget as well.

What’s she currently working on? “I’m spending time these days researching the functionalities of other Web sites to figure out how to make our sites better,” she says. “I’m also working with the editors of WorkBoat to make the magazine’s e-newsletter more interactive and engaging.”

Going forward, Maziarz says her company is placing a lot more emphasis on e-media and knowing what the customers want via digital delivery. Analytics and insight into DBC customers are also a major focus these days.

“I haven’t been in circulation for all that long, but things are definitely becoming more digital,” she says. “That said, it is important to remember that each audience is different and not all groups will be ready to respond to digital marketing or get their information solely from digital sources all at the same time. In other words, in many customer segments, I think print media and marketing are still very important.”    

Vital Stats: For two of her company’s titles, Maziarz has decreased direct mail cost per subscriber by 39 percent (SeaFood Business) and 36 percent (WorkBoat). And she increased the response rate by 47 percent and 64 percent respectively.

E-AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT

Sylvia Sierra
Senior Vice President,
Corporate Audience Development
Access Intelligence
Sylvia Sierra has made her mark for redefining audience development to include Web traffic building, including SEM and SEO. The facts speak for themselves: From 2006 to 2007, she and her team increased Web visits by 89 percent and page views by 98 percent.

“We have seen a shift in the industry to rename the circulation departments audience development,” she points out, “and yet marketing of a brand is fragmented by the persistent view that Web traffic building requires skill sets that demand a separate division.

“I strongly believe that no other department is as qualified or has the understanding of how to build community than the traditional b-to-b circulation staff.”

Sierra reorganized the staff around a brand, with dotted line responsibility to the management of the brand added to the organizational chart. This, she says, has provided the best of both worlds: Management structure, cost containment and sharing of best practices with the advantage of market knowledge and ideas.

Sierra is responsible for 14 magazines, two paid directories and eight Web sites. Her staff of 16 is charged with audience development covering magazine circulation, Web traffic, SEM, SEO, e-letters, Webinars, podcasts and job boards. In addition, she is responsible for list sales, co-registration programs, fulfillment, distribution, e-mail operations and customer service departments.

In the near future, Sierra is focusing on back-end systems to meet the goals of the company, which is to be “media agnostic.” To that effect she is finalizing fulfillment conversion, moving from product-based fulfillment to brand fulfillment, allowing for a single view of a client across many platforms.

SEO is the next big initiative. “We have fared quite well in executing push marketing programs,” says Sierra, “but now we have to focus more on using the power of content and Web natural searches as traffic building blocks that will allow for community expansion and product development.”    

Vital Stats: From 2006 to 2007, Sierra and her team increased Web visits by 89 percent and page views by 98 percent.

E-MEDIA MARKETING

Chris Wilkes
Executive Director,
Marketing and Audience Development
Hearst Digital Media

Chris Wilkes began his magazine circulation career at Ziff Davis in 1995, when traditional circulation was just beginning to adapt and evolve with the rise of the Internet.

“I started at the right time,” he says. “I was tapped to take what I learned and apply it online. And I’ve been able to take traditional skill-sets into what is now the future of direct marketing on the Internet.”

And based on what Wilkes brought to Hearst 10 years later, it looks he’s made a successful transition.

Wilkes has many responsibilities, including executing all magazine subscription offer promotions for Hearst online (selling 1.6 million in 2007, a 65 percent increase over 2006), launching more than 35 email newsletters, and taking charge of search engine optimization and marketing (he has increased search-driven traffic by 60 percent). But what he’s most proud of, he says, is the amount of revenue in subscription sales that he and his team have been able to bring in.

“We’ve had 70 percent growth in revenue after only our third year,” Wilkes says. “I’m proud of the fact that we’ve been able to grab that low-hanging fruit that Hearst wasn’t previously engaged in. Selling subscriptions online is not new, so to be able to do that is pretty substantial.”

Wilkes adds that his main goal for the future at Hearst is to just keep the momentum going. For him, that means projects that will have an impact on audience engagement.

