DCP Dialogue

Consumers Still Prefer Print Magazines

Take a look at this very interesting whitepaper, Leveraging Loyalty to Transform Publishing, produced by the CMO Council and InfoPrint Solutions. It addresses “The Impact of Relevance in Publishing and Advertising.”

I recommend downloading this 12-page whitepaper that includes the detailed findings about what people want from their magazines. It confirms what we all believe is most essential—relevance.

Here's some info pulled from the first page of the whitepaper.

“To get a clear picture of what opportunities might exist for publications transformation, the CMO Council asked consumers what they wanted from their magazine experience.

The audit revealed that consumers do not want to give up their cherished print publications, and further that their experiences within these preferred pages has shaped and molded their buying decisions.

In a world where the internet threatens to change the face of loyalty—offering new and exciting real-time connections—magazines seem to be the one constant that consumers are not ready to relinquish. According to our survey:

92 percent plan to stick to print when it comes to their magazine consumption

Only 24 percent intend to eventually switch over to some form of e-reader device

The real message consumers want to send to publishers is keep the content relevant, be it editorial, advertorial, or advertising. But, well placed, content rich and even personalized advertising will lead to new opportunities (and even renewed opportunities) for profitable customer engagements."

Click here to download the whitepaper and read the detailed findings of the online consumer survey.

Introducing John Rodenburg, Director of Custom Media

Diablo Custom Publishing (DCP) is excited to announce that John Rodenburg has joined our organization as the Director of Custom Media. John previously held the position of Vice President and Publisher of Travel and Leisure Golf for American Express Publishing. As a long time veteran of Time Inc., John held several senior positions at Sports Illustrated, including the Associate Publisher of Marketing and Associate Publisher of Sales. Prior to moving to New York in 2000, John was the Northwest Advertising Director at Sports Illustrated and a resident of the East Bay.

Barney Fonzi, Group Publisher for Diablo Publications comments, “John’s background makes him the perfect addition to our team, and we welcome his seasoned experience, strong business development skills, energy and business acumen. We are confident that John will be able to leverage his proven strategies that have worked in his past endeavors, as well as his entrepreneurial forward thinking.” 

Speaking about his new role, John said, “I’m very excited about returning home to the Bay Area, and I’m equally excited about the opportunity to share my experience to help DCP reach new heights by leveraging their great reputation and brand, their diverse client portfolio of top notch work and their talented team of professionals. DCP is poised for growth and I’m excited to be a part of this expansion.”

In the next month, expect to see a blog entry from John summarizing his outlook for the Custom Media market.

Content Marketing Rises to $47 Billion in 2009

According to a new survey from the Custom Content Council (CCC), U.S. corporations spent a record $47.2 billion on branded content last year. The 10th annual industry “Characteristics Study: A Look at the Volume and Type of Content Marketing in America for 2010” includes the study of electronic and other forms of content marketing for the first time—which explains the significant increase in spending from 2008.

This year’s study reveals that 32% of the overall marketing, advertising and communications budget were dedicated to content marketing. This is the greatest-ever proportion of funds dedicated to content marketing in the 10-year history of this study.

What does this mean?

Marketing organizations recognize the need to communicate regularly with their audience and provide them with meaningful content. Marketing today is not as much about flashy marketing campaigns as it is about constant interaction and sharing of relevant information with a targeted audience. Since today’s consumers make highly educated decisions, marketing organizations need to play a key role in the transfer of knowledge and participate in their consumers’ decision-making process. The more valuable content an organization provides, the more likely they will build and grow a loyal customer base.

How are companies communicating with their audience today?

Custom Magazines/Newsletters Still Strong:

• In 2009, average circulation per issue increased to an all-time high of 48,162 copies per issue.
• The number of unique printed custom publication titles decreased from 1.9 in 2008 to 1.7 in 2009. That said, those titles published increased in both page count and circulation.

Other Forms of Branded Content:

• The most common other forms being used are website updates of articles, blog post and e-newsletters.
• The least common are mobile and e-zines such as flipbooks and interactive PDFs.

What marketing vehicles are companies expecting to add in the future?
While mobile content is not yet widely used, it does rank as the medium that most marketers believe they are likely to invest in next year. Beyond that, marketers plan to invest in video and audio.

