Dovetail Services Client Survey and half year update. Jim Bilton of Wessenden Marketing & Brandlab Research's Subscription marketing update.

1. User Group September 2014

2. Agenda
Dovetail Client Satisfaction Survey Overview
Topline performance
Strengths & weaknesses
Improvements & developments
Digital needs & support
Reviewing Dovetail from the bottom up
Subscription Marketing Update
Agenda

3. Agenda
Fieldwork = Jul + Aug 2014
43 responses from 34 companies (52% response).
Self-categorised company size:
6 Major
11 Medium
17 Small
Survey Sample

4. Agenda
Rate the overall performance of Dovetail
NOW and A YEAR AGO.
Overall Dovetail Performance
5.2
Now
5.5
Year Ago

5. Agenda
Memory Trend in Performance -0.5-0.4-0.3-0.2-0.100.10.20.30.4Jul 10Jan 11Jul 11Jan 12Jul 12Jan 13Jul 13Jan 14Jul 14

6. Agenda
Performance: 6 Mth Trend Rating
Survey
Better than 6
months ago
Same as
months ago
Worse than 6
months ago
Net Better /
Worse
Jul 13 33% 39% 28% 5%
Jan 14 14% 33% 53% -39%
Jul 14 21% 45% 33% -12%
Trend in Overall Performance
Is the overall performance of Dovetail better/same/worse
than a year ago.

7. Agenda
Strengths & Weaknesses StrengthsWeaknessesCustomer Service (7)IT (23) Core fulfilment processes (7)Account Management (16) Account Management (6)Reporting (10) General culture (6)Lack of resource (5) Lack of of QC on CS (5) Key verbatim comments (with 5+ mentions)

8. Agenda
Improvements & Developments Recent Improvements SeenFuture Improvements WantedNew senior management team (6) Extra resource & different culture in IT (19) Account Management (6) Extra resource & training in Account Management (11) Key verbatim comments (with 5+ mentions)

9. Agenda
Dovetail not falling over
Underlying core processes working well.
New team getting into place (senior + ac management).
Signs of more structured approach to IT projects.
Core values still in place.....transparency + can-do.
But a frustrating period of marking time
New ac managers coming on-stream.
Promised IT improvements still to show.
Clear resource constraints.
Sense of weariness, frustration, “heard this before.”
Overview

10. Agenda
Where is Dovetail going?
Accelerating into
the digital world from a stable base?
Jogging along within ongoing limits
& constraints?
What are Dovetail’s real capabilities, plans & priorities?

11. Agenda
Dovetail from the bottom up
Customers
Customer Care
Clients
Account Management
Digital Support
Reporting
Data Entry
Production
Finance
Warehouse
IT Platform
Culture Values Resources

12. Agenda
IT
General IT projects
Warming up
4.9 / +0.1
Website development
Cold
4.0 / -0.1
Positives
New Head of Data. Some isolated examples of improvements - signs of a more structured approach. Negatives Expensive, long timescales, lack of flexibility & responsiveness. Lack of CMS access.

13. Agenda
IT
“The appointment of a Head of Data is a major step forward.”
“I haven’t got a negative word to say about any of the people I’ve met at Dovetail – they’ve all been friendly, professional and helpful – but their hands are tied by an unresponsive, confusing, unintuitive system that is not fit for a 2014 company dealing with huge amounts of data.”
“Does any of our feedback get through to Dovetail? We seem to come up with the same gripes each time, but the service is simply not improving.”

14. Agenda
The core processes
Data Entry
Hot 6.4 / +0.2
Finance
Hot 6.2 / +0.1
Production
Hot 6.2 / +0.1
Warehouse
Hot 6.0 / +0.2
Positives
Do not feature in comments! Negatives Very specific issues....e.g. financial reporting, warehouse stock control.

15. Agenda
The core processes
“Dovetail’s core strength is just being able to do the basics well......their ability to handle the day-to-day management of large subscriber files.”

16. Agenda
Reporting
Reporting on your own data / usefulness of tools
Cooling down
5.4 / -0.2
Reporting on Dovetail’s own performance / KPIs
Cold
4.9 / no change
Positives
Core tools themselves are robust. Negatives Lack of analysis & interpretation of the data (web analytics emerging as an area in its own right). More detail (and action!) on Dovetail KPIs. Financial reporting.

17. Agenda
Reporting
“Reporting on data isn’t hugely insightful. This is more a presentation of the data rather than any analysis into it - what are the implications for us and what are our business options as a result?”

18. Agenda
Digital Services
Information & support
Hot
5.3 / +0.1
Positives
User Groups greatly appreciated.... Negatives ....but need to know so much...where to start (and end!)?

