Agora builds on twenty years' experience with its International Marketing Solutions division. (Going Global).

Agora Inc. founder and publisher Bill Bonner is known as one of the industry's most prolific investment newsletter marketers. When Target Marketing magazine named him its Direct Marketer of the Year in 1997, editor Denny Hatch described him as "the quintessential non-traditional entrepreneur. Contrarian. Oddball.

"He publishes newsletters, some of which are disguised as exclusive membership organizations. He has amassed some 900,000 subscribers in the United States with another 100,000 scattered around 105 countries."

When Hatch asked him how many newsletters he publishes, Bonner "shrugged his shoulders. 'I'm not sure what the total is,' he said. 'Maybe 40."' Agora also has scores of books, special reports, and videos in print.

About that same time, Worth magazine shined its spotlight on Bonner, his newsletters, and his regular mailings of "a few hundred thousand pieces" full of "thunderclap copy." The article stated, "Bonner speaks a refrain he uses to pump up his staff: 'People don't wake up in the morning and say, "Gee, I think I'll subscribe to a newsletter. Honey, we're out of newsletters!"'

"Nor do they want more information. They want what information can yield. 'They want to be richer, happier, healthier, more productive,' Bonner says. 'We try to go directly to those emotional points.

"'Boredom is the great enemy,' he says. 'There is no glory in softness.'"

In the highly decentralized operations of Baltimore-based Agora (which has 11 offices in Florida, England, Germany, Ireland, and South Africa, with Bonner himself working out of Paris and his chateau near Poitiers, France), one of its marketing entities, International Marketing Solutions, has become its own profit center.

"IMS has been marketing the Agora products internationally for the past ten years," IMS manager partner Stacy Berver told NL/NL last week. "It's a multi-million dollar business for Agora. We've had a handful of outside clients for the past year and have just brought on two new clients in the past few months with another few in contract negotiations."

Berver said IMS's range of services vary by client. "We have a number of partnership arrangements where the client supplies the proven copy and we choose the lists, adapt the copy and put it in the mail and then split revenues," she said. "We have a number of arrangements where we take the risk on the mailings and supply names to the client. They fulfill and keep all back-end income and we keep all the up-front income."

Berver said they also have consulting relationships "where we're paid a monthly fee to teach the client how to mail internationally for themselves. The relationship depends on the client--the success of their current marketing and how long term of a relationship they want to build with IMS."

IMS also builds on Agora's twenty years' experience in international marketing and list management and brokering. It was internationally active long before "global" and "multinational" became household words.

"Our strengths," Berver continued, "are knowing the list market, knowing the best ways to localize copy and offer, and knowing how to get in the mail at the lowest cost possible without forgoing response. We don't translate as all of the copy generally comes to us proven to work in the United States."

Asked to give an example of IMS's work on behalf of an outside client, Berver said, "One of our clients sells an expensive (US$499) work-from-home type of course. They're very successful in the U.S. and wanted to try international mailings. We created a partnership arrangement where IMS adapts the existing copy, orders the lists, and completes the mailings from start to finish. IMS accepts the orders, processing payments, and transmits fulfillment files to the client. They fulfill the product and handle any ancillary marketing of their other products."

Berver concluded, "We've done four mailings for this client over the past year and a half, mailed to almost 250,000 names generating over 1,300 new buyers. We gave them a local presence in Australia and increased reponse additionally by charging in Australian dollars."

105 W Monument St., Baltimore, MD 21201, 410-783-8450, fax [phone],

[e-mail], www.agorainc.com.