Big Picture Is Grateful for You, Our Qualifying Subscriber

I RECENTLY HAD A real-life situation that proves the benefits of qualified subscribers. Who is a qualified subscriber you ask? Well, it’s you! At least once a year, we reach out to you, our readers, to make sure you’re still active and engaged in the industry. Through our annual subscription renewal drive, we’re able to ensure our subscribers want to receive Big Picture.

Here’s the story: My neighbor has a screen printing background. He had a shop in Maui; now he sells used machines on the side. His wife was grabbing the mail across the street, before stopping by to see our home renovations. From our deck, I immediately noticed a copy of a competing wide-format magazine in her hand. I jokingly told her she wasn’t allowed in the house with that thing! Her response? “I don’t even know what this is. We get it and I throw it away.”

It was a perfect example of our competitor sending issues to people who are not qualified (my neighbors have never been in the wide-format, digital print business) and are pitching it the minute it hits the mailbox. And yet they are still part of their subscriber list, leading advertisers to think their ads are hitting a much larger audience.

I explained to her that Big Picture has a qualified list of subscribers. They would only receive it if they asked for it. (I then shared a stack of recent editions in case they wanted to join our amazing readership.)

Thank you for being a part of our qualified audience, for taking our surveys, for asking for the magazine, and especially for not pitching it in the trash. And remember, you can always join our Brain Squad (bigpicturemag.com/brainsquad). By answering our monthly survey, you not only get to see your peers’ responses in real-time, you also have the opportunity to see your answers in the next issue of Big Picture.