RBI e-Newsletters - Winner of Online Ad Sales Team - Business 2008

"The Reed Business Information e-Newsletters central sales team has gone from strength to strength in the judging year, with significant team and product developments. The newsletters offer a unique targeted opportunity for advertisers, and the team go the extra mile with clients, offering a wide variety of tailored ad solutions."

The Reed Business Information e-Newsletters central sales team sells advertising on 37 editorial-led e-mail newsletters across 12 of RBI’s online brands in 11 markets: CatererSearch.com; CommunityCare.co.uk; ContractJournal.com; Farmers Weekly); FlightGlobal.com; Hairdressers Journal; ICIS Chemical Business; RoadTransport.com; OpticianOnline.net; PersonnelToday.com; TravelWeekly.co.uk; and Travolution.co.uk

Enterprise and innovation

RBI’s e-mail newsletters were originally devised simply as traffic drivers for the company’s websites.

In 2006, some ad teams started monetising their brands with banners and skyscrapers, generating £120k of revenue - but there was no consistency of product or sales effort across the business.

So in Q2 2007, RBI centralised its e-newsletters business in a way no other publishing company had before under publisher Rob Willock, with a telesales team led by sales manager Kelly McAlpin and a production department under head of e-mail marketing Louise Colligan.


From left to right: AOP Awards 2008 Presenter Hardeep Singh Kohli, sales manager Kelly McAlpin, head of sales Vic Bunby, award sponsor Loraine Davies from PTC and publisher Rob Willock

RBI defines its e-newsletters as the next generation of controlled circulation publications in that they: define an audience; produce compelling content for them; deliver that content free to the audience in exchange for their demographic information; and offer advertisers the opportunity to be seen/clicked by a targeted audience and align themselves with RBI’s valued brands.

It was apparent that the existing product portfolio and standard advertising inventory would be insufficient to hit 2007 and 2008 revenue targets, so the team set about launching new e-newsletters, standardising templates and incorporating new ad options.

These included lead generation opportunities via advertorials linked to lead capture forms, a features sell approach (replicating RBI’s successes in controlled circulation publishing), supplier news (paid-for vendor generated content), events packages and a job of the week position.

This effectively doubled the potential yield on each e-newsletter.

As well as the new ad inventory mentioned above, existing ads were moved into more prominent positions (skyscrapers above the fold; and bottom banners to a mid-newsletter position).

Professionalism and client relations

The e-newsletters team has both external advertising clients and ‘internal clients’ in the form of their vertical market publishing management and display colleagues.

Each team member makes 20 effective sales calls per day to their customers.

On closing a deal, they use their experience and recent traffic stats to educate customers about what works best in terms of e-newsletter ad content and design (clear customer benefit plus call to action), and can offer both basic and advanced design services for advertisers who have no banner, skyscaper or MPU creatives.

• They also manage expectations of what volume of clicks or leads a customer can expect by product, ad type and ad position
• All call and booking activity is logged and those records are made visible to all display sales reps in that market to minimize duplication of effort
• Some key accounts are handled by the vertical market display teams (though all e-newsletters bookings are processed by the central team)

This has required the e-newsletters sales team to work very closely with their display colleagues. The e-newsletters head of sales Vic Bunby ran e-newsletters sales training, objection handling and incentive schemes for all display reps. The wider team continually equip them with information on prices, special offers, availability, mock-ups etc and help to ensure they are including e-newsletters in all their proposals.

Development in the judging year

The e-newsletters sales team, in conjunction with their publisher and production team, were central in the development of new standard templates for RBI’s e-newsletters.

They recognised the folly of producing 30+ different newsletters on almost as many different templates, knew its potential impact on product and advertisement performance, and also understood the limitations on new advertising opportunities that this caused.

Using RBI’s own metrics, plus examples of best practice gleaned from colleagues at RBI-US and RBI-NL, as well as industry white papers and seminars, the team set about creating a high-performance e-newsletter template based on the most successful elements of the most successful newsletters.

This helped to ensure all of the company’s e-newsletters maximised their chances of achieving the four main objectives of e-newsletters publishing: getting through; getting opened; getting read; and getting clicked.

Traffic growth

The click-through rate from RBI’s e-newsletters to its websites increased by 40% in March 2008 following the introduction of the standard templates. On some newsletters (including Airline Business and ICIS Fine & Pharma) the traffic uplift was more than 100%.

Advertisers experienced a similar uplift in clicks - clicking is obviously habit-forming!

The company culled underperforming e-newsletters (those that did not meet minimum revenue and traffic expectations) and encouraged the launch of new products through a revised launch procedure that focused on: audience propositions; content propositions; and sales propositions.

Audience development

Maintaining and growing our circulation databases is a crucial part of driving value in RBI’s e-newsletters business. As part of its audience development plans, a high-profile sign-up campaign was implemented across RBI’s websites, which increased e-newsletter subscription rates by more than 250%, and which turned the net decline in e-newsletter audiences to net growth.

The impact of these developments were immediate and exciting. E-newsletters are now one of RBI’s fastest-growth businesses, with forecast revenue growth of around 50% in 2008.

Judges’ Comments

"Identified a gap in the inventory and successfully exploited it. Having a clear focus on a simple proposition has delivered some very successful results."
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