Shanley + Associates
turn publishing operations around financially. Putting financial health ahead
of circulation growth, Shanley + Associates first defines the financial
path and then addresses the circulation strategy. Without a sound financial
plan, there can be no sustainable circulation growth.
* Magazine Circulation Consulting
* Ad Sales Consulting
* Market Research and Reader Surveys
* On-Site Staff Training
* Subscription Fulfillment Systems/Agencies
* Direct Mail Creative Services and Production
* Circulation Web Strategy
* Price Testing
* Direct Mail
* Copywriting
* Association Membership Acquisition & Retention
Magazine
Circulation Consulting
Are you missing a successful marketing plan?
Using the language of numbers, Kevin Shanley has improved the profitability
of hundreds of journals. The first step is to analyze your business like a CFO.
The financial truth will set you free. In order to find profitability, all the
expenses must be realistic to the scale of your business. Living within the
financial reality of the current business requires discipline and an understanding
of publishing economics.
Kevin brings the worlds of circulation management, accounting, and marketing together with custom analysis that allows management to ask the 101 "What if…?" questions.
Asking key questions
elicits clients’ needs:
1. What keeps you up at night worrying?
2. What needs to happen in the next twelve months so you know that you’ve
made progress?
3. Can you get to the place you need to be, from where you currently are?
4. What level of risk are you willing to undertake to increase the circulation?
5. Plus many others…
Shanley + Associates
aims to make your organization more profitable. We build marketing plans around
key strategic questions:
1. How many new dollars need to be invested to increase circulation?
2. What are the new revenue opportunities for ad sales, circulation, and list
rentals?
3. What is the optimal circulation for the journal?
4. How do you achieve breakeven?
5. What is there to consider about a frequency change?
6. What would be the impact of a price testing offer?
7. Plus many more…
After the plan
is approved, we then apply the right blend of marketing to successfully execute
the strategy. Are you ready to be more profitable?
Ad
Sales Consulting
Do you need more ad sales revenue?
Many publishers find the world of advertising sales a necessary burden. They
don't want the worry, but they need the revenue.
It's often an area where outsourcing comes up.
Kevin has managed advertising departments, set up operations, hired staff, negotiated
with independent contractors, developed incentive plans, written and designed
media kits, built databases of prospects, walked trade show floors pitching
ad programs, and closed orders.
For his clients, Kevin has developed proven ad sales strategies that result in hundreds of thousands of new dollars added to their bottom lines.
Kevin shows you how good working relationships and outstanding customer service, far more than slick media kits, are the keys to ad sales success.
What are your advertising sales needs?
Market
Research and Reader Surveys
Are you two years behind in conducting your reader survey?
To grow your business, know your readers! Reader surveys are needed every 24
months to ensure that editorial, advertising, and marketing staff fully understand
your customers.
Kevin Shanley defines the strategy, writes the questions, recruits the focus
group members, conducts the research, summarizes, analyzes, and recommends.
Plus, with new technologies, reader surveys can be conducted electronically
using tabulating software to provide instant feedback.
Kevin will help you identify the most cost effective ways to better understand
your audience.
On-Site
Staff Training
Does your staff need more circulation management training?
One-day training workshops are available. The day brings together marketing,
editorial, customer service, advertisement, and fulfillment operations. Now
your brain trust can explore new opportunities and synergies. Kevin excels in
getting parties to work together in productive environments that may not have
previously existed.
What are your circulation training needs?
Subscription
Fulfillment Systems/Agencies Search
Are you confused about how to manage fulfillment?
Many clients struggle with finding the right subscription fulfillment solution.
Kevin knows the questions to ask, the prices to pay, and the benefits to be
gained from both the internal and external fulfillment solutions.
Shanley + Associates has helped design many fulfillment systems. Working with
their clients' fulfillment houses every day, Kevin and Mike oversee those services
that execute the production, run reports, track orders, and complete the analysis.
They have conducted
vendor searches for many clients, often uncovering niche solutions, the "one
size fits one" fulfillment strategy. The best solution is based on what
fits each client’s situation. Many times, the inexpensive turn-key PC system
was the right solution.
Picking the right agency can be daunting. Kevin has successfully coached many
clients through this process.
What are your biggest fulfillment headaches?
Direct
Mail Production Management and Creative Services
Do you need help with your production management?
The Shanley + Associates’ production management team is second to none. We know where all the traps are hidden.
