Implementing Emap Brand Subscriptions at Retail Week

Implementing the Retail-Week.com subscription barrier

Context
Retail Week: aimed at senior managers in UK multiple retailers and related industries
96% of our readers are Management, 62% are C-suite. (Source: Survey Monkey March 2009)
We are read by 97.2% of the top 500 retail companies. (Source: Reader Research Fusion communications June 2004)
Print circulation: 9,128 (ABC July ’08 - June ’09)

Context
Retail-Week.com: 212,000 UU; 763,000 PI (November 2009)
>50K registered users

Previous website
2008: free online access strategy

Previous website
2008: free online access strategy
All magazine content available free online

Previous website
Free content advantages:
Rapid growth in traffic and registrations
Increased editorial teams’ skill with SEO
More web-native content (blogging, live reporting, video, social media)

Previous website
Free content problems:
Cannibalisation of (print) subscriptions
Poor timing: recession led to retail head-office layoffs
Retail firms cut back on bulk subscriptions to cut costs
Renewal rates falling

New strategy: “Brand Subscriptions”
Brand Subscriptions
No longer just a printed magazine... but:
A subscription to all content the brand has to offer:
printed magazine
subscriber-only web content
added-value digital data products (eg Retail Week Knowledge Bank)
In future, more will be added to the package (mobile access, subscriber-only email services)

“ Brand Subscriptions”: Objectives
Give subscribers better value
Improve subscription renewal rates
Woo back lapsed subscribers
Increase new acquisition volumes

Delivering “Brand Subscriptions”
Technical
New content management system
Upgrades to introduce subscription barrier
Marketing
Raising subscriber awareness and encouraging activation
Editorial
Impact on our journalism and editorial processes

Technical changes
New CMS rollout: Webvision 3.0 from Abacus Emedia
Article-level barrier: Barrier can be applied to any article page, not index pages.
“ Activation”: Linking records in existing subscriber and website registration databases
Single Sign On: Allows us to extend barrier to other platforms

Activation

Technical: Helping our customers jump over the barrier If you subscribe to but are not registered with the website, please register for free here If you don’t subscribe, please subscribe here 1 2 3 If you subscribe and are registered with brand website please activate or login here 4 If you’re lost, contact customer services

Marketing activities

Editorial Changes
"This makes it clearer for editors to understand how to marshall content. Once you've got a free-to-air environment and and hard copy environment it's quite complex, maybe even impossible to know how to treat the two surfaces from an editorial point of view. "We're moving much more to continuous publishing and a much easier relationship between the different media. It's a much less confused, contrary picture now.” (Emap CEO David Gilbertson in Press Gazette, March 2010)

Editorial Changes
Few day-to-day changes for editorial process
SEO remains relevant concern
Less concern about cannibalisation on web-first news
Observed greater relevance of “most read” stories
Some brands attempt to avoid revealing full stories in introductions
Need to integrate updates of data products into editorial workflow
New metrics: UU/PI no longer ends, but means to conversions

New KPIs
Increase “activations” Encourage cross-media use of the brand
Retention Increase renewal rates
Acquisition Increase new subscriptions
Increase subscriber value Introduce new products as subscriber benefits

New Digital Products
Retail Week Knowledge Bank
Acquired Retail Knowledge Bank
In-house development

Acquired Retail Knowledge Bank
In-house development
Marketing campaign to raise awareness and increase activations

New Products: Other Emap sites

Questions?
Martin Stabe
[email_address]
Tel. 020 7728 3614
Mob. 07799 764576
www.martinstabe.com
Slides available at: www.retail-week.com/sipa

Implementing Emap Brand Subscriptions at Retail Week

by Retail Week on Jul 12, 2010

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Implementing Emap Brand Subscriptions at Retail Week — Presentation Transcript