Exclusive Seth Godin Case Study; Newsletters.com Reaction; ContentUK

*** MarketingSherpa.com's CONTENTBIZ.com ***
Practical News & Case Studies on Marketing, Syndicating &
Selling Content Online
August 8, 2000 Volume I, Issue 16

1. NEWS: Study Results, INFOCON AMERICA, ContentUK, WebWord
2. More Headlines
3. CASE STUDY: Seth Godin's Free Book Offer
4. READER LETTERS: Reaction to Newsletters.com sale

* Yes, you can forward this to your friends, but please
send the entire issue (not just one bit) and please tell
them to get their own free subscriptions at:
http://www.contentbiz.com
Thank you!

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NEWS & GOSSIP
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* ContentUK Industry Portal Launch Planned

ContentBiz.com was psyched to be invited to submit our info
last week for a new publishing/new media industry portal in
Britain -- ContentUK. It's being created by the Digital
Content Forum, a non-profit organization that just about
every UK publishing and new media association belongs to.
They hope the portal will, "Link relevant players, provide
the means to guide new companies into successful start-up
operations, help existing companies find partnership
opportunities with each other, nationally and
internationally..." etc. If you're interested in being
involved, go to:
http://www.mmsig.org.uk/dcf/dcf-contentUK.xhtml
or email rosanne.levy@virgin.net

Note: This is a separate portal from the one that for-
profit MMP.co.uk are also reportedly building for the
industry. To get their free newsletter go to:
http://www.mmp.co.uk/subscribe.htm

* INFOCON AMERICA to Sell Reuter's Business Reports Online

INFOCON AMERICA who help more than 50 leading
"professional" business-to-business print newsletter
publishers such as Aspen and IOMA manage online content
sales, just announced they are now carrying Reuter's
Business Insight research reports on sister store
Newslettersonline.com

Does this mean INFOCON's branching out to compete with
DeepCanyon, MarketResearch.com and the like? Yes and no,
CEO Mark Hartsell told us. "We're more of an ecommerce
enabling company, not just an aggregator. The aggregation
business is very competitive and very tough as you know.
Our primary business model is providing seemless back
office technology to publications so they can transition
from print to Web and sell their own content on their own
sites. NewslettersOnline.com is just a secondary
distribution channel once their content is on our
database." Hartsell also noted his company has just begun
syndicating out publishers' content, always with their
explicit permission, to other sites. INFOCON's first
syndication customer is Managed Care Online.
http://wwwinfoconamerica.com
http://www.newslettersonline.com
http://www.mcol.com

* Study Reveals Adult Books Sold Online Rose to 5.4% in
1999

The 1999 Consumer Research Study on Book Purchasing shows
an enormous jump in the percent of adult books bought
through the Internet from a 1.9% unit share in 1998 to 5.4%
in 1999. (No, silly, by "Adult books" we just mean those
written for grown-ups as opposed to kids.) eBooks don’t
have big enough sales to be counted as a category yet, even
though as Jan Nathan of the Publishers Marketing
Association says, “After attending the BEA in Chicago, I’d
say it seems that this has become an “E” world.” The Book
Purchasing Study is compiled from diaries sent to people's
houses -- which means we could wildly skew the results if
we are lucky enough to ever get one. For more info go to:
http://www.bisg.org

* Campaign Review: WebWord.com's Ezine Welcome Letter

Many email newsletter publishers don't want to go the
double opt-in route (sending a confirmation email to every
new opt-in subscriber which they must reply to in order to
be added to the list) because they fear it will lower their
response rates. WordWeb.com's ezine on designing Web sites
for maximum usability gets around this very cleverly by
saying three times in a row in all caps:
PLEASE BE SURE TO REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE!
right at the start of the message where you can't miss it.
Then as a nice touch to drive more traffic back to the
site, they give a list of links to their all-time most
popular articles and interviews. This welcome note is a
very clever marketing piece for a very useful site.
http://www.webword.com

--
MORE MARKETINGSHERPA.COM HEADLINES
---
Here are more exclusive news headlines you might be
interested in from other MarketingSherpa.com channels:

* How YellowBrix Built Industry Buzz via Marketers' Email
Discussion Groups and Bulletin Boards
http://www.marketingtowebmarketers.com/sample.cfm?contentID=632

* Denied! Interactive Ad Trade Press Turned Away By Jupiter
http://www.marketingtowebmarketers.com/sample.cfm?contentID=636

* VerticalNet's Lesson: Email Can Get You in Trouble
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=646

* SmallBusinessDepot.com's Grows Opt-In Email Database by
Giving Airline Travelers Print Newsletters
http://www.marketingtosmallbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=624

Note: if you'd like to run MarketingSherpa.com headlines
on your site or Intranet for free, go to iSyndicate.com
http://www.isyndicate.com/directory/partners/all/marketingsherpa.html

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CASE STUDY:
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EARN YOUR STRIPES IN THE NEW DIGITAL ECONOMY!
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Enlist in Digital Commerce Boot Camp
A one-day intensive workshop for digital content executives
At Internet Content East
New York City
October 2, 2000
http://www.qpass.com/bootcamp
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Editor's Note: OK how embarrassing is this? When we picked
up the phone the other day and a voice said, "This is Seth"
we just assumed it was our pal and Board Member Seth
Fineberg. So we were horsing around, giving him the kind
of relaxed backtalk we give all our pals, when after a few
minutes it dawned on us ... this wasn't Seth Fineberg at
all. This was Permission Marketing King Seth Godin.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has entered the building!