“We have a database project that, for the first time, will marry up online and offline in a way that will give us important and advantageous ways to market on the Internet,” he says. “The people who come to our sites right now are strangers. The key is to transform that and use what we know about them to give them a more pleasurable experience.”

“We also want to increase engagement. We don’t just want grow traffic, but we want to get more page views and more time spent. We probably have about a half-dozen initiatives for increasing those metrics in 2008.”   

Vital Stats: Wilkes has been an e-marketing powerhouse for Hearst, increasing promotional email list sizes by five times; increasing search-driven traffic from zero to more than 10 million monthly visitors; and helping to sell 1.6 million paid subscriptions in 2007, a 65 percent boost over prior year.

EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT

Joy Puzzo
Corporate Circulation Director
Advanstar Communications
There are no all-stars without a team. That’s the initial response of Joy Puzzo, corporate circulation director, Advanstar Communications, upon hearing that she is a 2008 All-Star. Puzzo is so psyched about her team, its talents, its achievements, and its commitment that she unapologetically declares that she has the best department in the industry.

“We have changed the talents of our staff by cross-training and providing industry experience to ensure that employees are more flexible and experienced in all facets of audience development (print, Web and digital),” she says.

With an eye to helping the company stay on the leading edge, Puzzo and her staff analyze data to provide upper management with recommendations on how to grow the business. That requires consolidation of data from all sources.

Advanstar was the second company to release an ABC Consolidated Media Report. The report, for RN Magazine, provides a total audience metric that includes print and digital products. “We also have been working with the marketing teams to bring knowledge for show and Web site registration (creative and list segmentation) while cross-promoting,” says Puzzo.
The scorecard is impressive. Puzzo’s team reduced the cost per order 7.7 percent from 2006 to 2007 and increased the response rate by 15.7 percent through mandatory testing on every effort.

Puzzo’s team of 20 is currently in charge of 39 print publications and 13 digital editions in both b-to-b and b-to-c markets with paid and controlled strategies.

Right now, there is a strong focus on digital editions. Advanstar currently produces 13. The staff also works closely with the Web and marketing teams on the corporate goal of driving registrations to the Modernmedicine.com Web portal by cross-promoting circulation efforts and email execution.

Over the past four years Advanstar has changed drastically, but always according to customer needs. “We’ve added digital editions, created Web portals, Webinars, and the list goes on and on,” says Puzzo. “It is always about meeting the changing needs of the customers.”

Vital Stats: Puzzo’s team reduced the cost per order 7.7 percent from 2006 to 2007 and increased the response rate by 15.7 percent through mandatory testing on every effort.

FULFILLMENT

Anne Drobish
Associate Circulation Director,
Audience Development
NewBay Media
When Anne Drobish started at NewBay Media, publisher of Guitar Player and AudioMedia, among others, she was faced with epic fulfillment challenges. “Each publication’s [fulfillment] was at a different place,” Drobish says. “Some were in-house, some were outside, and some titles had different types of data kept at different places. There wasn’t a central database.”

So Drobish got to work on successfully integrating NewBay’s 12 publications (the company now has 17), 30 newsletters and event attendee marketing into one database. Then mid-way through the conversion process, NewBay acquired IMAS Publishing in July 2007, which added four more publications to the list. Drobish handled those conversions as well. It’s no wonder she was promoted to associate circulation director just six months after she was hired.

Drobish started her career in circulation in 2001 at Scholastic, where she was able to work for two separate divisions. “Email marketing, direct mail, renewals—I touched on everything that I could,” Drobish says. “It prepared me to bring out all of these ideas at NewBay and tackle some pretty big challenges when I got here.”

Shortly after arriving at NewBay, Drobish was put in charge of every aspect of the trade division. But her most important responsibility was getting all of NewBay’s titles on the same page.

“Each magazine did things differently,” she says. “I had to figure out how we could  standardize everything and set things up easier in the long run, in terms of where customers can go online and subscribe.”

And within six months, while navigating the conversion, Drobish was able to set up 24/7 customer service online, as well as allow subscribers to opt-in to receive digital editions.

