This year was my first time visiting Austin, TX for South by Southwest Interactive (SxSW). I managed to attend a few decent panels, met a lot of good people, and had a great time.

First lesson learned: Sign-up early.
Registration for the conference starts at a super low price, hotels go fast and there are excellent rates available through the conference.

Second lesson learned: Leave the laptop.
Unless it’s the new ultra-light MacBook Air, it’ll get heavy quick.

Third lesson learned: Avoid March if you don’t like flying.
I’m not talking about the month; I’m talking about the one and only Doug March. He’ll shake your chair in a turbulent manner when you least expect it.

Favorite panels: A tie between Jason Fried of 37signals & Tony Hsieh of Zappos.
Jason really knows his stuff with agile application development and Tony managed to tell an amazing story about the company’s culture and its level of quality.

Favorite event: Geeks Love Bowling.
The folks at Nclud did an awesome job putting this event together. I managed to score a copy of the latest Microsoft Office for Mac and a cool Eric Meyer Happy Webbies shirt.

I’m looking forward to future South By’s and – March – let’s just say that you’ve been warned!

A look at common marketing up-sell techniques used within the magazine industry.

Magazines can and do get away with a lot when it comes to direct marketing. With annual subscriptions roughly at $6.97 - $18.99 a year, there’s a great opportunity for up-sell and cross-sell marketing.

After reconsidering the past year that I spent reading Maxim, I didn’t receive any options to renew and was willing to try Esquire. As a marketing professional, I was impressed and wanted to share my customer experience.

Step 1: A 4×6 insert that typically gets in the way of every issue. Planning to fill out my mailing info and check the Bill Me Later box, I noticed the blurb “For faster service subscribe online at order.esquire.com or call 1-800-888-5400.”

Step 2: Visiting the online subscription page, I couldn’t find a Bill Me Later option. Turns out that it was in the drop-down when selecting Visa, MasterCard, etc. My original intent was to signup and pay later, so I stuck to this and placed my order.

Step 3: I was given an option to receive 2 additional issues if I paid the annual subscription that I was going to pay sooner or later now. For a measly $7.97 (or truly 3 cents short of 8 bucks) I was happy to get 2 extra issues. In addition to receiving cash now, the publication intends to automatically renew my subscription the following year.

Step 4: My subscription was complete and I had the option to get 3 additional deals (Smart Mechanics or Popular Mechanics for $5, or both for $10). This appears to be a great deal, but if I was remotely interested in either of these magazines and clicked for more information, I’d be automatically subscribed.

Bottom line: Getting things faster drives consumers to subscribe online. Having the Bill Me Later option “nested” within a dropdown, makes consumers more inclined to pay now. The opportunity to receive 2 additional issues for paying now was a very effective way to close the sale. Even more effective is collecting cash now and securing an auto-rebill that’ll occur 1 year from now.

Luckily for me, my credit card will be expired by then. Boo-yah!