A pioneer in Internet circulation marketing.
During a business planning session for Yahoo! Internet Life in 1995, group circulation director Steve Sutton presented some lofty projections for subscription acquisition via the Internet, specifically the Yahoo! site. The numbers were so big that Ziff-Davis CEO Eric Hippeau asked incredulously, "Do you actually believe this is going to work?" With his fingers crossed under the table, Sutton replied, "Absolutely."
So when the banner ads for the startup title were finally in place across the Yahoo! site, Sutton held his breath. "Thousands of orders poured in during that first day, and relieved, I said 'Wow! this really is going to work,' " Sutton recalls.
Today, Yahoo! Internet Life grosses approximately 600,000 orders annually via the Internet, which is light years ahead of the volume other publications are getting. But success was a long time coming, Sutton admits. He started testing various forms of Internet marketing a decade ago--in the dark ages before the Web. "Along with CMP's Net Guide, we were probably the first magazine to get a subscription from the Internet," Sutton says. "But we really started blowing the medium out with the rise of the Web because it became much easier to get a message out in front of people."
Sutton says computer magazines were a natural to be at the forefront of Internet marketing, but YIL has succeeded where many others, including many computer titles, have failed. "The primary reason for our success was simple," he says. "We looked at this new medium like direct marketers," Sutton says. "I treated the Web as if it were DTRV or direct mail."
"Steve has definitely been a leader and an innovator in applying direct-marketing concepts to Web marketing," says Rodale Press' Ed Fones, who is also culling some impressive volume from the Net with Men's Health--about 2,500 orders per month.
But the publishing industry as a whole has a long way to go, Sutton believes. "We're playing catch up to traditional Internet marketers." This is mainly because "so few organizations in the publishing industry are willing to put big bucks down on something when they have no assurances," says Sutton. "Until recently, online wasn't producing a lot of orders for anybody."
When asked if he thinks his success in Internet marketing is encouraging other publishers, he replies, "I'm glad lots of people are in the game now--and if I played some part in that, then great. It's not too often that you get the opportunity to break a medium, and I'm excited that I got to be part of breaking this one."
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