“AgriDirect helped us well with the introduction of trade magazine Elite”

Elite has been the leading trade magazine for dairy farmers in Germany for many years, published by Landwirtschaftsverlag Münster Hiltrup. The German publisher also wanted to introduce the magazine to the Dutch market. Wageningen-based AgriMedia went on to publish the magazine. In cooperation with AgriDirect, a large-scale campaign was launched to generate subscriptions for Dutch Elite.

To generate as many subscribers as possible in a short period of time, the choice was made to send a trial copy of the magazine to groups of 5,000 professional dairy farmers and then to approach these dairy farmers by phone to take out an annual subscription or a trial subscription of 2 issues. A total of eight groups of dairy farmers were approached. In addition, AgriMedia introduced Elite magazine at various trade fairs and was publicised by e-mail campaigns through AgriDirect’s Boervindt.nl portal.

The action was continuously monitored and adjusted, by. among others:

• A segmentation analysis after several rounds of calls. This analysis examines profiles of dairy farmers who showed the most interest in Elite magazine. After this, a selection could be made from these best scoring segments.
• An evaluation after each round of calls.
• The companies with trial subscriptions were called for annual subscriptions after the end of this subscription.
• During the period when milk prices were extremely low, the action was temporarily halted.

The response of dairy farmers to ‘Elite’ was positive. The magazine was widely praised for its layout and content. On average per round, 14.4% of the dairy farmers approached were interested in a trial subscription (2/3) or an annual subscription (1/3). This is a very good result in the difficult trade magazine market.

“Despite the crowded magazine market, there seems to be a need for a practical dairy magazine like Elite. Through our cooperation with the German publisher, Elite publishes a lot of international trade news that cannot be found in any other Dutch magazine. With Elite, the Dutch dairy farmer therefore gets an important tool to further improve his performance. AgriDirect helped us well with the introduction.”