Al Goodloe, master of international marketing.

Al Goodloe comes from Roanoke, Virginia. His family was horrified when he went North to Harvard rather than to the University of Virginia (which in Virginia is usually just called "The University").

But that was only the beginning of his travels. In his publishing career he has roamed the world, spending almost a quarter of a century with the New York City-based Alexander Hamilton Institute.

"The traditional business at AHI was correspondence courses, a sort of MBA by mail," Goodloe said. "Some 50 years ago universities didn't generally offer evening, weekend or accelerated summer courses, so the AHI course was a way to get an advanced business education for people who couldn't go on directly from college. In fact, my father, an engineer, took the AHI course after he came home from the war."

'Reinvents' a company

"But by the sixties, universities were moving into the 'adult education' business, offering evening classes and so forth, and it was hurting our business," Goodloe said. "We looked for ways to 'reinvent' AHI and began publishing newsletters--titles like Taxes Interpreted and Executives Personal Development Letter.

"We also moved into the international market. We advertised our business course with full-page ads in Business Week and Fortune. At that time, they didn't yet have split editions, so you bought the whole run, including international," he said.

"We noticed that we got perhaps 20 inquiries from Chile. Chile isn't a big country, I thought, how many subscribers can Fortune have there? When we looked it up the figure was 100.

"With that much interest we had to do something. We offered our correspondence courses in truncated versions, less time and money. This worked up to a point, but more was needed.

"We developed a stable of newsletter titles and added special reports. We published and marketed them in local languages, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Arabic."

(Goodloe tells the story of the time he discovered the Spanish translator they were using for their marketing package thought dividends and profits were the same thing.)

"At the peak we had enough products, newsletters and reports," Goodloe continued, "that we could practically send one mailing a week to prospects. People asked if that was 'over-mailing,' but my thought was, if each mailing is for a different product, the chances are that most mailings will be very profitable and, indeed, they were."

Founds Publisher's Multinational Direct

Goodloe retired from AHI in 1984 but is still a board member. In 1986 he began publishing Publisher's Multinational Direct (12x, $195/year, $225 outside North America).

Along with the newsletter, now in its 18th year, Goodloe has offered international conferences--one concentrating on publication marketing which attracted both some newsletter publishers and many other marketers from titles like the Financial Times and National Geographic.

He has also offered a conference aimed at catalogers which drew some big names--Lands' End. L.L. Bean, Saks, Brooks Brothers--but not so many more.

"I suppose we were worried about the hassles of fulfillment and customs, etc.," Goodloe said, "but the fact of doing international business today is so much more 'do-able,' but people just don't realize how 'do-able' it is."

For 2004, Goodloe observed, "The past several years have been tough times for many newsletter publishers and they tend to pull back, reduce marketing, cut staff, but the outlook for the international market is much brighter.

"First, of course, you have to have a product that will work internationally. A newsletter which is tied to U.S. law just may not work; you must be sure the overseas market needs the information.

"For example, The Chronicle of Higher Education is a subscriber to PMD; evidently what happens in the U.S. marketplace is of great interest to educators all over the world."

Some facts about international newsletter marketing

Goodloe offered these insights regarding the international marketing of newsletters:

* You cannot test the waters with one mailing.

* You need to find the lists that will work for you. (As a codicil, the best lists are frequently competing publications, and their lists are down these days, with fewer fresh names added.)

* Price 20 percent or more higher in the global market. In 2004 list response is picking up.

Think high. In the right markets information from the U.S. has cachet and you do have additional costs to meet doing business internationally. Plus, the U.S. dollar is down against most other currencies. Your newsletter will cost them less than it did a couple of years ago.

* Your USA version will probably work well abroad. Perhaps your international edition could be printed on lighter paper to save international postage.

* "If you want to do business internationally," Goodloe said, "you need to be willing to allow customers to pay however they want. I grind my teeth whenever I see 'Payable in U.S. dollar check drawn on U.S. bank."

Besides, Goodloe noted, "most overseas subs pay by credit card these days, and international checks can be cashed by foreign exchange firms for about $3.00, cheaper than the credit card rate for a high priced title."

International subscribers tend to be loyal, Goodloe said, and you want to be able to maximize the value of each one by selling them other titles, reports, directories, and annuals.

Offshore your telemarketing 

Offshoring is a hot-button political topic this year, but the costs of global telemarketing have come way down. Goodloe said, "There may be opportunities for newsletter publishers to take advantage of this with things like special renewal offers, special reports, surveys--ideally things which are easy to explain on the phone."

Al Goodloe, a founding member of the newsletter association while he was at Alexander Hamilton, served on the board of directors for six years and was named to the association's Hall of Fame in 2003.

Publisher's Multinational Direct, 1501 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10028, 212-861-4188, fax [phone], [e-mail]