19. Agenda
What do you want to do?
Develop ecommerce.
Targeted & personalised comms with customers.
Improve customer journeys on brand websites.
Deepen customer insight.
How do you want Dovetail to help you?
Fast and cost-effective IT response to ad hoc requests.
Seamless integration with third parties.
More focus on ecommerce, bundles, etc.
Test & tweak faster and more cheaply.
Analysis of customer behaviours.
Digital needs & support

20. Agenda
Customer Care
Mail Contact
Hot
6.1 / +0.3
Phone contact
Hot
5.9 / +0.2
Email contact
Hot
5.7 / no change
Positives
A key strength. Consistent. Negatives Better at some channels (e.g. mail) than others (e.g. email). How well-briefed and QC’d are more complex offers?

21. Agenda
Customer Care
“The Customer Service team is a key Dovetail strength. They remain reliable, particularly on the phone.”
“The Customer Service teams have clearly not been fully briefed on some of our offers. They are fine on the basics, but when products are more complicated than the norm, the quality control just does not seem to be there.”

22. Agenda
Account Management
Account Management Efficiency
Warm
5.2 / -0.2
Account Management Quality
Cooling down
5.1 / -0.3
Positives
New faces.....capable & enthusiastic. Negatives Churn, knowledge, proactivity, headcount.

23. Agenda
Account Management
“The Account Management team has quickly improved. The new people on our account have made an excellent team.”
“We lost an excellent account manager and badly miss their understanding of our business, their support and their pushing forward of new ideas. We are simply not getting the proactive attention and push that we once had.”

24. Agenda
Other Issues
Dovetail Value-for-Money
Hot
6.1 / +0.1
User Groups
For those who attend....
A positive value-add to the core service.
A distinctive part of how Dovetail operates.

25. Agenda
Dovetail from the bottom up
Customers
Customer Care
Clients
Account Management
Digital Support
Reporting
Data Entry
Production
Finance
Warehouse
IT Platform
Culture Values Resources

26. The Digital Magazine Marketplace
Subs Marketing Update
Dovetail User Group
September 2014

27. Agenda
Jan-Jun ABCs
Channel
2009
H2
2010
H2
2011
H2
2012
H2
2013
H2
2014
H1
UK newstrade -9.1% -6.9% -8.5% -10.5% -11.5% -10.1%
Export newstrade -14.1% -5.7% -11.3% -15.8% -10.4% -19.0%
Total subscriptions -2.7% -3.5% -4.1% -5.8% -8.2% -5.2%
Other sales 6.2% -3.9% -2.7% -33.2% -26.8% -28.7%
TOTAL -8.0% -6.3% -7.7% -11.1% -11.1% -10.7%
Source: Marketforce Analysis of ABC
CHANNEL VOLUMES
Year-on-Year % Change
 Total decline slows (slightly)
 Subs decline slows (markedly)
 Export wobbly (NB USA)
 Digital editions....301,000 units per issue / market share
rising from 1.1% to 1.5%.

28. Agenda
What Enders say about magazines
Market dividing into two clear tiers of winners & losers
More vulnerable markets
Publisher drivers: editorial quality / differentiation / investment.
Demographic drivers: younger / mass market / male.
Digital competition.....the over-riding factor currently.
Strength of launch activity.
Supply chain issues
Retail threats: supermarkets / wholesale cost base.
A bigger commitment to subscriptions.
Pricing: stronger products must be more aggressive.

29. Agenda
What Enders say about digital in magazines
Tablets complementary while smartphones a threat. Digital editions a very niche channel.....“not working.” Websites have to be mobile-optimised. Ecommerce an illusory holy grail except for the few. Social video a real opportunity. Discovery an issue for both advertising & circulation revenues. Digital transformation not digital add-ons The Debrief / Good Housekeeping / Auto Trader

30. Agenda
Digital promotions, payments & back-ends
IPC & Boku
Text-to-Pay magazine subs
IPC & One-Stop
In-store promotions
A glimpse of Kindle Unlimited
All-You-Can-Eat model grows.

31. Agenda
Magzene digital promotion club

32. Service company & agent developments
iSUBSCRIBE whitelabels LetsSubscribe Aditus focuses on publisher subs acquisition A glimpse of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited The All-You-Can-Read model grows in books More Amazon news...
The battle with Hachette becomes more bitter & wide-ranging
Q2 2014 loss : -£74m on rising (+23%) £11bn turnover
Conde Nast USA uses Amazon’s cloud computing service Readly hits 150 titles in UK Starting to gain traction as it rolls into other countries Frontline & Seymour trying to become digital distributors Finding a role in the digital world

33. Agenda
Products to watch
Company goes digital-only & Cosmo mobile-first CosmoBody (USA) subscription VOD service Mobile-optimised apps
 Beano’s Dennis & Gnasher Prank Stickers (templated stickers)
 BBC Food Magazine (shopping list & social sharing)
 House & Garden Kitchen & Bathroom (interactive room views + video)
 Time Out on Amazon Fire phone (3D / gesture control / head tracking) Mobile-optimised websites
 Yours (online shopping)
 The Independent’s i100 (user rankings shape layout of site)
 What Hi-Fi (user reviews & price comparisons)
 NME (video / social sharing / users shape feeds) Digital editions
• Virgin Holiday’s Unleashed Magazine (Future)
• Radio Times