If you've only ever worked on paid consumer titles, controlled circulation can look a bit odd. You give the magazine away, for free, to people who've filled in a form. Where's the money in that?
The money is in the form. Controlled circulation works because the publisher can prove exactly who is reading, and that proof is what advertisers pay for. Get the data right and a free title can be a very good business. Get it wrong and you're just paying to post magazines.
What controlled circulation is
A controlled circulation title is sent free of charge to readers who meet a set of qualifying criteria, usually around their job, their industry and the size of their organisation. A magazine for plant engineers goes to plant engineers. A title for hospital procurement goes to the people who buy for hospitals.
The publisher "controls" the circulation by deciding who qualifies. Readers ask for it (or agree to receive it) and answer questions about themselves. The title's revenue comes from advertisers who want to reach that precise audience.
It's common in B2B and trade publishing, where the audience is specialist, the advertisers are suppliers to that industry and the readers would rarely pay a cover price.
Why advertisers care
An advertiser buying space in a controlled circulation title is really buying a list of the right people. They want to know:
- how many copies go out;
- to what kinds of people (job function, seniority, industry, company size, region);
- how recently those people confirmed they want it;
- that someone independent has checked.
That last point is why ABC and BPA audits matter so much in this part of the industry. An audited certificate tells the advertiser your figures aren't just your own opinion. Our guide to preparing for an ABC audit covers the evidence side.
Qualification: the questions you ask
Qualification questions are how you know a reader belongs on the file. Typically you'll ask about job title or function, the type of business, the number of employees and sometimes buying responsibility.
A few things make these questions work:
- Keep them tied to what advertisers buy. If no one ever asks for a breakdown by a particular question, think about whether you need it.
- Use fixed answers where you can. Free-text job titles are hard to count. Pick lists are easy.
- Ask the same questions consistently. Changing them halfway through a year makes your breakdowns hard to compare.
- Store the answers against the reader. Not in an email somewhere, not in a separate spreadsheet.
Those answers become the demographic breakdowns in your audit certificate and your media pack, so it's worth getting them right.
The request: source, method and date
For audit purposes, it's not enough that a reader qualifies. You need to show they asked for the magazine, or how else they came to be on the file, and when.
That means recording, for every reader:
- Source: where the request came from (a campaign, an event, the website, a renewal mailing).
- Method: how it arrived (online form, email, phone, a signed card).
- Date: when it was made.
- Type: whether it was an individual request, a request made on someone's behalf by their company, or another category recognised by the audit body.
Audit bodies treat different request types differently, and some kinds of distribution count in different categories, or not at all. The exact categories and how they're reported are in the current ABC reporting standards (or BPA's rules, if that's your audit body), so check those for your title rather than relying on rules of thumb.
Request recency: the clock is always ticking
This is the bit that catches people out. A request doesn't last forever. Audit standards only accept requests made within a certain period, and older ones drop out of the qualified figure, even if the reader is still happily receiving the magazine.
So a controlled circulation file needs constant renewal, just like a paid one. Instead of asking for money, you ask readers to confirm they still want the title and that their details are still right. Done well, it also keeps your demographic data fresh.
The practical steps:
- Watch the age profile of your requests, by request type, every month.
- Plan re-qualification mailings well before a large group of requests ages out.
- Use more than one channel. Email is cheap, but a reply card in the magazine or a phone call can rescue readers email misses.
- Make it easy. The shorter the form, the more people finish it.
- Record the new request properly (source, method, date, answers), or it doesn't help.
Our piece on building a renewal series that works applies to re-qualification as much as to paid renewals.
Keeping the file clean
A controlled circulation file only has value if it's accurate. Three habits matter most.
Process gone-aways fast. In B2B, people move jobs all the time. Returned copies tell you someone has gone, and every copy you keep posting to them is wasted money and a copy you probably shouldn't claim. See gone-aways and why they cost you.
De-duplicate. The same reader registered twice, once with a work email and once with a personal one, is one reader. Your counts should say so.
Don't let people drift into the wrong category. If a record has no evidence of an individual request, don't count it as one.
Mixing paid and controlled
Plenty of titles run both: a qualified free circulation for the core audience and paid subscriptions for people outside it (consultants, students, overseas readers). That's fine, as long as the system can tell them apart and count them separately. Audit certificates report paid and free copies in their own categories, so your data has to support that split.
What the software should do
Whatever you use, it should capture the request source, method, date and qualification answers at the moment a reader is added, and keep them with the reader's record. It should let you count readers by category and by request age, and tell you who is about to age out.
In Avio, a dedicated controlled circulation wizard captures request source and method, record type, status codes and qualification questions as the order is taken, and selections can count circulation as at any date. In Adeptis, requests are captured with their audit classification, selections filter by request recency and type, and the Circulation Age report shows your ABC priority tiers alongside a request-type by age-band breakdown.
If you'd like help running the file itself, our circulation and subscriptions bureau handles controlled circulation day to day, and our audit preparation service helps when the auditor calls.
Happy to talk it through if you're setting up a controlled title or tidying one up. Get in touch or book a demo.
Rob Sherwood is Managing Director of Adept Data Services. He has spent his career in subscriptions and circulation, at WDIS, Optima and CDS Global before founding Adept.