An offer aimed at bringing an expire back from the dead (with a friend). (The DM Notebook).

In an episode of The West Wing, Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) says at one point, "This is just wrong on so many levels."

I felt much the same about an expire mailing I received from The Hockey News. Now, I know from experience that they are slow and if you wait to renew, as I tend to do, until "at expire," I'm going to miss several issues (it's a weekly) before they get you back on line.

However, to receive an expire mailing a month from the day I mailed my renewal check stretches the boundaries a bit. But that's an administrative question, and my real concern was with the format and expire offer itself.

* It contained a polybagged sample issue. I suppose it's a nice "gift" to receive, but can it be justified economically? The one thing you know for sure is that your former subscriber knows what the publication looks like and what a typical issue contains.

* It offered a discount and premium for coming back on board. Now, the discount was only $5 from the "regular" renewal price and the premium just a 2002 Olympics hockey team pin, but my renewal mantra is "train your subscribers to renew early, not late."

If you'd like to get cash in early, offer your "best" subscribers the chance to save the fin by responding to the first piece in the series. Don't reward your "worst" subscribers. Next year I'll know I can wait until the end of the renewal series, or even later, and save a couple bucks.

* Especially odd, the package made a combined renewal and gift subscription offer. One of the standard items of publication DM wisdom is that it's difficult to sell more than one product at a time, make more than one offer at a time. I've worked with publishers who make combo offers for renewals and special reports in the earliest pieces in their renewal series, but usually drop the ''extras'' from the offer and home in solely on getting the renewal check as the series approaches expire.

* You might wonder why the reader who let his own subscription lapse would want to give it as a gift, but allowing that he might, The Hockey News isn't a cheap publication. Even with the $5 discount, the ticket for renewing your own subscription and giving one gift comes to more than $100 ... perhaps enough to make the on-the-fence prospect say, "Whew," then hesitate, and then fall down on the wrong side of the fence.

That was what was "just wrong on so many levels" about The Hockey News' after-expire renewal offer.

Let's summarize what is "just right on so many levels" for a renewal series:

* Reward your early renewers, not your late ones.

* If you are making a combo offer, do it at the beginning of the series, not at or towards the end. Perhaps even combine the combined offers with a discount of some sort--"Gift subscription at half-price," for example.

* In other words, design the series to get simpler as it goes along, not more complicated.

Guidelines for gift subs

Speaking of gift subscriptions, here are four quick tips which can work for any variety of titles, both consumer and b-to-b:

* Start early. The pros, like The New Yorker, are in the mail for their Holiday gift solicitations in early October, even September.

* Offer discounts. Not necessarily three for one like Andrew Harper at The Hideaway Report (NL/NL 12/3/01), but "something." Perhaps so much off for the first gift, a better deal for three.

* Of course, also offer the subscriber an opportunity to renew (early) in conjunction with signing up gift subscriptions.

* Accept bill-me orders. The pay-up is great. No one wants their gift subs cancelled.