Now Drobish and her team have just launched a new publication and are slated to launch an international edition of another title, bringing the total to 17 with one more on the way. Plus, the team rolled out five new digital editions just last month.      

Vital Stats: Drobish converted 16 titles within the first year at NewBay, redesigned more effective Web subscription and subscriber service sites, and launched five digital editions, one new publication, and one international edition of an existing title.

INTEGRATED MARKETING

Tom Canfield
VP Circulation
Belvoir Media Group
Tom Canfield is living proof of the benefits of a flexible customer database and the integrated marketing opportunities it can provide. Canfield primarily versees Norwalk, Connecticut-based enthusiast and healthcare publisher Belvoir Media Group’s titles in the health group, which include 10 print newsletters that are institutionally sponsored by organizations like The Cleveland Clinic and the Weill Medical College of Cornell. Circulation ranges from 40,000 to more than 100,000, but it was the installation of a new database that significantly upgraded the company’s ability to cross-promote, upsell and segment its audience. One success Canfield can point to: High-margin whitepaper sales have increased by 25 percent, year over year, for the last few years. The company has also benefited from a 10 to 15 percent lift in response rates thanks to higher-grade audience insights and messaging.

“Our fulfillment center had a very traditional mainframe that wasn’t very flexible when it came to finding names and trying to upsell people quickly after they made a purchase,” says Canfield. “We wanted to be able to cost-effectively get solicitations for our whitepapers in the hands of new newsletter subscribers on a more rapid basis.”

The newsletters, says Canfield, are doctor-targeted, broad-based information products in categories, such as heart health, arthritis and men’s and women’s health. The whitepapers, however, are annual editions that take a deep dive into niches within those categories. The new database gave Canfield an unobstructed view of the entire customer base, revealing opportunities to not only cross-sell, but upsell existing customers to more whitepapers. “As opposed to looking at each title as an individual silo where we could only look at the subscribers of each newsletter individually, we now had them in one dynamic pool where we could find readers of multiple titles,” he says.

As a result, Canfield’s entire marketing strategy was reborn. The newsletters themselves were the primary marketing vehicles, but that strategy prohibited any meaningful segmentation. Now, a robust direct mail campaign has been established, which as gone from essentially none to almost 2 million pieces.    

Vital Stats: New integrated marketing tactics have resulted in increased white-paper sales and year-over-year sales gains of 25 percent.

MENTORING

Maria Postell
Senior Professional Development Manager
Time Consumer Marketing
With an impressive number of mentoring programs, Maria Postell has been instrumental in transforming a proprietary, competitive climate in her division to one of sharing and cooperation.

Postell is in charge of mentorship, knowledge sharing, innovation initiatives and enrichment programs involving all Time Inc. magazines, including Southern Progress Corp. and American Express Publishing.

She works with 300 circulation staffers consisting of more than 25 magazines across all sources of business to help them share information and best practices.

The traditional mentoring program, taken over by Postell in 2000, is the largest mentoring program. About 80-100 people from Time Consumer Marketing and American Express Publishing go through the program each year. Senior executives are matched with junior staff to focus on career goals, job function and leadership.

A second mentoring group is for new hires. It’s a peer mentoring program to get new staff acclimated to the Time Consumer Marketing culture and provide support. The new hires are matched with someone with more experience, but outside the magazine group in which the new hire will be operating.

Still another mentoring program overseen by Postell is for financial managers. That’s a rotational nine-month program. “The purpose of this is to network and identify talent and acquire an understanding of what skills transfer to different areas of Time Inc.,” she says. 

A reverse mentoring program started by Postell has created a lot of excitement. In the program, NYU Stern School of Business undergrads are matched with and mentor senior executives. 

“This helps senior management understand generation Y,” says Postell. “It also enables our senior executives to be more tech savvy, to market to Gen Y more effectively and make better hires.” 

Lastly, responding to women executives, Postell developed the Time Warner Women’s Network mentoring program. It’s a pilot program that started with 30 participants and will be rolled out in September.

Vital Stats: Postell works with 300 circulation staffers consisting of more than 25 magazines across all sources of business to help them share information and best practices.   

