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Study Group International
Study Group International, a global leading English Language training provider, have purchased Subscribe to fulfill a very specific brief for an email broadcast solution. The key factor was the necessity be able to send out emails in a variety of languages, using unusual character sets such as Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic and Cyrillic for Russian students.
Study Group is responsible for placing over 35,000 foreign students from 150 countries into English speaking countries to learn English. Communicating to their student base in their native language is essential; as was the need to source a multi-lingual email broadcast solution.
Nick Witcher, Campaigns Manager for StudyGroup explains their acquisition:
"We spent over 2-months researching possible solutions and after a rigorous assessment we decided on Subscribe for a number of reasons. The ease of use of the system, the rapid integration of the software and of course the support for all the languages we need to communicate in. The people at ION Technologies were very proactive and responsive to our needs."
Managing Director of ION Technologies, Niall McKeown, is delighted with the new client:
"Study Group came to us with specific requirements, and Subscribe Software fitted their needs exactly. Email marketing is not only for communicating with your local customers, many large companies have customers all over the world speaking a variety of languages. Subscribe is built to manage multi-language email campaigns as well has centrally control offices around the world with differing permissions for different geographical regions. Study Group exploit all of these features to the full and our partnership is set to grow."
Since the install in February 2005, StudyGroup have sent many thousands of email to their opt-in students in languages such as Arabic, German, French, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.
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Radio Business Report
Creating revenue from your email newsletters
The perception that everything on the internet is free is fast fading. Publishers can no longer continue to give their content out on the web without recouping costs and making a profit. Print publications reproducing content on the web only stand to reduce copy sales, as more and more readers become happy to read and digest electronically. The argument that "we are protecting our market", doesn't make money. As specialist magazines and journals struggle to come to terms in how to generate revenue from their web strategy, Carnegie Solutions International (CSI) shows how to take a traditional publishing business, embrace the web and make money at the same time.
Jim and Cathy Carnegie have been publishers for the past 22 years. Jim is a 39 year radio veteran beginning his career in the mid-'60's as an on-air talent DJ and worked his way to become the youngest Program Director for an ABC Radio owned station KQV, Pittsburgh, PA in 1974. Jim used his programming creativity, media knowledge and in 1983 founded Radio Business Report (RBR) a six (6) page monthly radio business newsletter delivering the inside business analysis on media shakers and makers. Over the past twenty (20) years the growth produced an end result of a weekly four-colour tabloid magazine.
Two and a half years ago, the beginning surge of internet communications, email was developing into a preferred method of receiving and needing news, data, and making decisions fast. It was obvious to the Carnegie's that their life from building a monthly newsletter into a weekly tabloid business news publication was quickly becoming irrelevant to the needs of their media customers. Fact is today all businesses live, work, and communicate in a 24/7 environment.
That 24/7 pace forced Jim and Cathy to develope a 24/7 based E-paper. The key was taking their established brand identity with the weekly tabloid magazine and delivering the same consistent design, content, and delivering their magazine daily. They maintained their print magazine but moved that 20 year base into a monthly product that is also delivered in a digital form with Rich Media attachments. The creation of a daily e-paper was their prudent risk by focusing the end result for success on the year 2005.
Right this minute their three daily publications are sent as an HTML email to all paying subscribers; while a free 60 day incentive is offered to new potential customers.
Due to the success of the initial daily digital publication, the Carnegies and their reams of journalists and designers now produce three titles, Radio Business Report, Television Business Report and Media Mix, along with their monthly print / digital title Radio & Television Business Report - Solutions Magazine. WWW.RBR.COM
When ION Technologies and the Carnegie's of CSI got together their needs were for growth and confronting the numerous issues that are obvious and not so obvious, surrounding the growth of the digital publications.
The obvious:
The cost of outsourced mailing was not economical.
Two of the daily publications, RBR & TVBR have a 7.30am deadline while Media Mix needs to be delivered by 4.30pm. Getting reliable, timely delivery from outsourcing mail delivery had proven difficult if not impossible.
Delivery with outsourced email was often caught in spam filters.
The email broadcast tools, list management, subscription management software, accounting and electronic payment systems were all managed separately.
Not so obvious:
This all added up to a lot of work and internal frustration before a single editorial decision or newsletter was ever sent to a paying subscriber.
Not getting the answers to the obvious from any solution provider in the United States as numerous firms did not listen to understand their needs and knowing the Carnegie's publishing business.
Without answers and understanding today's internet business and rules of engagement meant no growth for the Carnegie's publishing company of over 20 years.
After an eighteen (18) month search the Carnegie's found no technology firm in the United States that would confront the inevitable problems facing all publishers delivering content via the internet. July 2004 the Carnegie's found Niall McKeown, the Managing Director of ION Technologies.
Within sixty (60) days McKeown and his ION team confronted the inevitable problems head on and quickly McKeown departed Ireland and visited the headquarters of the Carnegie's in Washington D.C. to discuss the issues with the staff behind the publications. It became apparent that with Subscribe Version 4.0, all of the obstacles facing the Publisher could be overcome. Within days Jim and Cathy commissioned a web server and were sending their own emails, negating the outsourced email vendors.
Subscribe is used to send approximately 100,000 emails per week, while automatically producing statistics on campaign success as well as handling bounces. ION and CSI are currently testing a fully featured and automated subscription payment system to handle credit card and PayPal payments. Subscribe will be used to manage the lists of pre-paid users, complementary subscribers and those that have let their subscription lapse. Automatic timely reminders are used to encourage expiring and expired subscribers to add money to their account.
Each subscriber has a personal profile, accessible via the RBR.com web site. In this area a user can modify their personal postal and email delivery details, as well as update subscription payments. Using the content management system, the staff maintaining the site can easily add new time based subscription incentives and even sell merchandise and other products.
"Having a fully integrated subscription management, payment and email broadcast solution is delivering to us the ability to grow our business again while reducing costs. The partnership formed with McKeown and ION has allowed us to do what we do best - that's publish in this 24/7 news media world and be competitive for the customer subscription and the clients advertising dollars - and let ION take care of the technical side of things. The important factor by partnering with ION is their compassion, patience, knowledge of today's real internet business world. But most important is the personal service. When we call Ireland a real person answers the phone and knows who we are. Now that's service."
Jim Carnegie
President & Publisher
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