Custom Content Council Executive Director Lori Rosen said, “As more and more companies explore custom content solutions across print and digital platforms, we will continue to see an increased financial investment. Things are changing rapidly—the data shows just how much change the industry has undergone in 12 months-and we haven’t even touched social media surface. Next year we will be measuring Twitter, Facebook and more. It’s an exciting time to be involved in content marketing in all its forms.”

Digital Magazines vs. Online Magazine Microsites vs. Websites

What’s the Best Solution?

There are many options for presenting magazine-style content online. How do you know which approach is ideal for your publication? You can start by answering three simple questions.

1. Is your online magazine an extension of a print publication?
2. Do you want to optimize your online magazine for web viewing?
3. Will you update your online magazine content regularly?

First, what are the different solutions?

If we put online magazines on a continuum with print-centric solutions (PDF/Digital Magazine) on the left to web-centric solutions (full featured website) on the right, magazine microsites would fall in the middle. Below are explanations of each.

PDFs are the simplest online versions of a print magazine. You just post the PDF file of your magazine online and allow people to view it. But it’s not very compelling for readers because:

• Large files are often blocked by firewalls and slow to download
• Readers don’t want to download big files onto their computer
• Reader experience is cumbersome—you have to read pages sequentially
• No interactive content

This option is also limiting for publishers—you can’t add rich media or new content, you can’t track viewer activity, and search engine optimization (SEO) is limited. This solution is quickly becoming obsolete.

Digital Magazines (flip books) are high-quality online replicas of print publications that offer value-added functionality such as interactive media and live links. There’s no file downloading and it’s easier for readers to navigate with a flexible control strip and search functionality. Advertisers like this approach because they can replicate print advertisements online and embed active links to their website. However, people find these solutions hard to read because they’re based on PDFs that were designed for print viewing, not for the Web. Reading requires a lot of zooming in and zooming out. And publishers can’t add new content. Digital magazines are a lively way to view a static print magazine online.

Online Magazine Microsites are HTML-based solutions that take advantage of the design and interactive possibilities of the Web. Based on a print publication or an online-only magazine, it’s a dynamic gathering place where readers peruse your magazine content, view rich media (videos, podcasts, slideshows), and link to your social media sites. Online magazines replicate the magazine-reading experience with a flag treatment, Table of Contents, feature stories, and departments. By mixing custom designed feature articles with various article templates, you don’t have to design every page from scratch. Instead, you upload content as often as you want using a simple Content Management System (CMS). Readers prefer this solution because articles are easy to consume and graphically compelling, content is updated regularly, plus navigation is highly intuitive.

Websites can be used to house online magazine content for organizations’ whose primary business is magazine publishing. For these companies, the main website is an extension of the magazine. For organizations that do more than magazine publishing, articles posted on the primary site get lost unless they’re packaged in a magazine microsite.

What are the ideal scenarios for each solution?
Getting back to the original questions….

1. Is your online magazine an extension of a print publication?
2. Do you want to optimize your online magazine for web viewing?
3. Will you update your online magazine content regularly?

If your online magazine is based on a print publication you can consider all options. But if you’re creating a web-only magazine it makes sense to focus solely on web-centric solutions. Why create a print-centric publication to be viewed online? Why invest in designing each and every page of your publication from scratch when it’s never going to print? There are much more efficient ways to do this. If you plan to update your content regularly, PDF/Digital Magazines are not a viable solution—an online magazine or website is the way to go.

The ideal scenarios for each solution are:

PDF/Digital Magazines
You have a print issue and have already invested in the design of each page. Repurpose it. Don't want to add any extra content; just want to replicate your print piece. Great for magazines with ads—publishers can sell online ad space in addition to print.

Online Magazine Microsites
You want to extend your magazine's brand online and give your magazine lovers a solution optimized for the Web. Regularly post fresh content to keep your audience engaged. Make your magazine a two-way conversation with your audience through article commenting.

Websites
Your company is all about your online magazine. Readers don’t distinguish between your magazine’s brand and your organization’s brand.

Social Media Marketing: Not the Leading Marketing Tool

The title of a recent Junta42 Content Marketing blog entry caught my eye--“Five Reasons Social Media Marketing Comes Last”. When every other blog entry, email subject line, whitepaper, and webinar advocates the high priority of social media marketing, it was refreshing to read something different.

