A Letter From The President

Dear Circulation Friends,

As we look forward to our next two major events I want to thank our entire membership for your generous support in the past year.

I know the one-day Training Session in Utica, "Beyond Retention...into Reader Loyalty," will meet the needs of all newspapers in our association. This session, back by popular demand, is an extension of what Tim Pearson presented last time he met with us. If you missed the last session, this is your opportunity to understand and use this innovative plan at your newspaper. Additionally, we will offer Alex Grimshaw who always presents in a dynamic motivational style. We have tried to keep the cost low so multiple people can attend.

Additionally, the line up for our Cooperstown NYSCMA Convention will be one of our best. We will be featuring motivational speakers Tony Marsalla and Norm Bossio, and national favorites Rob Althaus from Gannett Corporation and Bob O'Sullivan from Bergen County. Always a hit is the information from John Murray from NAA, Anthony George from ABC and Diane Kennedy from NYNPA. All this information will be framed with an opening reception at the "National Baseball Hall of Fame" and taking place at the "first class" Otesaga Resort Hotel.

Just a few quick reminders:
1. Register for the Training Session.
2. Register for the NYSCMA Convention.
3. Send Promotion Award Entries.
4. Gather ideas for the "Hot Ideas" session at the conference.
5. Bring promotional items to the convention for prize give-a-ways.

And as always, if you have any questions about NYSCMA or if you are interested in getting involved in the association, please feel free to contact me at (315) 792-5151.

Best Regards,

Claudia Hartz
President, NYSCMA

Young Managers Look
Back At Important
Lessons Learned

Reprinted from Circulation Update 2/01  CSC 0800
by Adam Campbell

As assistant sales manager at The News Journal (all day, 121,242; Sunday, 142,274) in Wilmington, Del., I have had the enjoyable experience of mentoring and counseling circulation interns. Through Gannett Co.'s Circulation Specialist Program, The News Journal has taken on recent college graduates as employees and trained them in circulation sales and marketing. Many of the participants in this program move on to challenging positions with other Gannett properties. Recently, I got in touch with program graduates and polled them on what they considered the most valuable lessons they learned as first-time managers. Among them:

  • Keeping good records. To be effective in evaluating market trends, it is imperative that novice managers keep extensive records. Every piece of data, from logistics to results, is key in determining the prospects for success of similar campaigns under identical conditions. In fact, many sales efforts don't change dramatically from year to year. Instead, they are just tweaked to get better results. Therefore, it is important to document and file all elements of a sales project.

  • Being flexible. Sales managers must possess the ability to change direction on the fly, despite planning their tasks meticulously. When an opportunity arises, the window may be open only as long as an event takes place. Being opportunistic is not a skill that is practiced, but organization and attention to detail are. More often than not, the ability to chase sales is contingent upon having the standard efforts (such as telemarketing and crewing) on auto pilot. Managers must have the ability to organize their tasks daily and manage their time so that the tasks are completed on schedule with sufficient time devoted to each.

  • Letting others do their jobs. A former colleague has this as his motto: It doesn't take me all day to do a full-time job." It's easy to view this statement as an excuse for a poor work ethic. But I have come to see that it actually embodies the "work smarter, not harder" policy. Too often, managers concern themselves with every facet of the sales operation. At some point, they must let their managers manage and their supervisors supervise. Bogging yourself down with training telephone reps, selling Newspaper in Education accounts and  solving delivery issues is a sure-fire way to turn your nine-to-five into a seven-to-nine. By all means, stay in tune with the entire function, but not to your own detriment. Not all of this advice may apply to your operation, nor is it intended just for first-time managers. perhaps it will be the catalyst for some interesting conversation in your department.

PRESS RELEASE

"The Umbrella Kings"
Announce Limited Edition 50th Anniversary Peanuts Umbrella

Hot Off The Press Promotions, Inc., the largest supplier of premiums and promotional products to the newspaper industry, has obtained the exclusive rights from United Media Licensing to market a Peanuts 50th Anniversary umbrella to our newspaper clients. This limited edition umbrella comes in a variety of color combinations and features 8 different classic Peanuts comic strips along with the Peanuts 50th Celebration logo printed on each panel. It is not available anywhere except through daily newspapers that will be offering this unique product as a subscription incentive to generate new starts. Already, over 50 newspapers have purchased this Limited Edition umbrella.

The last original Peanuts comic strip appeared on Sunday, February 13th, the day after its legendary creator, Charles M. Schulz, passed away. Peanuts was published in over 2,600 newspapers and had an estimated 355 million readers in 75 countries. Over 90% of the newspapers that ran the original Peanuts are now running Classic Peanuts featuring many of the most popular strips from the 1970's.

For more information, contact
Joel Greenstein at 800-203-5304, extension 222, or go to our website at
www.hotoffthepress.com.

