Knight Kiplinger "repurposing" venerable publishing firm.

The two words that struck me most clearly in an interview with Knight Kiplinger, president of the venerable publishing firm, were "repurpose" and "monetize."

"For many years our company had been divided into two halves," Knight told me on the telephone. "The newsletters, our premium products that are subscription-based, and the magazines, chiefly Kiplinger's Personal Finance, which are advertising-supported as well.

"Today, where are the two coming together? Cyberspace.

"We're 'repurposing' some of our information for the website. If you had visited Kiplinger.com even a month ago you would not have seen our new Business Resource Center. It's ad-supported and contains a considerable amount of free content."

A variety of revenue sources

In addition to the increase in advertising revenue on the site, Kiplinger is also getting revenues from such initiatives as custom publishing for clients, joint ventures, and site licenses.

"However," Kiplinger adds, "we don't give away the content of our premium products, the letters. That wouldn't be fair to the subscribers or good business for us."

Kiplinger Washington Editors Inc. publishes:

* The 1923-founded The Kiplinger Letter ("Washington" was dropped from the title about 10 years ago)

* The Kiplinger Tax Letter (1925)

* The Kiplinger Agriculture Letter (1929)

* The Kiplinger California Letter (1965)

* Kiplinger's Retirement Report (1994)

"The website is growing, rapidly reaching 1,500,000 unique visitors a month for a total of 8-10 million page views," Knight says. "Obviously those numbers are of interest to advertisers.

"I'm sure you've come across the phrase 'search optimization' in your reporting. We're doing our best at Kiplinger to tag and index everything 8 ways from Sunday. So our site will come up not just with the well-known name Kiplinger, but terms like 'business forecast' or 'economic outlook.'"

(Editor's Note: Searching for "business forecast" or "economic outlook" didn't bring Kiplinger up for me.)

"Frankly, I'm not entirely confident the upcoming generation of 20- and 30-something executives are going to be willing to pay for information in any form so this is our strategy, to 'monetize' the non-paying reader. We now provide a certain amount of free ('repurposed') content to attract them to our advertising supported website."

Marketing

Kiplinger remains a heavy user of direct mail but there have been changes. "We used to mail very heavily to large affinity lists--business magazines whose audience and prices were similar to ours. But in the past 6 years or so they've been slashing their prices to the point that they are no longer similar to ours. The Kiplinger Letter currently offers an introductory price of $48 and a full ticket of $117, "We just went over the $100 mark a couple years ago," Knight says.

"Today we are looking much more at many smaller lists, trade magazines and associations that have maintained prices. In fact, compared to many niche publications, our price still looks inexpensive.

"We still mail millions, but just not as many millions as we used to."

Kiplinger's "More Boom and Inflation Ahead" package may have been the longest-running control in newsletter marketing history. Tweaked over and over, it must have mailed for 20 years or more.

DM format

"We've made a change. Kiplinger never used a sample issue. We cover a very broad range of subjects and, you know, 'no single issue can give the sense of the editorial scope of a full year of issues....' But about a year ago we made a change. We developed a composite sample issue. All the stories are actual stories from The Kiplinger Letter but covering a broad range of topics.

"It's a very simple package. It's mailed flat in a 9" x 12" envelope and contains the compiled sample, an order form and a BRE. It's working. We test adding a sales letter or brochure to the package detailing the history of Kiplinger, the broad range of editorial coverage they will receive and so on, and that adds nothing but expense to the package.

"We are also now hard-offer only. For years we offered introductory subs on a soft offer with long, long conversion series. That does work, it does build your circulation totals, but I'm happy with our present arrangements."

Pricing strategy

"Our first year renewals (conversion rates) are about 50 percent, but by the time we get to the 4th year renewals we reach about 90 percent." (I once heard Knight's father, Austin Kiplinger, say he regarded "the renewal rate as a very useful overall indicator of publishing quality.")

The $48 price must be in the mail offers; the website has only the full price option.

Times change

Knight concluded our interview, "When I began in newsletters many years ago what many publishers liked about the business is that it gave them a chance to make a good living in journalism without having to deal with advertisers--several, in fact, were magazine expatriates."

Kiplinger Washington Editors Inc., 1729 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20006, 202-887-6400, www.kiplinger.com