Finding money in the street--renewal at birth. (DM Notebook).

If you saw a $10 bill lying in the supermarket parking lot, you'd pick it up. (We won't get into the delicate question of how large a sum of money it would be before you felt an obligation to try to find out who lost it.)

"Renewal at Birth" is the closest thing the newsletter business offers to finding money in the street.

Definition. For our purposes here, any renewal effort that takes place in the first couple of months after the original order is a Renewal at Birth campaign. Some reserve that term for efforts that go essentially immediately after the original order and characterize an effort two or three months later as an "Early Bird." Two or three months after that the Early Bird becomes an "Advance Renewal."

The easiest way. Do you send a welcome letter to new subscribers? Many publishers do. "Welcome to Widget Marketing Fortnightly. We know you'll value the outstanding news and information in every issue, etc., etc. Please check your name and address on this letter and let us know if any correction needs to be made." Just add to that an offer to extend the subscription for another year.

Frequently, the offer is simply the "second year" price from the two-year deal the new subscriber didn't choose when ordering. If the offer was a year for $167 and two years for $297. offer the RAB option at $130, "the lowest price available to any subscriber." And there is no reason you can't make this offer to "bill-me" orders.

Psychologically, the time at which subscribers feel best about the decision they have made is immediately after sending the original order. Try to take advantage of this. Response is small--perhaps three to five percent is a normal range--but the cost is zip.

Option II. Wait six weeks or two months-long enough, depending on the frequency, for the subscriber to have received two or three issues. Then send a RAB offer as a stand-alone mailing. This might be a good point for the "extra issues" offer, 15 months for the price of 12.

Now you will be offering them something they know they want, more copies of your newsletter. I do believe every "very early" renewal offer, however titled, should offer the subscriber something extra for sending you another check so early. Publisher Frank Joseph liked this offer, and one time his response to the RAB was so good "I went back and raised my initial price by 20 percent."

With this offer you might be hitting people just at an early decision point. Bruce Levenson at United Communications Group says he makes renewal decisions fairly quickly. "After I've read two or three issues of a new pub. I pretty much already know if it's one I'm going to like and probably renew" There's no real reason to wait until 10 weeks before expire to ask for a renewal decision.

My friend Dan Capell, longtime publisher of Capell's Circulation Report for magazine CDs, doesn't believe you should ever send a piece of correspondence to a subscriber--welcome letter, confirmation of change of address, response to a complaint--without including the opportunity for a renewal decision.