Every request on a controlled circulation file has a sell-by date. The reader doesn't know it, the magazine keeps arriving, and nothing looks wrong. Then one day that copy stops counting as requested, and if a few thousand reach that point together, your audited figure drops with them.
We touched on this in controlled circulation explained. This post goes into the detail: what ABC actually says, what counts as a request, and how to keep the file in date without a panic every audit.
What ABC says
The rules sit in ABC's Reporting Standards for Business Magazines. The most recent change note I can point you to is ABC's February 2024 update to the controlled free circulation rules, which reprints the relevant sections. In plain English:
- Requested (individual). The copy must be addressed to the reader by name. You need evidence that they made a clear request to receive the publication within the last five years, before you sent it.
- Requested (colleague). Someone else at the reader's organisation asked for it on their behalf, again within the last five years. The copy can be addressed by name or by job title.
- The date has to be recorded. ABC says the request date must be recorded "so that it can be analysed by age".
- The reader's details need evidence too. Separately from the request, you need evidence supporting their name, job and address, and showing they meet your terms of control. That evidence must be less than five years old at the date you send the copy.
Standards do change, so check the current version on the ABC website for your title before you plan anything around these numbers. If BPA audits you rather than ABC, the principles are similar but the rules are theirs.
The 2024 change worth knowing about
Before that update, supporting evidence for controlled circulation had to be "third-party evidence". It's now "identifiable and verifiable evidence", effective from periods ending December 2023.
ABC's own example is a publisher using registrations for one of its own events, just as it could use event data bought from a third party. The condition is that you can say when and where each piece of information came from, and that ABC can check it.
One thing to be careful with. An event registration can support who someone is and what they do. That isn't automatically a clear request to receive your magazine. If you want those people counted as requested, the registration needs to include a proper request, and you need to keep the evidence of it.
Why the age profile matters before the cliff
Five years sounds like a long time. It isn't, for two reasons.
First, people move. In B2B, a request from four years ago is often from someone who has changed jobs since. The older your requests, the more of your file is quietly going to empty desks. Our post on gone-aways covers what that costs.
Second, because the date is recorded so requests can be analysed by age, an audited file that leans heavily on old requests is visible to anyone who looks. A circulation built mostly on requests from the last year or two tells a buyer something good about how alive the file is.
So the real target isn't "nothing over five years". It's a steady age profile, with fresh requests coming in at least as fast as old ones age.
Get the dates right first
Recency only works if the date means what you think it means. A few things to check:
- Record the date of the request, not the date it was keyed. A batch of reply cards entered three weeks after an event should carry the date the reader filled them in, if you have it.
- Don't overwrite a request when details change. An address update isn't a new request. If your system treats any edit as a fresh date, your age profile is fiction.
- Keep the source and method with the date. Online form, reply card, phone call, event registration. ABC wants to know when and from where, so store both against the reader.
- Keep individual and colleague requests apart. They're different categories with different rules on how the copy is addressed.
A routine for keeping it fresh
None of this needs to be clever. It needs to be regular.
- Look at the age profile monthly. By title, by request type, by age band. Note how many requests will pass the five-year mark in the next six and twelve months.
- Work backwards from the cliff. If a big intake from a launch campaign or a particular event is ageing together, plan requalification well ahead of it, not in the final quarter.
- Requalify little and often. A rolling programme that asks a slice of readers each month is easier to run and gentler on the file than one huge mailing a year.
- Use more than one channel. Email does the bulk. A reply card bound into the magazine and a phone call for high-value readers pick up people email misses.
- Keep the form short. Confirm they still want the title, check the address, ask the qualification questions you actually report on. Every extra question costs responses.
- Record it properly. New date, source, method and answers, stored against the reader. A requalification you can't evidence doesn't help at audit.
- Decide what happens to non-responders. At some point an old request with no reply is a copy you're paying to post with nothing to show for it. Agree the rule and apply it consistently.
Free controlled titles aren't the same as paid auto-renewing subscriptions. If you also sell paid ones to consumers, the new rules from January 2027 apply to that side of the file, and our guide to the subscription rules covers what you'll need.
Where the software helps
You can watch request ages in a spreadsheet, but it's the sort of job that slips when someone is on holiday.
In Adeptis, our all-in-one platform for smaller publishers, the Circulation Age report shows how much of your circulation falls within five years, your ABC priority tiers, and a request type by age band breakdown from under a year to five years and over. It works from live records, one best record per reader per title, so nobody is counted twice.
In Avio, our subscription platform for larger publishers, the controlled circulation wizard captures request source and method as the order is taken, and audience selection can count circulation as at any date, which is handy for checking what an audit period will look like.
If you'd rather someone else ran it, our ABC and BPA audit preparation team runs requalification by email, post or phone and records the answers with their date and source.
If your request ages are drifting and you'd like a second opinion, get in touch. Happy to have a look.
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.