Based on an excerpt from Shama Kabani’s new book, The Zen of Social Media Marketing, this blog entry explains why social media marketing should come last in your marketing plan, yet why it must be there.

The main distinction Shama makes is that social media is a consumer platform, not a marketing platform. With a consumer-owned platform, you can listen and you can participate in the conversation but you don’t control what or how much is said. You still need a marketing platform—a one-way communication vehicle that enables you to deliver your marketing message to the consumers you want to reach.

Since social media is where your customers are, you have to be there. But don’t forget that while social media provides a great place to meet and greet customers, you still need traditional marketing platforms (i.e. advertising, websites, email, e-newsletters, PR, webinars, special events, catalogs, etc.) to communicate your comprehensive marketing message.

It all starts with content strategy....

This blog posting from "A List Apart" authored by Margot Bloomstein came to me this morning via an email newsletter I subscribe to form Junta 42.  In it, Margot talks about the importance of content strategy.  While she's primarily focused on content strategy via website design, the importance of content strategy has been something we've been talking about since long before the web became a critical marketing challenge for our customers.

The idea that all great marketing starts with a content strategy (or a messaging strategy) should come as no great epiphany to anyone (I hope)!  But taking the concept from the "big picture" to the nitty gritty of marketing planning requires spending some time to dig into some of the questions that Bloomstein raises along with some others.

Unfortunately, for many of our clients, by the time a project gets green-lighted, there is often a hard deadline that requires shortcuts at the outset and the thing that often seems to get short-changed is the content strategy discussion (at least at the level that the project deserves).

It all starts with content strategy....

Is There a Quick and Easy Way to Build Quality Email Lists?

Over the past several months, I’ve noticed a considerable surge in the number of emails I receive from people trying to sell me email lists. Today I received five. I’ve been encouraged, thinking that perhaps this intensified marketing effort is a sign that there’s new data supporting the viability of purchasing email lists. Wouldn’t it be great to buy a list of email addresses and suddenly multiply your avid subscriber base without much effort? So I decided to do some investigating.

What I found is that nothing has changed, only email list marketers have become more aggressive. Unfortunately, it’s still true that you can’t simply purchase subscribers. But I did come across several articles that provide useful tips on how to build your lists.

In the Bionic List Building Guide from Lyris we’re reminded, “Although there are many strategies for list building, the main thing to remember is that the possession of an email address does not mean you have the owner’s explicit permission to market to them via email. By law, you must get them to opt-in.” This guide goes on to provide a useful list of techniques to convert raw names into opt-in subscribers. You can subscribe to download it.

In his article Email Address Lists: Buy, Rent or Leave Alone? Mark Brownlow discusses the benefits of list rental compared to the risks of buying a list. This article is not new, but the content remains relevant. In reference to buying bulk email lists, Brownlow says, “At best, your messages to that list just elicit a poor response. At worst, you’re labeled a spammer, which has numerous practical consequences—all of them bad—for your brand, bottom line and ability to do business over the Internet.”

The challenge is to take a list of raw names, presumably people who are interested in your company’s products and services, and get their permission to send them regular marketing communications or newsletters via email. To summarize, the main tips are:

• Ask for opt-ins at every chance you get—in phone calls, newsletters, social media, home page of website, email signature, trade shows, direct mail, etc.
  
• Partner with complementary organizations to attract their subscribers to opt-in to your list.
  
• Offer incentives to motivate people to subscribe.
  
• Ask your subscribers to share the word and forward your message to a friend.

The bottom line is, there is no substitute for building your own email list of people who have expressed an interest in your company's products and services.

Why Should You Create Online Videos?

The YouTube phenomenon is an oft-cited example of the explosion of video on the web. Now, an increasing number of studies reveal the effectiveness of video for creating “stickiness” on websites, for keeping eyeballs on your site longer and prompting them to return more frequently.

The data about the effectiveness of video, when combined with the demographics about broadband penetration (over 90% among “active” Internet users according to a February 2009 report from Neilson Online) makes a powerful case for marketers to integrate video into their web content toolkit.

