Slicing and Dicing Customer Information to Boost List Revenue

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Monday, June 1, 2009

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One of the biggest sources of list revenue for PennWell Publishing last year was the databases it offered to buyers, but things changed quickly due to the poor economic climate. “We did pretty well last year, but now that [source of revenue] has gone off the face of the earth,” Gloria Adams, senior VP, audience development and book publishing, PennWell, told AD. “It used to be fairly reliable, but now it has disappeared for some reason.”

So what the company is doing now, Adams says, is slicing and dicing its lists in every way possible to come up with new keywords and databases. “We’ve just been trying to do different things to at least get onto somebody’s radar screen.”

The team has been going into its centralized database to dig deeper into the customer information they already have to offer clients even more targeted lists. “We’ve gone in and said, ‘Okay, let’s take the traditional titles’ industry segments, and look only at small business or only at women.’” Adams says. “It has allowed us to come up with totally different demos and numbers.”

These finely targeted lists have become a part of PennWell’s regular group of lists—the company now has about 100 lists for its 40 magazines—but others have been created on the fly at the request of clients. But sometimes, Adams says, those on-the-fly requests can be a bit tedious to sort out.

“This one particular client wanted a list in a specific area and, when we looked at the data, we thought it wasn’t going to be possible to give them an ample amount of names,” Adams says. “But when we looked back at some of the categories, we were able to come up with a bigger list than we thought. Our first attempt only brought us 500 names, but our second attempt garnered us 4,000 names.”

Adams added that email has helped hold the company’s list revenue budget. “We really try to gather as many email addresses as we can because it’s a way for companies to continue to market affordably,” she says. “Email is still a good alternative once a company has pretty much given up on all other forms of advertising and promotion.”