It’s how you ask that matters

"The softer they are, the harder they fall."

The original saying may have referred to size rather than texture. But when it comes to subscription offers, this version comes nearer to the truth.

To wit: a generous ‘soft’ offer can find you in the position of watching helplessly as your initial gross response proves a very poor net - leaving you in the unenviable position of wishing you’d hedged your bets (and hastened your learning curve) by testing a ‘hard’ offer against it. (I am, for the moment, setting aside the critical fact that your soft offer might still give you a higher universe to renew than a hard offer tested alongside it.)

But before I take things further, let’s define our terms. What, exactly, do I mean when I use the terms ‘soft offer’ and ‘hard offer’?

The phrase was coined by American magazine publishers in the early 70s, when magazine subscriptions were still a fairly new thing and a lot of testing was being done to gauge the affect that various offers and levels of subscriber commitment had on both front-end (acquisition) and back-end (renewal) performance.

At that time, a ‘hard offer’ was defined as one in which the prospect agreed to subscribe to a given magazine, and entered a contract for which payment was immediately due.

Conversely, a ‘soft offer’ was one in which the prospect agreed to sample the magazine (and may have agreed to subscribe), but did not enter a contract for which payment was obligatory. (You might wish to bear in mind that US banks didn’t offer direct debit arrangements. So a popular soft offer was trial issues followed by a hard-working, multi-effort billing series.)

With the benefit of hindsight, you can imagine what transpired. Soft offers often generated a higher initial response but flagged at the ‘paying up’ post. Renewals, too, proved problematic in many instances, with subscribers who came in on a soft offer expecting continued open-handedness from their publishers.

Take-it-or-leave-it hard offers, on the other hand, didn’t pull in as many initial subscribers. But payment was both prompt and guaranteed, and renewal performance was such that the hard offer frequently became ‘control’.

Now, if you, like many, believe that Americans are a people who want to have it all, then I guess I’d have to agree, at least with reference to subs offers. Faced with the above situation, publishers and their ad agencies began to work out methodologies for keeping responses to their soft offers healthy, while improving both initial pay-up and subsequent renewals.

To put it another way, they conceived ways to ‘soften’ their hard offers and ‘harden’ their soft offers.

Hardening a soft offer

Taking the last first, here are a few approaches that helped toughen up those no-commitment soft offers:

* Ask for a signature. When potential new subscribers were asked to add their signatures to the subscription order form, this had the effect of making them think more seriously about taking up the free trial offer. While this signature was not meant to be legally binding, it appeared to act as a deterrent to those who wanted to grab the freebies and run. Hardly surprising, of course, when you consider how many important documents require signatures that do carry firm contractual commitments.

* Downplay use of the word ‘free’. There’s no arguing that ‘free’ is one of the most effective words in the marketer’s lexicon. And most copywriters will quite sensibly insist that, if your offer is genuinely free, you make it very clear that this is the case. But this doesn’t mean you should feel compelled to repeat it over and over again, in ever-larger type. In fact, US marketers found that reducing the number of times the word appeared, and lessening its impact visually, served to improve paid take-up. (You might want to extend this approach to your order form title as well. Instead of using "Free Trial Subscription Form", for example, find out what happens when you try "No Risk Subscription Invitation" instead… or similar phrasing.)

* Link all free issues or gifts to payment. Back in the golden days of US direct marketing offer testing, magazine launches often carried a "free charter" invitation, sending out the launch issue followed by a billing series. While this approach made sense for new magazines, it didn’t always lay golden eggs for more established titles. Thus some magazines turned to tying all free issues and gifts to receipt of payment. (These ‘net premiums’ load in more cost, of course, but can be worth testing – assuming that you have a hard-working billing series, backed up with proper reports.)

Now, if your current offer is trial issues linked to a delayed direct debit payment, you can still think of this as a soft-ish offer. Confronted with unacceptable cancellation levels after those free issues go out, you might think about testing a free gift sent when payment is confirmed. (By the by, I am assuming that, if you are making a nominal charge for those trial issues, you have tested a higher per-copy price.)

So much for toughening up your soft offer. What about a hard offer?

If you’re not testing one at the moment because A) you’re afraid that responses will be unacceptably low or B) everyone else seems to be going with "3 free issues for £3" and why buck the trend…, then I have to ask (and there’s no kind way of putting this) are you sure you should be in direct marketing in the first place?

Direct marketing is, and always will be, about testing. Finding out what works, what almost works, and what was such a disaster that you fervently wished you’d taken up a less demanding occupation. Oyster shucking, perhaps.

Yes, I appreciate that hard offers are scary. Their uncompromising buy-or-bolt stance isn’t for the faint-hearted, as it will usually result in a lower initial uptake. But your renewal performance might well tell another, more positive story.

Softening a hard offer

So how can you soften your hard offer, to increase upfront response?

Here are a few ideas we found to work, in my salad days at New York ad agencies…

* Emphasise your guarantee, and make it as generous as possible. Don’t just state your guarantee on your order form. Put it in your letter, perhaps in the ‘PS’. Mention it in your brochure. And if you don’t have a brochure (or even if you do), then why not blazon your guarantee on your reply envelope? ("No Risk Rush Order", for example.)

Returning to that order form for a moment, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t build your guarantee right into your commit copy, thus: "Yes, please enter my no-risk subscription to Title X. I understand that if I am not happy with the magazine, I can cancel my subscription at any time for a refund…." (This is music, not lyrics. But you get the idea.)

* State "send no money now". If you are asking for annual direct debit payments with no free issues, you can at least make the arrangement sound more open-handed by telling your prospects that they don’t have to enclose payment now. While most copywriters have been trained to think that this magic phrase merely emphasises ease of reply, it actually works on another, deeper level.

* Test quarterly direct debits. You may well have tested quarterly payments already, but, if not, you should test them against a ‘harder’ annual payment direct debit. In addition to enabling subscribers to spread out their payments over time, quarterly debits give the impression of offering a shorter-term commitment. Thus they can be seen as a ‘softer’ version of the annual direct debit – with free trial issues and delayed first payment being the very softest approach.

Now, if you’re thinking that this is all very well, but your current soft offer is doing just fine, and you can’t see any reason to rock the boat, then so be it. Let’s hope things stay that way.

For my part, I think the magazine-reading population is getting worrisomely accustomed to multiple free or reduced-priced trial issues. So much so that harder offers are going to start looking increasingly tempting.

When that moment arrives, you won’t be a soft touch if you’ve done some testing in advance.