The magazine industry is showing remarkable resilience after the dust-up of the past several years. Industry stats are showing, and predicting, growth in both the overall value of the global magazine market and in ad presence, according to an article in Publisher’s Weekly.
And with the magazine still firmly entrenched as a solid marketing tool, the author has some timely advice for gaining new readership, especially in digital channels.
“Marketing automation tools … simplify and automate online marketing tasks. Basically, you set certain criteria and the system responds according to the rules,” the article states.
“For example, you might have a rule that sends a follow up email to people who recently cancelled a subscription. Or your email newsletter program might tag individuals who read a specific article and follow up with similar content or a sponsor product suggestion.”
These types of tools leverage your existing house list and customer behavior insights to make each communication point with your customer more relevant and timely, which we know are keys to being successful in any marketing plan.
With digital readership becoming increasingly important for magazine publishers–some stats suggest that digital revenue will account for up to 16% of publisher revenue by 2017–engaging on many platforms is crucial to building your relationship with existing customers and broadening your audience.
“By automating what type of content is sent to certain users (whether they only opened an email without clicking or deeply engaged with email content), publishers can segment their audiences and send more meaningful content to users. That content, because it is more precisely targeted can then spur the actions publishers want (subscriptions, social shares, comments, etc.),” the article continues.
And because the tools are set up to measure specific key performance indicators, measuring ROI from these auto-campaigns can help you really understand where your marketing dollars are doing the heavy lifting.
“A publisher might want to compare how a subscription campaign performed among various demographics or regions. Publishers can then orient specific content or campaigns toward individual segments.”
If you aren’t already using some of these marketing automation tools, it’s time to consider doing so. That big pile of data isn’t doing you any good just sitting there.
