Posted in Membership Website Tips	May 14, 2008

Defend Against Economic Downturn

In a softening economy, it’s critical to tighten belts and focus on the resources you do have and can control. A few ideas:

- Plug in your “leaky payments” bucket

Chances are that many of the cancellations happening on your site are due to broken credit cards (expires or changes in account info) – chip away at those declines and regain some of your revenue!

- Focus on customer retention and cross/sell and upsell opportunities

If the state of the economy means it’s harder to find new customers, focus on the ones you do have. Remarket to people who are already your customers in new and unique ways.

- Repurpose content for additional revenues

Now is a good time to think about potential partnerships and new products. Donahue spoke about a case study he did on Elsevier’s Science and Technology book division. Elsevier digitized 4,000 titles for their subscription-based ScienceDirect.com platform. They marketed through a free trial and volume discount offer. They signed up 2,000 customers via the free trial and lifted book revenue 15% in 2007. (Learn more about that in the case study.)

TAKE-AWAY #1: Adapt to changing subscription models

TAKE-AWAY #2: Make 2.0 work for you

TAKE-AWAY #3: Optimize your marketing mix