Why are online videos effective marketing tools? They allow your prospects to see and hear firsthand what makes your organization unique, rather than having to sift through pages of text. Videos offer a personal touch and guarantee that your message is being communicated completely and accurately. There is no better way to share customer testimonials.

Here are some interesting statistics:

• Most users consume video. 80% of Internet users watch video, moving to 88% by 2012. (Ad Age Web Video Report)

• People are spending more time watching videos online. According to a survey by comScore, 73% of U.S. Internet users watched an average of nearly three and a half hours of online video during the month of February 2008, with Americans viewing more than 10 billion videos online. According to the Nielsen Online VideoCensus, the time per viewer spent looking at videos online jumped 49% in May 2009 compared to May 2008.

• Videos drive people to action. Of the people viewing marketing-oriented videos, over half will take some action after viewing a video...including 12% who will buy the product being offered. Typically only .5% to 2% of visitors to a "text only" web site will purchase a product. (Online Publishers Association and Adweek)

• People spend more time watching videos than reading text online. 65% of online surfers will view video advertisements to their completion. Less than 20% read "text only" sites to completion. (Online Publishers Association and Adweek)

• All demographics are watching videos.
Who Watches Online Video
      Men 63%; Women 51%
      Ages 18-29 76%
      Ages 30-49 57%
      Ages 50-64 46%
      Age 65+ 39%

• People share links to videos. 68% of people who watch online videos pass links for these videos onto their friends. (Online Publishers Association and Adweek)

• Video is highest performing advertising unit online. Pre-roll video outperforms all traditional display units on brand lift, brand recall and lift in purchase intent. (Ad Age Web Video Report)

Now, with the cost of video production declining significantly and with the option to host your videos on other websites, web videos are viable for more organizations. DCP is expanding our video web services. Contact us if you’re interested in finding out about our video offerings.

How Can My Social Media Efforts Support My Email Marketing Programs and Vice Versa?

We’re all trying to figure out exactly how social media fits into and boosts our marketing efforts. Last week, I highlighted a Q&A with Paul Gillin, where he touched on the overlap between social media and direct marketing. Today, I’d like to point out two interesting articles from DM News that address ways that social media and email marketing support each other. They are:

• Problem Solver: “How can I integrate social media with my email marketing program?” by Nicholas Einstein

• “How to use social media to grow your email list” by Morgan Stewart

Here’s what I’ve learned from these articles. Email (one-to-one personal communication) is the preferred vehicle to convey promotional offers and drive transactions. Social networks are a great platform from which you can provide customer service and collaborate with fans. Ideally, people will follow you in both channels. Therefore, you want to use each channel to drive your audience to the other channel.

I’ve summarized the synergies between social media and email marketing into four main beneficial actions:

1. Listen to and learn from your social community—let your fans help you hone your marketing message (same point that Paul Gillin made for direct marketing).

2. Deepen communications with your audience by giving them multiple ways to converse with you. If people find you on social media, make it easy for them to link to your email programs. If you reach them via email marketing, encourage them to join your social communities.

3. Make it easy for your audience to spread the word and tell others about you by adding a “share-to-social” function in your email communications.

4. Encourage people to subscribe to all types of communications with your organization. Make sure members of your social networks know they can stay in touch via email subscriptions and invite people to join your social communities via email messages.

The bottom line is, we want to have as many conversations with our audience as possible and we want to encourage them to share these discussions with their friends.

Where Do Social Networking and Direct Marketing Overlap?

If you’ve ever wondered, “What on earth does social networking have to do with direct mail?”, you must read this Target Marketing Q&A between Paul Gillin, author or the recently released “Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business!” and Ethan Boldt, editor-in-chief, Inside Direct Mail.

Throughout these seven questions and answers, Gillin presents numerous examples of how these marketing functions are starting to come together and support each other. To me, the most hard-hitting point in the dialogue was Gillin’s statement:

“We don’t control our brands anymore. Brands are controlled by our constituents. We have a role in shaping the brand, of course, but branding is now a process of constant back and forth with the people who will interact with these brands.”

Given this development, Gillin suggests that direct marketers use their social community to help refine their marketing message. Let your community tell you what messages work and don’t work—they’re a great testing ground.

But read the article to get other ideas of how social marketing can support your direct mail strategy.