Financial Newsletter Marketing — A Peek at Stansberry Research’s Product Ladder
July 30, 2008 by John_Newtson
Alright, let’s continue with this series on the product ladders of financial marketers.
Today, let’s look at what is probably the most profitable (at least for now) arm of Agora, the $300+ million publishing empire of direct marketers.
I’ve heard through the grapevine that this financial publisher does in the neighborhood of $50 million a year. Whether that’s right or not they are definitely a very successful publisher.
When we look at their product offering and editorial content here’s what we see:
- 2 FREE e-letters – They publish them daily. Agora is in my opinion one of the preeminent ezine marketers online, not because they do everything perfectly or even right all the time. But because they publish a LOT of them across their different divisions. And they leverage their combined media-platforms very well across services and divisions.
- 5 Front-End Newsletters – All at the same price-point of $99. Also notice that these all are annual continuity programs. Renewals are critical in the subscription business to maintain and grow your customer base. Most publishers I’ve seen are running renewal marketing campaigns but I’ll bet Stansberry’s auto-renew option gives them a better retention rate.
- 14 Backend Products & Services – These include 1 course, 3 high-price “Lifetime Memberships” that each includes several of the other services and subscriptions, and 11 other investing & trading services ranging from $500 to $4,000.
You probably notice the product ladder is remarkably similar to Investor Place’s product ladder. They had 7 front-end newsletters and 15 backend newsletters.
As we get into more of these you’ll start to see these patterns emerging. The structure of a $30 … $40 … or $50 million financial publishing business isn’t difficult to map out if you’re paying attention to what other successful companies are doing.
Having such a robust product ladder means you can actually pay more to get a new customer, which in turn, opens up your prospect universe. And the key to explosive sales growth is what you do with a customer after you get him. Having a developed product ladder gives you good options to promote to new customers to generate more profit, sooner.
One of the most encouraging things about all of these businesses is that none of them are fantastic at all parts of their marketing. From tracking them for several years, talking to insiders, tearing apart their campaigns, offers and everything else I could get my hands on I’ve come to realize that being “pretty good” and even just “competent” at the core areas of acquiring and selling to customers is enough to be very successful.
And when you do excellent work, things can really explode.
Click here to view and download a PDF of this financial marketers product ladder.
Yours for faster profits,
John Newtson
Chief Direct Marketing Officer
Explosive Direct Marketing
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