For the last 12 years Ant Marketing has been providing outbound and inbound controlled circulation generation for the UK 's leading weekly information technology publication. We have been responsible for contacting via the telephone current and lapsed subscriber to the publication across the UK , to renew subscriptions. We are also responsible for building up the client's readership by contacting potential new readers of the title.

We have maintained our relationships for this long because we are committed to meeting the client's requirements; we constantly strive to add value by suggesting enhancements to the projects; and we provide a whole host of management information on a daily, weekly and monthly basis so that the client is constantly informed of our activity.

Ant Marketing provides a dedicated and experienced team for this client, many of whom we have worked with for several years, enabling us to complete controlled circulation registrations to a high standard. As controlled circulation is an area that Ant Marketing specialises in, we are fully aware of all audit requirements and profile audits, clients' direct marketing needs and also the high-quality requirements of the campaigns.

We also complete a range of related campaigns that look at other areas of the client database, such as list builds and cleanses, email collection and any other client requirements.

Due to our ongoing success, we now handle all the controlled circulation telephone registrations for this project.

Objectives & Target Audience

• To re-register or generate new readers from a business audience, meeting all terms of control
• To meet the target number of readers required, within timescales set
• To meet all audit requirements
• To provide a high conversion rate from the campaign data
• To generate a high-quality database for both re-contact and direct marketing activity
• To increase the awareness of the publication and the publishing company

The Challenges & Solutions

To ensure each of the registrations are of high quality

Ant Marketing use a variety of mechanisms to ensure the challenge is met, including:

• Ensuring the team is fully briefed on each project
• Agreeing and adhering to predetermined criteria for a completed registration
• Utilising a robust quality control procedure that ensures contact demographics are accurate
• Utilising a robust internal audit procedure that ensures all external audit requirements are met

The Second Challenge

To deliver completed registration to the fulfilment team on a regular basis, as specified by the client.

The Solution

Agreeing and adhering to delivery schedules with the fulfilment house

To ensure the highest level of product knowledge

Here the solution has been as follows:

• Providing extensive initial and ongoing training
• Creating a dedicated team for the project (5 to 35 operatives)
• Undertaking ongoing product knowledge assessment (independent of operations, every month Ant Marketing's Training Division makes an assessment of each operative and, dependent upon the results, provides additional training).

Co-ordination

Coordination and reporting is via a central marketing contact.

Delivery Management

The delivery of the objectives is via:

• A dedicated team of qualified/trained operatives
• Full-time dedicated management
• Quality control independent of Operations via Client Services
• Support from training to provide further product knowledge
• Audit of the operatives
• A robust IT platform

Results & Success

Results have been measured as follows:

• The client closely monitors the data penetration and secured completed registrations generated from each database supplied.
• High standard of quality is achieved via ongoing quality control and audit procedures.
• On a daily/weekly basis, Ant Marketing delivers robust reporting, which consistently measures against the key performance indicators and an agreed service level.
• Ant Marketing audits the service by a series of regular client satisfaction surveys, and takes action if required.