Sample
Transcripts for Non-Members
July 2003
Los Angeles Athletic Club
WFMA DINNER MEETING
7/03
CIRCULATION MODELING
MODELING PAID AND
CONTROLLED CIRCULATION
Speakers: Peter
Klehm
Hal Jaffe
Paul: All right. Tonight's topic is modeling, and for
those of us who do circulation modeling, it's very important particularly this time of
year. We're leading into budget time and we need to get our circulation models in order so
that we can pass on to the publishers what kind of numbers we're looking for and looking
at for the coming year. We've got a couple of distinguished speakers here tonight. We're
going to start with Peter Klehm. Peter, who's our past president, is also the Corporate
Operations Director for Paperloop. They're a multimedia provider of information to the
pulp and paper industry. Peter has been in the publishing industry for 20 years, directing
circulation for controlled and paid publications, newsletters and online titles, including
Embedded Systems Programming, Pulp and Paper, Visual Basic Programmers
Journal, The Progressive and American Demographics. We're very pleased
that Peter consented to come speak to us tonight.
Speaker: Peter Klehm
Well, to get started it'll help
me by a show of hands if you can tell me, How many people here work for a controlled
title? How many paid? Then how many in both? Mostly either/or, okay. How about: How many
work on one title? How about two to three? More than three? Okay. So most people are
multi-titled. Okay. All right, so if you work on controlled titles, I wonder how many
people have bothered to ask their publisher if they could go out a buy a controlled model
program? Would you even bother to take that step? Probably not.
(From Audience: ) Is there one?
So that leaves us having to come
up with our own tools, which is what I'll start going into here. So . . .
Just to give you a little quick
background about Paperloop. As Paul said, we are an information provider to the paper,
printing and converting industry -- very exciting stuff. These are the magazines which
we'll be talking about in general tonight. We also have some web sites and some
newsletters, and finally some trade shows. Typical b-to-b publisher in these various
channels.
Circulation modeling. What is Modeling? This is what we're
going to go over tonight. What do you need to do modeling? You need resources to model
effectively, and then we'll look at a demo spreadsheet we have. And then I'm going to do
part of the presentation tonight more on the marketing side, and if you come to Circ Day
LA I'll give you more on the fulfillment side of modeling.
What you need is to be able to make your best possible
forecast based upon past history
information. Your model is only going to be as good as what you feed into it.
So, again, past history information. What you need to gather
first when you are starting to do your modeling is 1) your response to promotions and 2)
getting together cost information from various promotions. Look at currently available
market and other information. And no matter how many hard facts there's always going to be
a certain level of intuition that you're going to need to rely on. And, just in general,
in terms of resources--probably more people are seeing the following: you get handed a new magazine to handle that you're not familiar with and you'll find
yourself digging through lots of information without really a map. I have found that what
works for me is basically just to ask as many people as possible, start with other staff;
if that doesn't work or you don't get all the answers, fulfillment companies, or usually
your rep has a wealth of information. –Hopefully they’ll tell you everything
that you need to know.
At any rate, gather as much response information as you
possibly can--that's very important--including looking at your requal efforts--you need
information on your new business efforts as well, including: selection criteria for lists
and so on, and your quantity mailed, drop date, etc. And this is all probably very
familiar to you if you're doing any type of market analysis.
Again, resources--you have to look at your cost assumptions.
Go digging through invoices and go to your accounting department. Make sure you're
properly analyzing what it's costing to reach a new subscriber doing various campaigns,
look at your fulfillment reports. Be aware of the limits of your fulfillment reports;
every company has its strengths and weaknesses.
Now knowing what your publisher wants is key to modeling in order for you to come out
with the right answer for your model. .
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