Putting a Little Muscle Behind Digital Editions

Two publishers prove an aggressive and persistent digital edition platform can pay off.

By Jane Zarem
Wednesday, April 30, 2008

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Those publishers that think digital editions are a low-grade, low-effort strategy to cost-savings or international circ are likely missing the point. The platform can and does work for companies that put a little effort behind promoting their digital editions. Cost of entry is relatively cheap, and we all know materials costs are non-existent, so there’s room for a little marketing muscle and persistence, which can eventually generate some returns. The two publishers profiled here, Playboy and Penton, couldn’t come from more wildly different markets, but both show that launching a digital edition platform, and sticking with it by consistently hammering away at requals and new business offers, can produce real results.

Playboy Digital Adds Incremental Circulation

Phyllis Rotunno

Playboy jumped into digital delivery with one-shot special editions in May 2005 to get accustomed to the marketplace. The digital edition of the magazine rolled out the following fall.

“Digital made sense for this brand,” says Phyllis Rotunno, senior VP of subscription circulation. “It got us in front of a new group of people, certainly the early adopters of digital technology, in our key market of 18-34 year-old males. Also, it brought in new readers from all over the world.”

A Loss Leader, At First

Rotunno and her team spent more than a year researching various digital publishing vendors, which required a lot of resources and staff time. “We didn’t just put the magazine out as a digital edition and expect it to sell,” she says. “We put dollars behind it—but not a lot. It wasn’t a particularly high cost of entry.”

Rotunno’s team developed a marketing plan and was ready pre-launch with emails, press releases, banners, buttons and digital insert cards. “We had college marketing going on and utilized our online club portals,” she recalls. “We had newsletters and space ads in the print edition. We did combination offers and lots of testing.” In addition, editorial became engaged, embraced all the enhanced media and came up with videos. It was treated as a whole new—and different—kind of magazine.

Marketing Pays Off

Focusing on a full marketing plan may be why Playboy Digital has had such an impressive audience response. “On the consumer side, you need more bells and whistles to get the readers excited about the new product,” Rotunno explains. “Beyond the technology in terms of getting the new magazine published and presented, you have to explain all the benefits in a very simple way—yet really grab the customer’s attention. So we didn’t just promote a subscription. We would tie a big marketing campaign around a cover celebrity, for example, telling people they could get the magazine instantly and before anyone else. ‘Just click here.’ And that worked very well for us.”

It certainly has. On average, Playboy has added, on average, about 60,000 digital subscribers and 7,000 digital single-copy buyers to its print circulation base of 2.4 million. “It’s mostly incremental business,” notes Rotunno, “although it’s hard to measure precisely because the subscribers come from various sources. But we haven’t seen much duplication with our print files. Only about 10 percent of the digital subscribers were print subscribers.”

Print subscribers cannot access the digital version for free. The subscriber pays for one or the other—or both. “Since it’s a duplicate edition, ABC wouldn’t count it as two subscriptions,” Rotunno explains, “so there’s no financial benefit for us to deliver both. We’re also not seeing much interest in having both. They want either one or the other.”

Playboy has tested various subscription offers in the last couple of years, and has learned to pull back on choices. On Playboy.com, the banners and buttons offer a choice of buying print or digital. Direct-mail campaigns and renewals have tested choices as well, but choices always decrease overall response. “To be honest, more people are still buying the print edition on the Web site,” says Rotunno, “but we do generate a lot of digital subscribers online.”

For Penton, It’s All About Cost-Savings…and Volume

Jerry Okabe

Penton Media publishes digital editions for 22 of its 113 trade magazines—14 of which already had digital versions when they were acquired in the Prism Business Media merger a year or so ago. When Penton began its own digital editions, the primary objective was to save money on paper, production and postage and, along with that, expand circulation—particularly internationally—at a reasonable cost.

“A few years ago, Prism (when it was still Primedia Business Magazines) decided to eliminate all free international circulation with the exception of a couple of internationally focused books,” explains Jerry Okabe, VP of circulation. “Now that we can serve digital editions, we can exploit—or at least investigate—international opportunities for all the other magazines.”

Aggressive Promotion

Over the last year, Penton has been aggressively offering the digital option in all its new subscription promotions and requalification efforts, asking people whether they would prefer to receive digital or print. For the 22 magazines that already have digital versions, most still prefer print. About nine percent (of a total two million subscribers) have opted for digital.

For the titles that do not yet have a digital edition, all offers and requals ask subscribers which they’d choose if a digital version were offered. “Typically, there’s a point where you reach critical mass and it becomes cost-efficient to launch a digital version,” Okabe says. “For many of those publications, we haven’t yet reached that point. On average, across the titles that don’t have a digital version right now, only about 3.5 percent of respondents say they would choose digital.”

Both Versions…For a Price

Controlled subscribers receive print or digital, not both, unless they pay the print subscription price. Otherwise, any cost savings would be lost. And how much is Penton saving with digital editions? It varies from magazine to magazine. But even if each magazine saves only about $2,000 a year, that’s $44,000 in annual bottom-line savings for 22 titles. “And some magazines are saving more than that,” says Okabe. “It’s a volume thing for us—and it does add up quickly.”   

Delivering to “Prosumers”

Penton Media is using digital in a rather unique way for its paid audio titles, Electronic Musician, Mix and Remix. “We’ve just started what we call a ‘prosumer’ community, a crossover between business and consumer,” says Okabe. Rather than purchasing subscriptions, people are invited to join AudioInsider.Net. The membership fee includes the magazine subscription(s), delivered digitally, along with discounts at the online bookstore and in-person events and other attractive benefits made available through partnership programs with advertisers. The monthly membership ($5.95) includes the current issue of one magazine; the annual membership ($49.95) includes a year’s subscription to one magazine; the premium membership ($99.95) includes a year’s subscription to all three magazines.

“Electronic Musician has 60,000 print subscribers,” says Okabe. “Right now, it’s about 40 percent paid. At one time, it was 100 percent paid, but we’ve supplemented it with controlled circulation. We’re offering the expanded membership package to all current print subscribers. Controlled subscribers who join pay the entire membership fee and then move over to the paid side—which boosts our paid numbers.”

The digital versions of the three magazines launched in December 2007. “I don’t think we’d be able to do this initiative effectively if we didn’t have digital editions,” says Okabe.


Observations From the Field

Whatever It Takes…
I’m a media agnostic. I like paper. I like online. It really depends on the publication. I believe more attention should be paid to the role and function of the media than to the selection of the platform.

…And No Vanilla, Please
The Web generation expects a richer media experience. And if those readers get only a plain-vanilla digital edition, they’ll quickly become bored. To succeed with the next generation, publishers must become facile with involving the reader at the origin, as well as with providing links to other things that might be of interest. That may mean partnerships and affiliations.

It also means that the next generation of editor must have real skills in being a “referrer,” rather than just a writer and will make his or her reputation as much on being a resource expert about places to go to find out more information as on being a good selector of information to publish in the magazine.

Steve Paxhia, Lead Analyst
Publishing Strategy &
Technology Practice
The Gilbane Group


Get on Board
Over the next 15 years, digital magazines will grow to become 30 percent of the magazine market (and that’s with a 70 percent probability). Within 25 years, they will represent more than 75 percent of the market for periodicals (80 percent probability).

“The Definition of a Print
and Digital Magazine,”
Media Ideas Th(ink) Note, by David Renard, 9/6/07