Well, hello again! We were terrifically pleased to see so many of you at the R.E.D. Circulation User Group Meeting in January, and from the response we've had, it seems you were pleased to see so many people too! So pleased in fact, you elected to hold another meeting which will be on 4 JUNE 1998, again in central London, very near - walking distance - from where we were last time. More about that later.
Very importantly, we'd like to congratulate Lydia and the team at Exhibition Bulletin who won the last competition, and Linda and Andy at Quintessence who came in a close second.
Oh yes, the answer was :
The R.E.D. Bike Club is growing by the moment. Johns Hornet is due for collection just after Easter and Emma now rides a BMW, and what with Jamie (our accountant) arriving on his Bandit and Ken (friend of R.E.D.) on his Yamaha, the collection is looking impressive! If there are any R.E.D.-users-cum-bikers who might be interested in nice day-trips or weekends abroad, do let us know, perhaps we could go together.
Thank you to all of you who sent kind wishes and condolences
to John and Helen on the death of John’s father. Thank you
too for your understanding about appointments being postponed
at short notice - it was much appreciated.
Sometimes, you know, it’s quite challenging for us to understand what users are trying to explain us on the telephone, so much of our "listening" work is done by intuition, experience, and that wonderful, age-old stand-by, guesswork!
This was really brought home to us the other day when somebody telephoned, but before they were able to say a single word, they dropped the phone and the line went dead. We looked at one another, mused a moment, raised an eyebrow or two, then we knew, we just knew, who that must have been! Rely on your instinct - a most unlikely adage for a software house, but as applicable here as anywhere!
R.E.D. is on the move. Not especially gleefully, we have to say. Our landlords have obtained planning permission to turn our office into eight flats and a car park. Since we don’t fancy working in a car park, we’re on the look-out for some similarly nice, local offices, either to rent or buy - so if you know of anything ......
We’ll certainly keep you posted as to how things progress and our new address, when we know it!
The first ever meeting of the R.E.D. Circulation User Group turned out to be a real wow! It was a quiet start with around 40 representing 20 different companies drinking coffee and gently contemplating the other users gathered at the offices of LUK on 22 January. Helen and Emma looked at one another - was this going be a success or a total failure? Would these people talk to one another; would they like one another, or were we in for a really difficult afternoon?
True to character, Helen got the ball rolling without fiddling around! Her brief chat started with thanks and apologies and went on to an overview of where R.E.D. came from (including what those initials stand for - if you weren't there, you'll have to wait for another opportunity to find out!), the first R.E.D. program for the brand new PC market, how things evolved, recent developments and where R.E.D. wants to be in 10 years time. Also, how the publishing industry itself has and is changing, with subscriptions departments being elevated from dodgey basements into a forceful, integrated department standing alongside and working with the marketing, accounts, customer service, and management departments as equals.
Helen went on to point out that assembled there in the room was around 300 years of subscription and marketing experience, maybe more. Each person has an expertise, a knowledge and an experience which was unique to them. Everybody had something of offer, and everybody had something to gain. The concept of engaging with others in the same general industry could increase ones own personal knowledge, increase the professionalism of the industry as a whole, and benefit ones own business too. That is the fundamental idea of the user group.
It was made very clear that we at R.E.D. did not want anybody to feel compromised with their corporate confidentiality, and that we were looking for a level of discussion with which everybody felt happy.
For future user group meetings there will be many opportunities, for example, presentations by third party groups (eg. ABC, BPA, Royal Mail, consultants, PPA etc), reviews of seminars, exhibitions, and training courses, as well as talks and exchange of ideas among the members themselves.
Matters started off tentatively, with each company giving a very brief description of themselves - whether business or consumer; number of titles, that type of thing and by the end, people were nodding and smiling at one another!
Then onto two super talks - the first by Andrew Parks of Paramount Publishing, and their experiences installing and using a Windows NT network. Again, much nodding from the listeners and many ooohs! when it came to performance of their hardware! Christine Allan of ‘The Oldie’ then talked about their experience of British Family Publishers - the pitfalls and the benefits. The benefits were especially interesting, and not entirely sub-related, but in the spin-offs and cross selling. In Christine we rest our case that it is each individual address which has the value!
Next came the moment of truth with the special interest groups.
