Most recently, the audit bureaus’ crackdown on agency-sold subscriptions has placed new pressures on circulation directors. In some cases, the circulation director will seek to find business from another source, and in others, he need only make sure the agency and the fulfillment house keep proper documentation. Even with direct-to-publisher sources, the environment is sure to foster even less tolerance for errors. Suddenly, it becomes even more important for the fulfillment house to be sure that auditing policies and procedures are followed to the letter and that documentation is complete.

Before this, it seemed there was increased pressure on circulators to do more with less personnel. The downsizing resulting from 9-11 and a weakened economy had stayed with us, and somewhere along the way Circulation Directors became Audience Development Directors. Granted, neither of these were overnight occurrences, but at last year’s CM Conference and CircDayLA, these were both hot topics, and were discussed at length during fulfillment session panels at the two conferences.

And it’s no surprise that fulfillment houses again were in the middle of it. Circulators looking to increase their audiences typically turned to the fulfillment house to see how they could handle online publications, gate-kept areas and digital editions. Fulfillment companies also responded to circulators’ need for increased support. Reporting tools were made to be quicker and easier, and account executives became more attuned to the publisher’s history and needs, sometimes just to more effectively aid a newly employed circulation employee who needed to hit the ground running.

There are lots of other recent pressures affecting both circulation and fulfillment: the softening of ad sales, the general decline in cold mail response, the regulation of the telemarketing industry, the need to capture e-mail opt-in data all took their toll. Publishers looked to cut costs to replace revenue, and fulfillment providers looked to provide more services for less money.

This quarter’s newsletter addresses some of ESP’s responses to those pressures. The winter newsletter introduced you to Audit Manager Tammy Veenis, who will help ESP clients to continue experiencing smooth audits even in light of heightened audit bureau scrutiny. In the spring newsletter, we introduced you to Programming Manager Michael Knight, who helps ensure that conversions are the smoothest in the business. This quarter, you meet Michael Jordan, a former circulation director who helps ESP and its account executives to understand and anticipate client needs.

We also introduce you to another tool that can help make life easier (and less expensive) for you. Our query tool is versatile and free to use, and can save you time and money when asked to deliver a subset of your file to an advertiser or in-house user. For some smaller publishers, it may even allow you to avoid the costs of using a list manager.

We’re proud of all of the features we’ve developed over the years to help our clients meet the pressures of the industry, no matter how fast and furious they may come.