BtoB Media Business - September 2010 - (Page 10)

FEATURE Reprints rebound A SourceMedia is “ahead of plan and ahead of prior year,” said Howard Gilbert, senior director, e-licensing and reprint services for SourceMedia Inc. Like Yates, Gilbert said the increase was not large, adding, “We budgeted for a small increase, but we exceeded it. That’s a good sign.” Revenues for Penton Media have improved overall as the economy has stabilized, said company spokeswoman Jill Baldassano. “This includes the reprints side of the business.” Digital reprints and licensing are growing at a better rate than print because Penton is working aggressively to improve its digital businesses across the board, she added, declining to provide percentages. At Haymarket Media’s New Yorkbased b-to-b division, the growth rate is approaching double digits, said Kathleen electronic will continue, but it varies by industry,” he said. “Our tech pubs are just about all electronic, but the investment pubs need to have very specific disclaimers and they want to include printed reprints in their sales kits.” Although Yates sees long-term momentum toward electronic reprints and content licensing, the vast majority of Dow Jones’ reprints are still print. “Our electronic is between 20% and 25%,” he said. “This has yet to change drastically.” New tactics People marketing reprints and content licenses must continually be creative when it comes to making potential customers aware of what’s available. Jill DeVries, corporate reprint manager for BNP Media, handles reprints for 39 of the company’s stable of more than 60 b-to-b titles. “We try to always keep up on what’s new,” she said. “We have Facebook pages for all of our publications, so, about eight months ago, I started promoting our reprints on Facebook.” DeVries created a logo that simply says “Need reprints or an e-print for that next trade show or your website?” Each publication team decides where to place the notification; most have located it under the Notes tab on their Facebook pages. Wherever it is used on Facebook, the logo is next to a link to the reprints page on the BNP corporate site, as well as e-mail and telephone contact information for DeVries. New marketing methods and delivery channels have business publishers looking to maximize revenue source By Marie Griffin fter more than a year of dealing with the economic slump, those who handle reprints and their digital counterpart, electronic content licensing, are seeing their business slowly heat up. Meanwhile, companies are beginning to implement new ideas that should help stoke those flames. ¶ For Dow Jones & Co.’s print and digital properties, including The Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com, Barron’s, barrons.com and MarketWatch, there was a slight improvement in reprint activity in the first half of this year versus the same period in 2009, but the difference was less than 5%, said John Yates, senior director of Dow Jones Reprint Solutions. Merot, license and reprint sales executive, who handles DMNews, Medical Marketing & Media, PRWeek (U.S.) and SC Magazine (U.S.). “License and reprint revenue across the four titles is up 9% year-overyear for the first six months,” she said. Merot is also seeing greater growth on the digital side, with a 15% increase in electronic license sales, a 33% dip in print reprints and an 8% increase in packages that include both. “While I can’t identify a single driver for this shift, I’ve heard anecdotally that some companies are attending fewer shows and conferences; so they need fewer hard-copy reprints to hand out, but they have increased their online marketing spend,” she said. SourceMedia’s reprint business is “probably 60% electronic, 40% print,” Gilbert said. “It looks like the trend to “Based on how much our leads have gone up since we started using Facebook, I think it has had an impact.” Jill DeVries, corporate reprint manager, BNP Media DeVries said she is currently unable to tell exactly how much traffic comes from Facebook, but “based on how much our leads have gone up since we started using Facebook, I think it has had an impact,” she said. Gilbert began a new style of e-mail campaign about six months ago. “After we 10 | Media Business | September 2010 | mediabusinessonline.com http://www.WSJ.com http://www.barrons.com http://www.mediabusinessonline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BtoB Media Business - September 2010

BtoB Media Business - September 2010
Contents
ABM/ANA Study Looks at Marketers’ Plans
Forecast Uncertain for B-to-B Media M&A Activity
New Delivery Channels Help Boost Revenue
Sales & Marketing
Audience Development
Events
Production
People
Benchmarks
Lessons to be Learned From General Patton

BtoB Media Business - September 2010