Benj Steinman, Beer Marketer's Insights. (Publisher Profile).

Beer Marketer's Insights, founded in 1970, is probably one of the relative handful of newsletters that can honestly be called "the bible of its industry."

Publisher Benjamin ("Benj") Steinman is the second generation at the helm. His father, Jerry, the founder, has retired. "Dad is 79 now," Benj reported, "and as catankerous as ever. He comes by the office to give us the benefit of his advice and counsel."

NL/NL didn't have to ask Steinman how he got into the newsletter business.

"I joined the company about a year and a half after I finished college," he said. "I had thought I wanted to write fiction. I guess some people think we do that sometimes in the newsletter business."

Beer Marketer's Insights ($23x, $510/year) has stayed close to its base. They have a couple of related titles--Alcohol Issues Insights (12x, $320) and Beer Statistics News 12x, $410)--two annual reports, Beer Industry Update ($895) and Import/Specialty Insights ($725); and a one-page fax and e-mail newsletter, Insights Express (75x, $245). "It's all beer," Steinman said.

Insights Express, their e-mail and fax product, is not a loss leader. It's a one-pager published more than once a week and priced at $265. "The overlap with Beer Marketer's Insights is probably from 10 to 20 percent," Steinman said. "We market it almost exclusively to our own lists. We haven't done that well when we went outside."

Editorially driven

"We are an editorially driven company," Steinman said, "meaning we haven't really experimented with forced free trials and other types of marketing common to business newsletters.

"I expect we are in a fortunate position with what I hear from other publishers about the difficulties of direct mail prospecting these days. With our renewal rates of over 90 percent, we don't require a constant influx of new subscribers. We do regularly add a few. Last year the gross was up two percent.

"We have a website and we have our e-mail product, but they aren't a major part of our business. We do find the internet to be an incredible newsgathering tool .and I guess it has just become part of evolution of the newsletter business."

Beer Marketer's Insights' reputation

Through the years, Beer Marketer's Insights has been known throughout the newsletter industry for two things:

1. The "Princeton orange" stock upon which it's printed. "We still use it," Steinman laughed. "My dad used to say he published the ugliest newsletter in the business. It began as an effort in the longstanding battle between publishers and the photocopy machine--the orange stock was difficult to copy--but it has long since become a 'trademark' for us. Subscribers tell me all the time that they recognize it immediately when it hits their desk."

2. The informal editorial style. Publisher Jerry Steinman wrote the newsletter very much in his own personalized vernacular--full of expressions and spellings like Tuff and Nuff sed.

"We still keep that voice," Benj Steinman said. "I call it 'stylistic continuity.'"

The newsletter is also well known for its heavy doses of analysis and editorial comment, * along with the news that no one else can have first--an accomplishment in this era of "everything is on the web in 20 minutes."

Beer Marketer's Insights is also in the conference business. They have an annual conference which has now been offered for ten years. "We also tried a second conference," Steinman said. "The first year was a success, the second not.

"Our annual meeting, however, is an industry standard. The first Monday in November at the Hotel Pierre in New York. You know the conference business," Steinman added. "It's more or less equal parts of information, industry networking and entertainment. We find the Pierre works very well for all of that."

* For example, the federal government's campaign to blackjack states into raising the legal drinking age and lowering the DUI blood alcohol levels by threatening to withhold highway monies was a long-term continuing editorial concern of the newsletter.

P.O. Box 264. West Nyack, NY 10994, 845-624-2337, fax [phone], www.beerinsights.com