Bauer Media Group steers subscription marketing with DeltaMaster
Bauer Media Group has used DeltaMaster for years in a variety of analysis, planning, and reporting projects. The company primarily uses the software to drive the success of its subscription marketing.
Bauer Media Group is one of Europe’s leading media companies and publishes over 60 magazines in Germany alone. In the 2013 fiscal year, the company generated 2.3 billion euros in revenues with a workforce of 11,000 people. The company founded in 1875 is owned and managed by the Bauer family in the fifth generation.

Cancellation rates, periods, and more
To gain control over its ever-growing volumes of data, Bauer saw the need to extend its existing systems with a modern Business Intelligence system. The company chose Microsoft SQL Server as a data warehouse and DeltaMaster as a front-end system. “With this software solution, we can analyze the entire subscription marketing in our company,” explains Ralf Vollert, Director Sales Control at Bauer Vertriebs KG. Users can closely examine data generated by selling magazines through BMD, a national organization of media and service retailers.
They also use DeltaMaster to monitor cancellation periods and detect errors in calculating advertising subsidies. By reviewing new and cancelled magazine subscriptions, users can also analyze and monitor the invoices for advertising subsidies.
As soon as Bauer had the sales data from BMD under control, it embarked on further projects. One of these was analyzing cancellation rates. The company loses approximately 20% of subscribers each year due to cancellations or failure to pay. Yet it wins new subscribers as well. To determine if structural effects in winning new customers influence the changes in the cancellation rate, Bauer conducts several in-depth multiyear analyses in DeltaMaster. The company also examines changes in longstanding customers. It categorizes the subscribers into age groups and compares the cancellation rates with each other in recent years.
Delivery monitoring with DeltaMaster
Bauer now also analyzes the delivery rates of magazines and newspapers with DeltaMaster. The software compares the delivery volumes of the postal service and analyzes it in correlation to the frequency of complaints in certain regions or on specific days of the week. DeltaMaster helps the company achieve its goals of maximizing quality and minimizing complaint rates among customers.
“With this software solution, we can monitor the entire marketing activities throughout our company.”
Ralf Vollert, Head of Reporting and Data Management at Bauer Media Group
Managing new customer wins
Using modern Business Intelligence, Bauer has boosted the efficiency of winning new customers. Each year, for example, the company invests an eight-digit sum to acquire new customers. The win process, therefore, needs to be carefully planned and executed.
Bauer advertises for subscriptions through a variety of channels, including phone calls, personal referrals, and internet ads. The controllers, who plan and monitor the costs involved, pay particular attention to the cost per order (CPO), which shows the price of winning a new subscriber. Previously, they had to plan and analyze the costs of each advertising channel separately and comparisons among the different channels were not feasible.
The comparable evaluations in DeltaMaster resolved this issue. “The data is now stored in a database instead of individual Excel files – which is a major advantage for comparative analysis,” adds Ralf Vollert. To plan the costs for the following year, users can now easily enter the necessary values through the familiar DeltaMaster interface. Helpful options support users along the way. “We frequently plan a variety of scenarios and the simple ‘copy’ function has minimized the time we need to input the data,” he continues.
Workshop for more in-depth analysis
The controllers took an even closer look at the cost per order as part of a workshop with Bissantz. They can now identify new patterns using special data mining methods. The pivot navigation method in DeltaMaster, for example, reveals which type of advertising drives changes in the cancellation rate. As the users drill down on the pivot table and expand additional columns or rows step by step, they get closer to finding the answers to their current questions. DeltaMaster itself determines which dimension offers the most important insights and automatically displays it as the next step.
Following the workshop, the controllers also optimized the overall report design and introduced standards for creating reports.These standards simplified the way to present complex topics and help report consumers understand the content better. By adding context-related links or extending pivot tables with sparklines and filled bars, they have also increased the information density of their reports. The participants agree that the workshop was a complete success and plan to host another one in the future.
Further references
Companies of all sizes and industries rely on DeltaMaster. Clients in the newspaper and publishing sector include Mediengruppe Oberfranken, Rheinische Post, Die Zeit, rtv Media, and Südkurier.
Highlights
- Marketing controls
- Analysis of cancellation periods and rates, cost per order and complaints
- Ability to compare advertising costs
- In-depth analysis with the pivot navigation
- Data-dense cockpits using sparklines and filled bars
Bauer Media Group
- one of Europe´s leading media companies
- Puplishes more than 60 journals in Germany
- Generated sales of over € 2.3 billion and employed around 11,000 people in 2013
- Since its foundation in 1875, the Bauer family has been managing the company for the fifth generation