Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Visionaries
Gloria Adams
What it takes to build a vibrant set of digital subscribers
Gloria Adams is Senior Vice President Audience Development
and Book Publishing for PennWell publishing with responsibility
for the circulation, list rental, buyers guide, and book publishing
operations for all of PennWell. Gloria has been an active
member of the circulation, distribution, and business-to-business publishing
community for more than 25 years. She is a current member of the ABM Audience
Development Committee and the BPA Audience Development Advisory Committee,
has served on the ABC Circulation Managers Advisory Committee, the Mailers
Technical Advisory Committee, and various other postal, distribution, and circulation
committees. She is a recipient of the Angelo Venezian Award, was the inaugural
recipient of the ABM Circulation Career Award, and has received a Circulation
Innovator Award from B-to-B magazine, and she and her staff have won multiple CM
and Folio awards.
As can be seen from her bio, Gloria Adams is a super-high-energy executive who knows
her craft extremely well. For PennWell, she has built perhaps the most successful digital
publishing program in the industry. PennWell has several magazines with digital
subscriber bases greater than 50%, and their overall percentage of digital subscribers
averages about 25%, which is ten percentage points higher than the industry average.
Gloria’s practical approach to building a vibrant set of digital subscribers represents a
set of best practices that could help other publishers expand their number of digital
subscribers.
The importance of developing a growing number of digital subscribers was (and
remains) important to PennWell’s corporate strategy. Here’s why:
� From talking with their subscribers, they believed that a significant number of
them would prefer digital editions.
� They expect the next generation of their readers to have an even stronger digital
preference.
� Their B2B content is ideal for digital publishing, and readers appreciate the
immediacy of delivery.
� It is less expensive to create and deliver a digital edition, especially into
international markets and remote locales.
� Advertisers like the tangibility of the results generated by their digital
advertisements.
Two key ingredients of her program are determination and execution. It takes
considerable effort to effect a paradigm shift. For the team’s efforts to be successful, the
first step was to construct a plan with clear business goals. Because of the strategic
importance of the digital initiative, the planning process started several years before the
first digital edition was released. Gloria’s team began the process by asking PennWell’s
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