By: Jennifer Saba A soon to be released study from the Newspaper Association of American in conjunction with Inforte, a management consulting firm based in Chicago, shows that the heavy reliance on telemarketing for subscriber acquisition could severely affect future circulation.
The report, about best practices in subscriber acquisition shows that telemarketing still plays a key role in gaining readers. For example, among the newspapers that participated in the NAA electronic survey, 86% still had telemarketing operations prior to 2003.
It still remains to be seen how much telemarketing plays in reader acquisition. Scott Stawski, vice president and client executive at Inforte, explains that when the Do Not Call Registry went into effect in October 2003, there was an 18-month ease-in period. During that period, papers are allowed to call those people with whom they had a prior relationship. "And what paper didn't have a prior relationship with their telemarketing list?" Stawski notes. Therefore, the real impact of the Do Not Call Registry will show up in 2005 circulation figures.
While the study outlines the affects of telemarketing, it quickly moves to other subscriber acquisition methods and highlights those papers that are doing the best in such areas as direct mail, crew, and kiosk sales.
This story was corrected on October 11, 2004. The report is due out toward the end of the year rather than having already been released, as Inforte previously indicated to E&P.
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