So anyhow, we hope this Case Study turned out all right,
because our hands were shaking with hero worship when we
typed it up. (Honestly.)

CHALLENGE
When a traditional publisher offered best-
selling author Seth Godin a "very significant advance" for
his next book, "Unleashing the Ideavirus," he turned them
down. This was his big chance to prove his ideas were
right on the money -- that content owners can make a profit
by giving it away ... free.

"From the math point of view, each hardcover book costs $4
to print and I'm selling it for $40. I'll break even when
I sell 5,000 copies." When we asked why people would buy
the book when he's giving 100% of the content away in it
for free digital download Godin explained, "It's a
souvenir. You're not buying the idea. The idea is free."

CAMPAIGN
Godin sent a single short HTML email to everyone
who had read his last book, Permission Marketing, and
emailed him asking to be placed on his email updates list.

The subject line read "Read my new book ... Free". Body
copy was very short, friendly and to the point. It
reminded us that we'd asked for an update from him and
briefly told us where we could download the new book for
free.

Being the opt-in King, Godin was careful to send this email
ONLY to people who'd opted in for more news and not to the
127,000 names he'd gathered of people who'd just downloaded
portions of his last book from his Web site. "A more
aggressive marketer might say, 'Here you can get another
one', but I didn't go that route."

Godin supported the campaign by building buzz during the
two prior weeks via stories in major media including USA
Today, Wired Online and The New York Times.

RESULTS
"My email had a 33% click through rate. It worked
far out of proportion to my expectations and I'm a pretty
optimistic guy. So far 55,000 people have downloaded it
[the book] from me. That combined with the fact that the
average person shares it with three other people means I've
now reached 2.5 times more people than my last book, which
was a New York Times Bestseller, in 1/20th of the time."

As of August 7th, the hardcover version of the book was
#930 on Amazon's best-seller list, a remarkably high
ranking considering it's almost double the cost of most
hardcovers, won't be published until September ... and a
free digital copy is also available for download there!
(Granted, you have to look for it.)

NOTES: Godin says, "The lesson here is an opt-in email list
is the single greatest asset a Web site can build. If your
response rates aren't like mine that means you're not
getting good opt-ins. Most marketers have trouble
understanding that."

"My message here for content owners is that the most
precious thing available to you is attention and giving
away things to get attention is smart. I believe we'll see
more and more of that, as people consider that any piece of
digital media you can give away is worth it; which is why
the whole problem with Napster is so ridiculous. Let
people sample new ideas!"

NEXT: After traveling around the world almost non-stop last
year on speaking gigs, Godin has decided to stay put for a
while. He doesn't like consulting, "I'm an idea merchant."
So he's doing the next best thing, offering 50 lucky
business executives (no consultants or service people) the
chance to spend one special, tax-deductible, day with him
en mass for just $8,000 each. As Godin says, "If I can
teach you to fish, then that's a bargain." Interested?
Email sethgodin@yahoo.com

Download the book at http://www.ideavirus.com
Check out Permission Marketing at http://www.permission.com
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READER LETTERS
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Editor's Note: Boy, we've been deluged with reader mail on
the story we did last week on Newsletters.com sale to
Kalorama.
(http://www.contentbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=619)
Interestingly none was directly from any of the players
involved although they are all subscribers. Anyhow, here's
a selection from our overflowing mailbag we thought you'd
be interested in:

"It seems like even before I can decide if a company is a
competitor or a potential partner, they're gone!

We're living in a strange, but interesting world."

Tim Baskerville
Chairman, Coolridge http://www.coolridge.com

"A woman I work with is friends with a former
Newsletters.com employee, so I heard about the sale when it
happened. Fascinating stuff, this Internet business. Any
word on what the Wunderkind plan to do next? Have the old
guard newsletter guys gotten over their "dinosaur" comments
in Red Herring?"

Julie R. Holland,
Marketing Assoc., American Industrial Hygiene Association
Web: www.aiha.org

"Hopefully, the dot.children have had their 15 minutes of
fame. Beyond their penchant for being shameless, in-your-
face, we-know-better media hounds, most of them have proven
nothing more than an ability to burn through cash at
alarming rates, confusing advertising with brand
confidence. Their inability to bootstrap, build revenue
foundations, and develop creative survival skills is their
achilles heel. The avalanche begins soon around here.

Oh well, back to reality, I guess!"

Dirk Johnson, Webmaster
Model Car Hub http://www.modelcarhub.com

* Wanna see your name in digital ink? You can write us at
editor@contentbiz.com. We can't guarantee we'll print your
note ... but flowery compliments to the publisher always
help! :)

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CONTENTBIZ.COM INFO
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To Sponsor this Newsletter Contact:
Mary Glynn
maryg@marketingsherpa.com

To Contact the Editor:
editor@contentbiz.com

Publisher:
Anne Holland
anneh@marketingsherpa.com
202.232.6830

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