Mike Cismesia is a production master. Customers have come to call Mike the "Go to Guy." Mike simply does it all. In a given month, Mike will oversee the production of several direct mail campaigns, solve hundreds of operational issues, crunch the numbers on major programs, and put together comprehensive circulation management reports for all our clients.
Mike has the ability to look at a campaign and identify where money is being wasted. Production management is his expertise. No one does it better.
We have created processes known as the "Chinese merge/purge" that we apply when marketing to church leaders. This and other innovative production and creative services processes are all tailored to
avoid production mistakes and take advantage of cost-savings that only production insiders know about.
With comprehensive advance planning on both creative and production services, Shanley + Associates offers clients proactive oversight in all our creative and production processes. We make sure all steps are properly audited so our clients can rest assured there are no costly production snags.
There can be as
many creative and production potholes to avoid as there are viruses on the Internet.
Kevin and Mike know how to get to them before they get to you.
Circulation
Web Strategy
Do you need a web strategy today?
Do you have web questions like these:
1. Where should
a magazine start with a web strategy?
2. Do you believe there are thousands of prospects on the web, people who should
be subscribing to your magazine?
3. Do you believe your web site is simply not productive as a marketing tool?
Shanley + Associates understands how to bring the world of search engines, e-zines, email, web site offers, and pop-ups together so you can acquire a new reader at a fraction of the cost of direct mail. As with direct mail, there is still plenty of financial risk with web marketing. It's simply too easy to lose tens of thousands of dollars in one campaign. Shanley + Associates will explain the process, define the expected outcomes and risk, walk you through the production process, track the orders, analyze the results, and recommend the path forward.
Kevin started designing marketing web sites before secure transactional software was available. Today his clients are written up in the marketing journals for their award-winning campaigns and financial successes. Kevin knows the fine art of moving people from suspects, to prospects, and finally to happy customers. There are specific steps that have to be followed for this to happen.
A good strategy can "shrink" the size of the World Wide Web so that only qualified prospects find your web site. Through the use of e-zines and good old direct marketing strategies, Kevin's clients have slashed their marketing acquisition costs in half compared to traditional direct mail. This does not happen by luck. There are key contact points that add new paid subscribers to the circulation roles. These new readers would not have been found through other marketing channels.
Kevin has developed
several marketing co-op web sites to help magazines successfully market their
titles together.
Price
Testing
Do you believe you can increase the subscription price without lowering your
overall renewal rate?
Setting the subscription price is too often treated more like a guessing game than a strategic decision by many clients. Shanley + Associates offers a scientific, statistical process for acquisitions and renewals to determine the maximum price without jeopardizing the circulation. Price testing is one of the shortest distances to immediate revenue growth.
Direct
Mail
Do you need a renewal and acquisition strategy that works?
One of the greatest
areas of confusion for most publisher clients is in knowing how to grow circulation
using direct mail. Publishers have lost tens of thousands of dollars trying
to market their periodicals, only to be forced to give up after reviewing unacceptable
results. Shanley + Associates breaks down the myth and fear of direct mail,
giving our clients confidence to pursue a smart circulation growth strategy.
The heart of Shanley + Associates’ expertise is in direct mail for periodicals.
We understand the interplay between the list, the offer, the package, and the
copy. A direct mail strategy is defined based on how these four variables contribute
to the results.
Our planning and
analysis have won marketing awards. But best of all,
Shanley + Associates has been responsible for thousands of acquisition, reactivation,
and renewal mailings that improved our clients’ bottom lines.
Copywriting
Do you need copy that not only sizzles but delivers more readers than past efforts?
Good copy is measured by the number of people who order. We have conducted hundreds of copy tests. We create new letters from scratch, test teaser copy, and ask for the order all the way through the process. We take our best words and test them against what's in place. In the end, the numbers do the talking.
The goal with good
marketing copy is telling the complete story with the fewest words. This is
easier said than done. Our copy has doubled the response rate on many campaigns.
We know the craft of good copywriting. We can create or tune up a renewal series
or start with a blank sheet for a new acquisition campaign. Our packages have
won many marketing awards, not just because of the words, but because they balanced
the right message, going to the right person, at the right time, and at the
right price.
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Association
Membership Acquisition & Retention
Have you run out of ideas on how to increase your association membership?
We review the economics
of acquiring and retaining your membership, size your marketplace, write the
plans, and execute the strategy.
Shanley + Associates knows how to increase your overall renewal rate within
the first twelve months. Our association clients have been surprised at how
quickly their financial pictures have turned around.
Are you ready to
change your membership trajectory?