Junta42 Content Marketing blog

Letting Your Customers Tell Your Story - Nxtbook Map

When possible, showing how your customers use your product is always the best option. It's also challenging.

Digital publishing provider Nxtbook Media found a way to do just that - with a little help from Zappos.

Showing that customers read digital magazines is not easy. You can't take a picture of them (yet). Sure, you have a lot of great statistics, but it's tough to bring those statistics to life.

Enter Nxtbook Map. Nxtbook Map shows in real-time around the world who's reading a Nxtbook digital magazine. According to Nxtbook's marketing guru Marcus Grimm (@marcusgrimm), someone opens a Nxtbook every two seconds. With Nxtbook Map, you can see this in real time. Truly powerful stuff.

And for the Zappos connection. The idea for Nxtbook Map was taken from Zappos' Map, where you can see people are buying shoes from Zappos in real-time around the United States. 

So often we focus on creating content that doesn't already exist. While that's important, we also need to look at leveraging the content we already have.

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Callaway Goes Digital with Online Magazine Launch

I had a nice email conversation with my friend Nick Green from MacDUFF about their recent launch of the Callaway Online Magazine.  Here are some of the outtakes. 

Joe -  Why did Callaway decide to produce this?

Nick - MacDUFF approached Callaway Golf about a year ago with the idea. With print and US Postal Service charges on the rise and marketing budgets under stress we felt the time was right to go online. Callaway is a technological leader in golf and believe the iMAG can reiterate their stance.

(Note from Joe - MacDUFF refers to a digital/online magazine as an iMAG. MacDUFF built the Callaway iMAG using flash technology.)

Joe - How is the digital magazine/iMAG distributed?

Nick - Through Callaway's home page (it's on the navigation bar), a regular email blast to their consumer database and other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. We are also encouraging consumers to share the content through a share function on each page.

Joe - What type of statistics can you share?

Nick - We literally just launched it and the reaction has been terrific. No stats to share yet, but our client is thrilled distribution costs have fallen 60%! The printed magazine was distributed quarterly to 800,000 people. We are testing the iMag without the print option. A six-page refresh is going up this week, which we will continue each month.

The initial reader response has been amazing. Video downloads, shares, forwards are all ahead of our expectations

Joe - How does it integrate with the print magazine?

Nick - It is promoted through the print magazine and features additional content, video golf instruction and read on content. Our print readers can get it and it is also open to all those with web access.

Joe (in Summary) - We've seen customers across the board in multiple markets opt-in to receive digital magazines in replace of the print version.  It's possible to see up to 20% of readers choose to convert from the print to the digital version (in addition to some new additional online-only distribution - often international).

In Callaway's case, it looks like they are taking this opportunity to invest in fresher, more sharable content for their customers. Only time will tell whether this will be a successful move, but it's clear that brands from every sector are starting to invest more print custom magazine dollars into either digital versions or web content. The print isn't going away, but it's definitely being cut. The marketers I talk with are pocketing half the savings, and taking the other half and investing it on the web.

We'll catch up with Nick in a few months to see how things are progressing.  Thanks Nick!

Related Articles

• Digital Magazine Examples - KLM Leads the Way with iFly
• Digital Magazines - Worth a Look? An Interview

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Five Content Marketing Ideas that Will Pay Dividends

Really cool eBook by Amplifier Content Marketing (full disclosure: Amplifier is a client of mine) called "Five Music Marketing Ideas that Could Pay Dividends Now".

Truthfully, the five ideas in this eBook could be applied to any industry, not just music.  Also includes some amazing examples and case studies.

Five Music Marketing Ideas That Could Pay Dividends Now

View more presentations from Glenn Sabin.

The five ideas to seriously consider now for your brand (according to the eBook) include:

1. The Content Filter - Be the "editor" in a market and present people the best content in that market or that topic. Be the enabler of the information they are looking for.
2. The Microsite - Become the trusted expert on a particular niche topic (on a different URL than your company URL, i.e., Mercedes Benz Online Magazine).
3. The Magalog - Combine that outdated catalog with the compelling content of a magazine and give your customers something to really engage in.
4. The Digital Magazine - Go no further than checking out what KLM is doing with their digital magazine, iFly.
5. The Tweeter - Same concept as the "content filter" or "microsite" model...just distribute the content through Twitter.

Download the full PDF of the eBook here. Thanks to Glenn Sabin from Amplifier for putting this together.

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Digital Magazine Examples - KLM Leads the Way with iFly

I had an interesting email conversation with Sak van den Boom at CustomerMedia.nl about digital magazines recently.

We can't seem to find a company doing more with the digital magazine format than KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and their digital magazine iFly.  If you haven't seen it before, it's one of the very few digital magazine examples that fully integrates flash and video into a customer experience, and tracks customer usage. It's worth checking out.

But is it working? Definitely. After each issue is released, an email is sent to KLM customers, who then click through to the magazine issue. That way, KLM can track the behavior of each of their customers from the email. KLM can then track this information back to repeat ticket sales (the ultimate goal for the magazine is to sell additional tickets to their customers).

