One of the trade pubs I get (online and off), sent me a new type of email at the beginning of the year, with this subject line:
Introducing TMWorld Deals: Dell LED/LCD Monitor for Just $129
My first reaction: ‘Oh, they’re going to offer Groupon or Woot style deals from their advertisers.’ My second reaction: ‘Um, Dell monitors?’
Yep, they’re just posting deals from a third party, of no specific interest to the subscribers.
Maybe they plan on using this platform with their advertisers? Maybe they need the added revenue? As it stands, not a service to their subscribers, and a dilution of their brand authority.
Oooo, the shame. Sorry I have to give props to my own org. We developed a similar newsletter this past fall… Great Deals for Laboratory Products. To be fair, we have offered promotional deals on our marketplace for a number of years, but I admit we stepped a little further on that bandwagon given the recent success from this model. If done right it actually works amazingly well. And yeah, we actually find deals on laboratory products from a variety of companies – go figure. Completely relevant to the subscribers, in fact we are going one level deeper and creating a Great Deals promotional flyer for the more niche “chromatography” segment.
But it’s not easy, the challenge for traditional media companies (as in your example) is the time. You have to chase the companies and build the relationships to get the deals in the first place. And even then the deals are just so-so, you have to get deeper into that relationship to say “c’mon give me a really cool promotion for my readers!” and it’s when you have those TRUE DEALS that the reader appreciates the service and finds value. And guess what, the media company might not make a lot of revenue from that, but the underlying value to the reader is second-to-none and that’s what’s important.