Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Best Practice Cases
The Challenge
The Information Today management team set the specific goal to moving subscribers
from print media to a hybrid print and digital reading experience. Their publications
are free and targeted towards groups of readers with specific professional interests.
Creating the richest reading experience helps readers connect with their content more
often and for longer periods of time. This helps them to generate additional advertising
dollars.
Meeting the Challenge
Information Today has 12 magazines. Streaming Media is at the forefront of their
digital publishing initiative and is the publication that most often experiments with new
digital functionality. The team selected Nxtbook because of the ease of deploying digital
editions and the very strong support for rich media. They like the Nxtbook business
model and find them to be excellent publishing partners.
Results
� They have had success in lining up sponsors for specific issues, including a
newsletter promoting the digital issue.
� Because of their name and industry focus, Streaming Media advertisers and
authors incorporate high-quality rich media. These links give some excellent
examples of rich media in action:
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0407/,
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/NXTbook/bestofnxtbook/index.php?startpage=32,
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/NXTbook/pubrecguide/index.php?startpage=14
� The associated Web site has lots of video, audio, and flash and is very well
coordinated with the magazine and conferences. All aspects of the brand attract
more people to the community and help sell more advertising and conference
registrations.
� Their media kit is totally digital. The sales team likes to be able to demonstrate
where the ad placement will be and to show typical digital ad performance data.
� Advertisers love the tangibility provided by Nxtbook’s reader statistics package.
� They now attribute 70% of their revenues to digital publishing efforts.
Lessons Learned
� They prefer to provide both print and digital editions to all subscribers. The
digital edition offers faster delivery of content and better searchability and
linking, and is more vivid because of the rich media content and advertisements.
The print edition is the physical presence that provides credibility for the
publication. Readers still like to browse the printed edition.
� They experimented with online communities but had only modest success. The
popularity of their conferences suggests that community is an important part of
their franchise and they plan to try another set of online communities in the
near future.
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