Tuesday, July 18, 2006

ARTnews Proposal

[My letter to ARTnews]

To Whom It May Concern:

As an aspiring art librarian, I am quite familiar with your publication. In fact, Art News is one of the most respected journals in circulation. Furthermore, your newsletter is a valuable reservoir of information; however, it does not reach the public in the most effective manner. E-mail newsletters are an extension of the of their paper predecessors whereas feeds (RSS & ATOM) allow users to redistribute your content without any cost to the organization. Moreover, readership will increase because your users will help you amplify your product.

Old guard marketers have argued that newsletters give the organization the means to collect demographic information on their readership. This is done usually when the user signs up for the product. However, the convenience sample that provides their information is so skewed to the overall demographic of the organization’s entire readership that little real value may be gained. Thus, e-newsletters limit the organizations ability to attract larger numbers of prospective subscribers, and the readership's corresponding demographic information, if collected, is irrelevant.

Please consider providing RSS or ATOM feeds. Your readership will increase. Your brand will increase its online presence. And this is all with little cost to ARTnews. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Bryan Loar
bryan.theloars.com

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Yeah, I'm still waiting for their response.

Unknown said...

The Response:

Dear Mr. Loar:

Thank you for your interest in ARTnewsletter.

We have considered an e-mailed edition of ARTnewsletter but when we surveyed our subscribers, we still had many clients who wanted to receive hard copies.

Thank you for your interest and comments -- we'll certainly consider them for the future.

Sincerely,
--
Jacquelyn Kasuya
Circulation Manager

Carter said...

It is unfortunate that they don't respond to your suggestion of ATOM and RSS feeds. I think that they have missed the point - offering content in a variety of formats (especially when those formats are free or low-cost) is a no-brainer for organizations these days.