NEWSSTAND

Patrick Hainault
Consumer Marketing Director
Mansueto Ventures

To say that Inc. and Fast Company had an uphill newsstand battle when Mansueto Ventures bought them from Gruner + Jahr in 2005 for $35 million is an understatement. In the first half of 2006, Inc. and Fast Company averaged 13,007 and 18,030 newsstand copies respectively, and were on the verge of getting kicked off the shelves. Fast-forward to second-half 2007, and each has increased to 21,396 and 30,515. That’s a 65 percent increase for Inc. and a 70 percent increase for Fast Company—in less than two years.

“The previous owner’s strategy was to try to get as much value as possible and invest as little as possible,” says Patrick Hainault, consumer marketing director at Mansueto Ventures. “So they were taking a different strategy.

Indeed, the titles were essentially left to whither on the vine, and by the time Mansueto bought them, industry insiders openly wondered whether Fast Company would be gutted and folded into Inc.

There was a lot of work to be done, especially at the retail and wholesale level. “We were on the boarder of extinction. We had to prove our worth and regain access first and foremost,” says Hainault. “Just two-and-a-half years ago, Inc., for instance, was averaging about 13,000 copies for the half. That just doesn’t earn you a spot on any retailer’s shelves.”

The immediate strategy was to create what Hainault calls a “virtuous circle,” where the titles’ newsstand sales incrementally increased and began feeding off themselves, gradually, but quickly, gaining traction in the retail and wholesale communities.

“We looked channel by channel—even retailer by retailer—to see where we performed best,” says Hainault. What he discovered was the magazines did, by far, their best business in airports and bookstores. Resources were diverted to those two classes of trade and the rest were abandoned, especially grocery stores. “We don’t belong there, and it’s a very hotly contested spot. So why invest resources there? Why strain relationships with the wholesalers and hurt efficiency? We just don’t win.”

Meanwhile, Hainault was moving quickly, finding ways to out maneuver his bigger competitors. When FHM shut down, Hainault e-mailed EMAP’s CEO and asked for their airport pockets. “Two e-mails later, we had an approval and a bid to put a sizeable investment in great placements for the rest of the year where FHM was,” he says. “It’s not as though people are banging on our doors to promote with them. So we had to hustle on that front.”

A second strategy, and one that better stretched Mansueto’s newsstand investment dollars, was to rotate Inc. and Fast Company in the same pocket—two weeks into the on-sale period. “The titles are published two weeks apart. So we asked our partners if they were willing to rotate the titles, and most obliged.”

Hainault says the majority of the newsstand copies are sold within the first two weeks of being on the shelves, so swapping the titles mid-stream doesn’t impact sales. “You can tell within the first two weeks you’ve sold about as much as you’re going to sell.”     

Vital Stats: Between first-half 2006 and second-half 2007, Inc. and Fast Company increased their newsstand sales by 65 percent and 70 percent respectively.

ONLINE PUBLISHING

Sean Brooks
Vice President, Social Media
TechTarget
TechTarget, the Needham, Massachusetts-based online publisher of IT content, launched in 1999. Since then the company has been on an enviable trajectory. TechTarget has grown its network from 2 to 49 tech-specific Web sites, amassed over 6 million registered members and records over 15 monthly unique visitors. In 2007, the company filed for an IPO and last October launched ITKnowledgeExchange.com, its flagship social networking site that’s supported entirely by user-generated content.

Social networking, and the content it produces, is the third leg of the company’s content strategy, which also consists of editorially created content, as well as vendor-contributed content, such as whitepapers. Leading the build-out of the network’s social media tools is Sean Brooks, who started with the company nine years ago as its first marketing manager. Since then, Brooks has risen through the ranks leveraging his marketing and audience development background to build out TechTarget’s thriving social networking community.

Brooks credits his Web marketing and audience-building background as particularly helpful in understanding the priorities of building a social media platform. “With marketing, you get an understanding of how the company works and how all the teams—editorial, product development and sales—work together. It also gave me an advantage of how to position the site to our members and to the people who we’re driving to the site. It’s about knowing what the hot topics are and creating relationships with partners at other Web sites,” he says.