Know The Telemarketing Rules

Reprinted from Circulation Update 2/01 CSC 0800

The Federal Trade Commission prohibits a company making outbound telemarketing calls from accepting payment over the telephone without the customer's signed or tape-recorded consent. Recently, participants in the Circulation Federation's E-Forum were reminded of this policy by Andy Orr, CEO of Circulation Services Inc. of Fort Collins, Colo. Orr said that his telemarketing services company had been contacted by an attorney working in the Attorney General's office for the State of Michigan. Orr's company had sold a subscription and provided a check draft on behalf of a home-delivery customer to a newspaper client. The newspaper had cashed the check and started the new customer's

 delivery service. "When the customer received their bank statement and cancelled check they went right to the Attorney General and denied that they had given anyone permission to debit their checking account," Orr said. The lawyer in the Attorney General's office told Orr that this might be in violation of the FTC's Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act.

"Fortunately, we had an audio recording of the check transaction, and we sent the Attorney General a copy of the file on CD-ROM", Orr said. "The attorney called back a few days later and told us she played the audio recording for the complainant, the wife broke down and told her husband that she had, in fact, given out their

 checking-account information over the phone. The case was dropped. Since posting the cautionary tale on the Circulation Federation E-Forum and offering to send out copies of the FTC's telemarketing rules, Orr says he has received 61 requests for the policy statement. In the March issue, Circulation Update will carry a story on telemarketing legislation. Watch for it!

DON'T MISS THE
SPRING TRAINING SESSION
THURSDAY, APRIL 5TH, 2001
"BEYOND RETENTION...INTO READER LOYALTY"

Contact Lou Saccocio at:
isaccocio@timesunion.com
or call 518-454-5607
for reservations!

The Whole Neighborhood in Their Hands
Reprinted from Circulation Update 2/01 CSC 0800

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution won the Packaging & Distribution Award in TechNews magazine's 2001 Best Practices Awards program. Winning teams each received $1,000 and a plaque at NAA's Newspaper Operations Super Conference in Orlando, Jan. 7-12.

by Karen Doss Bowman

Business is not as usual these days at the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. Using inexpensive, handheld computers such as the ubiquitous Palm Pilot, ACJ's technology gurus transformed the newspaper's circulation sales strategy from hit-or-miss to right on the money. The Palm III and the more rugged SPT 1700 from Symbol technologies Inc. of Holtsville, N.Y., have provided the platform for newly developed applications designed to improve circulation practices and increase productivity.
The ACJ currently uses handheld units for door-to-door circulation crew sales. Applications to refine select market coverage delivery and single copy distribution practices are in the works. ACJ's inventiveness in adapting the standard, inexpensive Palm-based hardware is a good model, according to Harshad Matalia, NAA director of production operations. "They use existing technology to improve the productivity of their workforce," he says. The old method of conducting door-to-door
circulation sales was random and inefficient, says Ed Baer, ACJ's chief information officer. "The crew supervisor would load up

  the sales staff into a van and send one solicitor down this street, one down another street, and so on," he says. Managers had scant information to help them target sales efforts and direct the sales force, he adds.
Bowman is a Bridgewater, Va., freelance writer. E-mail, brockman@bridgewater.edu.
A year ago, Gary Brockman, ACJ will soon pilot an application for circulation-technology director, took select-market coverage delivery that management's challenge to improve operations and reduce costs. "I had been reading a lot about the new 'hot', Palm technology and wanted to experiment with integrating our mainframe information about subscribers," he explains. Brockman and another programmer built the system within six weeks. The pilot project was conducted in one county by one sales team four months later, the system was in full use. "It started out strictly as proof of concept," Brockman says. "We wanted to prove that we could develop our own system and that it would work. What we gained was efficiency - it's quicker, better, faster."
The browser-based system interfaces with Java programs, Brockman explains. The ACJ's mainframe is integrated with an Oracle 8i database, which also acts as a World Wide Web server. Sales managers can adjust their routes on the mainframe, from the Palm, or through the newspaper's Web site.
Armed with handheld devices, ACJ salespeople now descend upon assigned neighborhoods, walking in U.S. Postal Service delivery sequence, Baer explains. 		The Palm III guides solicitors house-by-house to sales opportunities. The smart system knows where non-subscribers live and alerts solicitors to skip homes belonging to current subscribers or people who expressed an aversion to door-to-door sales. Additionally, the units tell solicitors exactly which promotional offers to extend and calculate accurate prices with the corresponding sales tax.
Since the ACJ automated its crew sales operation, Baer estimates that productivity has improved by 40 percent.
And it doesn't stop there. The ACJ Baer expects to install by February. Circulation staffers no longer will have to affix address labels and sort into delivery sequence the 100,000 copies of special weekly editions sent to targeted non-subscribers and weekend subscribers. The electronic route book will guide carriers through their neighborhoods, indicating where to turn and how many houses to pass before making a delivery. Carriers can make changes, and the system time-stamps each delivery to help develop better marketing strategies.
A system is also being developed for single-copy distribution. To be used with SPT I 700s featuring bar-code scanners, the application will gather data to help estimate the draw for each outlet and precisely account for returns.
This gets carriers out of the collections business, Baer explains, and minimizes paperwork.