Membership Doesn't Always Have Its Privileges

When gunning for market dominance, and the ad dollars that go with it, an association’s membership can fall short of a complete package. How two publishers are filling in the gaps.

By Bill Mickey
Friday, August 29, 2008

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Not all associations crave, or even need, publishing revenues derived from advertising. But for those that do, and are building an ad-based business model off the backs of memberships, it might pay to go beyond the obvious audience. Two association publishers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which publishes the 345,000-circulation Spectrum, and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), which publishes the 50,000-circulation CR, have built out a core, non-member audience to both compete effectively against commercial titles, and push the mission of the association to a broader audience.

Targeting the Ideal Member

Associations have a membership department that does the recruiting. The magazine, a member benefit, plays with the cards it’s dealt. “I don’t control who [the members] are,” says Jim Vick, publisher of IEEE’s Spectrum. “There’s a whole membership department, that’s their job.”And while the membership department won’t market to folks who don’t fit the model of the association, from a strictly market-facing perspective, the general membership—or audience—may not be quite right for the publishing division’s positioning statement to potential advertisers. “What I have an opportunity to do is express to [the membership division] what my ideal member is,” says Vick, “but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to act like a controlled circulation publisher. Their charge is to increase the headcount and retain it. That doesn’t necessarily jibe with what I may need at any moment.”

Those moments are when Vick—and any other association publisher who wants to position the organization’s media platform as an ad revenue-generating business—turns to non-member prospects to fulfill the publishing division’s mission. “The value of having an association allowing the publishing operation to either do paid non-member or controlled non-member is to fill the voids that are important to the marketer but may not be important to the association,” says Vick. “And I think that’s the crux of the issue.”

Vick approached IEEE’s board hat in hand, asking, initially, for “many millions” to market to a non-member audience. That amount has since tapered off as the publishing group became savvier with its marketing tactics. The audience Vick sought wavered according to function—“If I needed more C-suite, I could concentrate on getting them, if I needed more design people, I could go after them.”—but first focused on C-level executives, and direct mail was the preferred method.

Pricing Non-Member Subs

When the magazine went after the non-member community, it was sending 500,000 pieces of direct mail, with about a 3 percent response, says Ralph Monti, president of Special Interest Media, a magazine management consulting company that handles Spectrum’s non-member circ business. “The tricky part is the pricing points,” says Monti. “With IEEE the membership there is about $160 per year to join. You get the magazine when you join. We sell non-member subscriptions for $19.95 and $29.95. One is the newsstand blow-in price, and the Web site, which is more universal to everybody, promotes the $29.95 price point. We still occasionally get heated letters from our members when they discover the pricing for the non-members.”

At this point Spectrum reaches about 15,000 non-members, with renewal rates in the 70 percent range. The newsstand sell-through, says Monti, is a lower-than industry average of about 23 percent. Nevertheless, the non-member circ operation is profitable, and it gives the sales team that extra leverage when they’re in the field.

Broadcasting the Mission

Another association magazine that’s been courting a non-member audience is CR, a two-year-old quarterly backed by the American Association of Cancer Research. AACR’s traditional publishing unit produces seven medical journals covering cancer research and epidemiology, among other topics. But CR, led by Tracy Middleton, assistant director of marketing and circulation, and a former international licensing manager for Maxim, is the more consumer-facing product of the association. The magazine is about to break into retail this fall.

“We’re a consumer publication published by an association,” says Middleton. “The goal of this is AACR may be the oldest and largest organization dedicated to cancer research, but we wanted to have a vehicle that could reach the general public, whether they’re survivors, advocates, family members or caregivers. But we also wanted to talk to the scientists and clinicians that we work with so they can understand what the patients are going through and to better their research efforts.”

Not Just a Giveaway

Fifty percent of CR’s 50,000-circ audience, says Middleton, is patients and patient advocates. The rest is made up of clinicians and AACR members. CR is not an automatic benefit, says Middleton, it’s an option on the membership form.

It’s a concerted effort to both serve and represent a community outside of the membership. Indeed, the magazine’s circulation is almost double the association’s 28,000 membership. “We could give it to everyone just to get the circulation up, but we want to make sure that there are people who really want to be involved in the magazine, not just to get it because they’re a member.”

The mixed audience obviously requires different marketing strategies and creative, and Middleton says new subscriber acquisitions are easier from the professional community. The patient community is more difficult. “You can’t disclose medical information so there are no lists. So we have to be more grass roots about it. We go to a lot of advocacy conferences.”

A new multi-part series targets each segment of the magazine’s audience, but each part builds off the other, retaining the message of collaboration. “The first one in the series features a three-time cancer survivor and describes what he does in his community to raise awareness,” says Middleton. “The next one features a researcher, and we may do an oncology nurse next. Even though they’re different parts of our audience I think everyone can relate to that human aspect of it. So under this campaign we’re hoping to show that even though there are disparate audiences, everyone is working toward the same goal.”

For it’s introduction into the retail world, the magazine will have a newsstand-only cover. “Having a newsstand-only cover was a key element of connecting with the non-member audience. To market to new readers and be competitive on the newsstand we need to create something that has a bit more pop.”

Major elements include a full bleed, instead of the white border on the non-newsstand version, larger, snappier cover lines, more color and the implementation of bursts. It’s an effort that breaks through a smaller association’s assumption that its niche status should automatically attract an audience—and one that doesn’t give in to the belief that small can’t replicate big. “The last publication that I worked for had a circulation of 4.1 million. But you have to measure it by the same standards. It’s about working smarter with the resources you have, but still having the same expectations and goals. And if you look at the larger associations like AARP, it’s a situation where smaller associations might feel that they don’t have to work as hard because they’re a niche publication and the editorial will just naturally find its audience.”

And, according to Vick, an association can fall into the trap of believing its membership is the market. “The fundamental issue is the notion that just because you’re an association and you have a bunch of members doesn’t mean you’re a market. And the problem is I don’t think a lot of associations realize this. If you want to do it right, it means taking a serious look at whether or not your association, with its membership, actually constitutes a market of value to the people who will be spending their money in it. That’s the first law of competing effectively.”