The folks at the Herald Sun have launched a marketing campaign designed to switch newspaper home delivery customers to a full subscription service. The commercial risk for newsagents of this campaign, if I understand the campaign correctly, is that it drives existing customers from paying in the newsagency to paying the publisher direct by credit card.
The potential loss of customer foot traffic is considerable, especially in rural and regional newsagencies.
Paying the newspaper home delivery account has been a key traffic generator for newsagencies, important to other sales and an important factor in assessing business goodwill.
Publishers ought to be driving newsagency foot traffic and not implementing offers which put it at risk.
The Australian retail newsagency channel is unique in the world. It is a full service offer, excellent at driving sales for publishers and committed to brand building promotions. Keep chipping away at the channel and one day you will find it has all but disappeared. This comment right here is amied at ALL publishers, magazine and newspaper, large and small.
This Herald Sun promotion was announced to newsagents on Monday of this week. Outside of the issues noted above, it is, in my view, time consuming and complex for distribution newsagents to manage. The publisher could have made life much easier for newsagents had they engaged with the newsagency software companies in advance of their announcement. Their poor organisation has caused considerable stress for newsagents and generated extraordinary calls traffic to newsagent software companies.
A bit of professional planning and consideration for newsagents could have saved countless hours being wasted over the last couple of days.
I know that what I have written will annoy / anger /frustrate the folks at H&WT. Cop it on the chin guys and learn, once and for all, that you have to consider and consult with others before you announce any home delivery offer.
I am all for growing newsagency businesses – but not with a rushed campaign which appears, from where I sit, to have not been thought through.
This reminds me of another group… rushed policy and not thought through…looks like someone is struggling to hold onto their job.
News Ltd has done this in Nth Qld and it is exactly what Mark has stated. We have lost customers that came into the the shop each day and buying other things with the paper to them coming in only a couple of times a week. Also the extra paper work that you have to do to make sure that you are being paid correctly is also a huge problem. Customers have to contact News for stop/starts and then then you get these by email. It has been an absolute mess and all they keep on saying is they can better manage retention!!!!
We have given our round back and i know they have lost half the round
Mark – correct me if I’m wrong please but this appears to me to be the same thing we in Sth Australia went through with what News Ltd called ‘migration’ and promoted it as a good thing as amongst other things newsagents would not have to worry about bad debt etc. as they would carry the risk. It also (so they say) lighten your work load as you won’t have to issue statements etc. From the cr**p we are fed from those who think they know Adelaide newsagents think it is wonderful, but for us country folk it would have been another knife in the back and not required our friendly customers to keep in contact with us via a/c payment and ancillary sales. If it wasn’t for a couple of pro-active country newsagents this would have gone ahead full steam on News Ltd terms particularly in the country. For the moment we have a stay of execution. It was said at the time that Sth Aust was a test case for the rest of the industry
Hours of work to implement and for a small gain in paper sales only to lose in shop sales. Do they think we are that stupid?
Mark,
Can I look at this from another angle.
I am distribution only, and therefore do not rely on the customers coming into store to pay their bill.
For me, this offer has the potential to increase my sales, as customers move from 5-6 papers per week to 7 days per week.
In addition, this has other benefits. It converts account customers to subscription customers, which improves my cashflow, and reduces the amount of time I need to spend on administration every month.
My paypoints would not be overly fussed in some cases, as they find the paypoint process painful, and would be happy to see the volume reduced.
For me, I support this initiative. I have been actively encouraging my customers onto subscriptions.
I should point out that before I sold my shop, I did have a different opinion to this. I also acknowledge the way that HWT have implemented this could have been better.
Dean,
I agree that from a distribution agent perspective it looks okay. This is why distribution agents in S.A. agreed with the migration project and the retail and retail / distribution newsagents did not agree with it.
It is a complex issue which requires far more consultation than undertaken by HWT.
I’d also add that this campaign is, in my view, part of a much bigger project by HWT.
the project in Victoria HWT are trying to get all newsagents to run WAS trialled in distribution businesses; a narrow minded approach which shows total disregard for Retail businesses…..nothing new really.
Ross, you are absolutely right. Victorian newsagents need to look carefully at what happened and is happening in Souht Australia.
we have a lot of pensioners on subsriptions which pay us weekly and they have been aproached from nationwide about paying the full subscription up front on there credit card they have told them what to do politely as they can not aford the fee in one go and would much rather pay us weekly
Idiots. I rely on customer accounts being paid for considerable traffic. They don’t care about the newsagency business.
As it is, very few of our delivery customers are actually ‘our’ customers. Even the ones who pay their bill each month, aren’t ours. They don’t engage, or buy anything. Just pay their bill.
They’re News’ customers, not ours. Always were, always will be.
Setting up new accounts is probably a way of pre-empting a situation where fewer agencies will be willing to take on new territories.
And there’s no way News would even think of doing it without an established, and wider customer base.
Their home delivery review process promises to be interesting, if nothing else.