Here are some of the findings.

• After their third issue, KLM has found that iFly is the best marketing tool they have EVER used to sell repeat tickets.
• The average reader spends 20 minutes with the magazine.
• Half read more than five pages.
• 20% read the entire magazine.
• Frequent flyers are heavy users of the magazine.
• The click-through rate of iFly is higher than any other online campaign from KLM.

(thanks to Sak and Arjen Bonsing for putting together these incredible stats)

Digital Magazines in the States

To find out why more of these types of digital mags aren't produced by US corporations, I went to experts Marcus Grimm from Nxtbook and Cimarron Buser from Texterity.

From what I can gather, most digital magazines start as print, not as stand-alone digital magazines. Since that is the case, most publishers take the PDF-version of the magazine and optimize it for the web (integrating flash, video or RSS after the original print version is created). It also seems that many US companies opt for using microsites or independent websites instead of digital magazines, such as P&G have with homemadesimple.com or beinggirl.com.

Also, the investment in custom flash technology does cost quite a bit more for custom programming, which is another reason why people simply tweak the PDF versions.

Regardless, Marcus and Cim were able to share some great digital magazine examples, including:

• Project Analog - Example flash cover animation.
• Driver's Republic - Integrated video with some interesting advertising options.
• Lancaster Chamber of Commerce - PDF-based magazine with integrated flash.
• Organic Style - Includes interactive recipes and fashion close-ups.
• Linked - Brings in live feeds.
• Consumer Goods Technology - Solid BtoB example with interactive elements.

The Future of Digital Magazines
There is no doubt that digital magazines have always been a great option at giving publishers a proven digital replica option for their magazine, which can increase international subscriptions, and allow publishers to be more choosy in who they send their printed version to. 

For marketers like KLM, it's a excellent option if you want to track exactly what your customers are doing. Stats like the ones that KLM have received are much more challenging to get on a website version (as it pertains to one-to-one customer information). Also, if I already have a print magazine version, a digital replica is a no-brainer.

That said, if I were to start an online magazine, I'm not sure I would use a digital magazine format.  Seems like it may be better to open it up via a website and make it more possible for customers and prospects to actively share the information.

(Added after conversation with Marcus - interesting take "website is better to attract customers, digital magazine may be a better option for retention efforts...hmmm).

What say you?

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Digital Magazines: Worth a Look? - An Interview

I had the pleasure of interviewing Marcus Grimm, marketing executive for NXTbook Media. NXTbook is a digital media solutions company that I came to know through Penton with the use of digital magazines. There are a few interesting applications for both marketers and publishers to seriously consider. Take a look below at his view of the digital publishing landscape.

1. For the digital magazine novice, can you give me a basic description of what a digital magazine is? 

The simplest way to describe a digital magazine is this: take a printed magazine and give it all the benefits of being online - add audio, video, Flash, permalinks. Then, make it so that the publisher can easily view everything that the reader does: How many pages they visit, how long they stay on each page, etc. And because publishers are concerned about revenue generation, add in some special sponsorship opportunities.

2.  What is the one benefit of digital magazines that everyone seems to overlook?

Everything that we do to a digital magazine - from animation to RSS feeds and more - begins with the PDF of the publication. Without web editors, you can still get your content online in a format that readers like and search engines can index.

3. Digital magazines have come under some scrutiny for being a short-lived technology.  What would be your response to that?

Most of our publishers rely heavily on print circulation with a digital circulation goal of 20-25%. What this means is that 75-80% of their resources need to be devoted to their print product because that's where their readers are and that's how their bills get paid. A digital edition is a more cost effective way to reach that 20-25% of your audience than devoting extra resources to online development. So long as we have publishers with a print focus, methods to make it easy to do digital editions serve as a great business model for us.

 

The reality is that few technologies are short-lived, but many technology companies are very short-sighted. The product we have today is nothing like the product we had two years ago, and our management teams are just as certain what we need to continue to evolve and improve so that our technology always provides a solution as markets shift.

4. What is an area that's primed for digital magazines (or the technology) but have yet to use it?
 

One thing we've learned is that there are very few "lay-ups" in this industry. We've had great success stories and failures in every channel. However, there are some common ways to evaluate if a market will be successful:

• If an international audience is likely to enjoy your product but you don't have the resources to send it overseas, a digital magazine might make sense.
• If you have extra content that constantly gets shaved from your print version due to paper/shipping costs, a digital magazine might make sense.
• If you have a self-documenting audience - one that likes to talk about your content but can't because your magazine is a print publication, a digital magazine might make sense.
• If your website is sold out (no more ad placement positions) and you're looking for ways to generate more online revenue, a digital magazine might make sense.
• Most important of all - if your goal is to create content once, but distribute it in multiple formats - print, e-mail, html, RSS, Flash, etc. - a digital magazine might make sense.