In an article by Matt Kinsman he notes that a recent survey showed that only 7% of print subscribers look at a magazine’s website. If this is true then it is important that any magazine that is going digital do a proper marketing campaign to inform its readers of the switch. Matt’s article describes some of the things that magazines should be looking at. In the end:
Marketing the benefits of the digital edition rather than just thrusting it on them will pay off, even for a high tech crowd that tends to get its information elsewhere. When Ziff Davis took 700,000-circ. PC Magazine digital-only in January, it sent digital editions from Zinio to each subscriber (90 percent of the print readers were already visiting PCMag.com) so they would know there was an on-going magazine-like experience. “We were pleasantly surprised at the number of subscribers who opted to continue to get it in the digital format,” said Ziff Davis CEO Jason Young.
I was one of those PC Magazine subscribers and I opted to have my subscription transferred to Discover magazine rather than read PC Magazine online.
Recently Computer Shopper stopped printing but unlike PC Mag, didn’t notify subscribers and didn’t offer choices. Instead, I am now shifted to Esquire. Granted the deal was good — Esquire is giving me 3 issues for every 1 issue remaining on my Computer Shopper subscription (which means I’ll be getting Esquire until 2019, assuming it remains it print) — but the magazine is a junk magazine as far as I am concerned, i.e., one I wouldn’t buy or subscribe to or want as a gift. I could care less what Matt Damon thinks or even if he thinks (I do think he is an excellent actor; I just don’t care one whit about his personal life — or Letterman’s for that matter) and I really hate magazines that include perfume ads with samples that stink up the house, another Esquire “bonus”.
But the issue really is going from print to online only. I am unwilling to read a magazine or a newspaper at my computer. I already read more than I care to on my computer. If the magazines and newspapers can be properly displayed and read on a dedicated reading device like the forthcoming Sony Daily Edition, iRex 800, or Plastic Logic, then I would be willing to read them digitally. But absent that, I want to get away from my computer screens, not embrace them even more than I currently do.
And if a magazine is going to go digital only, it should offer me, in addition to the digital option, my money back for the unused portion of my subscription or a choice of print magazines to transfer my subscription to, or the option of “donating” my subscription to someone else — not force me to received more junk mail like Esquire.