Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Best Practice Cases
� Increasing ad clickthroughs.
Meeting the Challenge
Shane Molloy, Director of Circulation for ALM’s National Magazine Division, switched
ALM’s digital edition provider from QMags’ download format to Texterity’s browser-
based technology. Texterity’s non-Flash solution meant crisper, faster access on any
computer, iPhone, or iPod touch.
Law Technology News, IP Law & Business, and Corporate Counsel are now available in
digital format. Users seem to prefer the new format: American Lawyer’s digital
circulation has almost tripled since the switchover, though it is still relatively small.
ALM wants to ensure that at least one copy of their well-known Am Law 200 survey of
the top 200 law firms in the United States reaches every firm.
ALM has no paid subscription Web sites; they post content to their Web sites for access
through free registrations. Digital editions are thus complementary to Web sites as part
of ALM’s product mix; they are marketed on ALM Web sites, but otherwise there is no
tie-in between digital replica editions and Web sites.
When people subscribe to magazines, they are asked whether they want print or digital;
receiving both print and digital counts as two separate subscriptions. For controlled-
circulation titles, the first subscription is free but the second one is paid. One exception
to this is Corporate Counsel, which is free in digital form outside of the United States.
ALM is also offering advertisers value-added digital options through Texterity such as
Web links in their ads and electronic blow-in cards. Feedback from advertisers has been
very positive as they learn to incorporate these new options into existing campaigns.
ALM has adopted various strategies to help reach the goals outlined above utilizing
Texterity’s Best Practices resources. Some of ALM’s tactics include sending multiple
reminder emails to get subscribers to open the digital editions and using different sets
of bullet-point copy in email messages to test effectiveness. ALM hopes that increasing
open rates will naturally lead to increased ad clickthroughs.
ALM has a turnkey production process with Texterity: they simply send Texterity print-
ready files and Texterity does the rest. At this point, ALM does not reformat anything
specifically for digital editions. They are beginning to explore adding multimedia
content to their digital editions, such as embedded video clips.
Results
� Digital circulation of Law Technology News is now almost 10% of total
circulation.
� Overall digital circulation has tripled since adoption of Texterity browser-based
platform, with very positive user feedback.
� Great progress has been made toward achieving the goal of one copy of Am Law
200 at every law firm.
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