We have to say that LUK excelled themselves in their coffee-making activities. Somehow, suddenly everybody had one in their hands, suddenly everybody was chatting and laughing, and circulating into interest groups , flowing happily from one to the next, looking at the general information we had brought about courses, list brokers, BACS, etc, etc dotted around the room.
For us at R.E.D it was the most wonderful sight and sound - the start of something we had wanted so badly for so long. All these people we know and care about but who didn't know one another having a good and productive time together. A roomful of people talking circulations!
We weren't alone in our enthusiasm either, when we re-assembled, volunteers came forward unbelievably quickly to host the next meeting, and the vote by those attending was that 4 June 1998 would be a good date.
I’ll say that again, rather louder
at the offices of CRU (they got their volunteer in quickest!), who are also in central London
All in all a good time was had by everybody and we hope to see you all again on 4 JUNE 1998!
Payment method category. This is a new field and is completely brilliant! As you enter a payment, pick the method from your list of allowable answers. If it is a credit card type payment the (optional) Current Payment Method screen pops up for filling in and the credit card number is validated (using a checkum algorithm). The ‘payment comment’ remains the same free-text field.
Campaigns. Much recent work has been done on extending marketing response analysis. The ‘Campaign Category’ remains as it was, but now there is a new field called ‘Channel’. This will allow for analysis by type, eg advert, mailshot, etc, plus by effort, eg Autumn which might involve a mailshot, advertising and a radio slot. More news on extended Campaigns next time.
EMU. Full multi-currency versions of Subscriptions, Mailorder, and Advertisement booking programs are not only available, but up and running.
EMU is going to affect you come what may. If you are not already
running the full multi-currency version of the Subscriptions,
Mailorder, or Adman software, then you should at least be planning
the upgrades into your budgets by now.
Another budget has gone past, and again paper products escaped the VAT man. Don't forget though that fax services, CDs etc do attract VAT. This is completely fine as far as our programs are concerned, but talk to us about the set-up, and liaise with your accounts department.
Due to personal circumstances at the time we were sorry not
to be able to visit the Direct Marketing Show in March. We know
that some of you were planning to go along, and it would have
been good to meet up and exchange notes! Perhaps next time.
It is our intention to expand and extend this newsletter in support of the new User Group to include all sorts of other things. We have in mind your company news, your views, and a did-you-know section. Users of specific R.E.D. software could have their own sections, circulation, royalties, and ad-booking, for example. Also, a free box-number-only classified ads section for for-sale, wanted, computers, jobs and the like. We’d also like to make some, or all of it, available on the Internet - when we get the time! So, if there’s something you would particularly like to see or want to submit, please drop us a line.
To set the ball rolling, these are some of the comments from the ‘ideas’ sheet at the User Group meeting. Maybe you would like to reply to these (either positively or negatively) or sent us your own thoughts.
A directory of names of R.E.D. users and their field of expertise so other users can contact them for ideas or set up smaller user groups.
An E-mail directory of users.
An overview/presentation of what R.E.D. software is capable of would highlight parts not being fully utilised or not generally understood.
User Group sub-groups defined by Business to Business mags and Consumer titles.
Sub-groups for new(ish) users - or users by size of business.
We quote - "Any facility targeted at Conferences and Exhibition activities? if not, please, please, please ... Think about it." - (NB we have 3 users processing their conference data through R.E.D. software at the moment - in different ways...)
Details of areas changed in software on Internet web pages so that when a new release is received we know what may have been changed in addition to any specific fixes or requests.
A useful addition to the subscription software would be
the ability to track more closely the costs of sending out replacement
copies.
If you have to share your copy of this newsletter with somebody
and you’d rather not, let us know their name and address
and we’ll send them their very own copy!
Dates for your diary:
- Magazines 98 Exhibition 19th and 20th of May at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre.
- the Total Publishing Show at Olympia on the 7th and 8th of July. We will be there in the ‘Specialist Services Pavillion’ so do come along and say hello!
If you missed the User Group meeting you will not have seen an interesting FREE package from the Royal Mail called ‘Successful Subscription Promotion - Issue II’ containing a video, a ‘lifetime value’ disk, and a booklet. We were kindly sent enough booklets for all the users at the meeting, however, if you would like to obtain a set of your own just contact the Royal Mail at Streamline House in Oxford.
It remains for us to say that we hope you had a wonderful Eastertime and we look forward to seeing you all in June.