A question came up one day about the retention rates of our online advertisers. We were surprised by the answer.

After a little research in our billing system, we discovered that our online direct sales retention rate of about 65 percent — local, regional and national — was slightly higher than the newspaper retention rate.

Of course, local clients have the highest rate, followed by regional and then national. In addition, clients who have spent the largest amount of money in special-short term campaigns tend to have lower rates. Likewise, customers who were poorly sold – over-valued contracts, high cpms, weak placement, bad client service, high-pressure closes, etc. — not surprisingly were unlikely to return.

Newspaper sales managers may rightly point out that they have quite a few transient customers. Online sales managers also may point out that they have quite a few new clients who have never advertised online before, have had bad experiences, don’t understand the environment, etc., and are highly likely to bail out.

Either way, the selling effort for online has possibly reached another benchmark in becoming a stable and legitimate sales channel. If the retention rate is good, the sales management and staff are doing something right, and the clients must be fairly pleased with the results.