Developing TechTarget’s social media capabilities rose out of a strategy to offer a wider array of content. Until last October, when ITKnowledgeExchange.com was launched, the company’s products were primarily centered around editorial and vendor-generated content. User generated content was seen as a way to drive engagement while also producing the third leg of the content stool. “Every one of our sites has those three types of content,” says Brooks. “Users don’t have to go somewhere else to read what their peers are saying.”

Since launch, ITKnowledgeExchange.com’s traffic has grown 50 percent month over month. “We now have 30 users blogging on the site and we have almost 20,000 question-and-answer pairs,” says Brooks, referring to user questions paired with answers from other users on the site.

The activity and traffic levels indicate a degree of success that Brooks is comfortable with, noting that the company’s business model is primarily supported by advertising, which relies on page views. But, he advises, don’t ignore benchmarks. “Make sure your success metrics are measurable and that you know if it’s working or not,” he says. “This includes page views, time spent on site, number of content pieces created on a regular basis, and number of registered members signing up for a specific site or service.”  

Vital Stats: TechTarget has grown its network of from 2 to 49 IT-focused Web sites, amassed over 6 million registered users, and records over 15 million monthly unique visitors.

RETENTION MARKETING

Cynthia O’Brien
Associate Director, Circulation and Marketing
Consumer Reports
Just like any other product, magazines need to make sure readers keep coming back for more, and as associate director, circulation and marketing at Consumer Reports, it’s Cynthia O’Brien’s job to make that happen. O’Brien oversees retention marketing for Consumer Reports’ phenomenally successful print and online products, as well as fulfillment and e-commerce operations.

It doesn’t hurt that CR has a loyal customer base to begin with, but that doesn’t mean O’Brien can coast. Consumer Reports has about 4.2 million subscribers and its Web counterpart, which has a subscription wall, has over 3 million paid subscribers. “We have a really loyal subscription base,” she says. “But we keep an ongoing relationship with the customer through multiple touchpoints, including print, email, wraps, and telemarketing. We try to keep the customer as engaged with the products as possible, across all of our publications.”

One program aims to get customers hooked even as they interact with the products for the first time. A kind of orientation program for new customers, O’Brien launched a member communications program based on a series of email communications. “It’s a series of six emails that are sent out to new customers after they order, and they’re spaced out every two weeks. The copy and design is intended to describe the features of the site and get the customers clicking over to the site to try it. We describe some of the unique features of the Web site that are not as intuitive when the subscriber first gets there.”

For the Web site, that’s a lot of email communications: The site has seen three years in a row of over 15 percent growth.

On the print side, O’Brien has done particularly well with a new format for their cold donor mailings. “It’s a blend of advance renewals and gift subs,” she says. “The package is voucher-style and we saw a 45 percent lift over our control, which is the biggest I’ve ever seen. It worked well because we tried something new, we had great copy and an intriguing design.”

It’s these types of adjustments that O’Brien says keeps the retention machine in full swing. “Unlike acquisitions, on the retention side what I think we’ve done best is make a lot of small adjustments—like list fatigue, changing different components, changing terms, offers, positions, fonts. It’s a lot of very small adjustments that have allowed us to maintain our rates and improve them over the years.”

Lastly, when balancing strategies and tactics between online and print products, O’Brien recommends understanding the unique requirements of each platform. “It has a lot to do with lead time. On the print side, execution is pretty quick, but you wait a long time for results on a renewal campaign—probably six or eight months. Online, you get results quickly and you have more metrics and tools to know everything about your campaign. But you need a longer lead time with IT development and all the systems you need to integrate with—everything from enhancements to credit card processing and changes to the back end. It’s all about IT time and resources.”   

Vital Stats: Consumerreports.org has not only maintained its over 3 million paid subscribers, it’s growing as well—by over 15 percent for the last three years in a row.

These reports were compiled by staff editors Bill Mickey and Chandra Johnson-Greene and contributing editor Barbara Love.