The value of magazines

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Emily Fovargue considers the advantages of Customer Magazines for getting the message across and keeping it at the forefront

Customer Magazines – bringing Brands to life i

n today’s muLtimedia environment, brands looking to engage and interact with existing or potential customers need to carefully consider how best to make their message heard and considered.

According to Forrester Research in the United States, the average consumer is exposed to over 3,500 marketing messages every day, making it particularly difficult for many companies to ensure their communications stand out.

The changing dynamics of customer interaction with companies means that

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businesses are increasingly reviewing their marketing strategies. This is an age where intense competition for the consumer pound means that loyalty is eroding. People are now more likely to switch providers to ensure they get the best products at the best price.

One of the ways in which consumers are putting into action their right to control media consumption is through opting out of marketing communications — whether this be technology enabled, for example, changing viewing habits to skip over commercials, or simply deleting emails

in the latest ABC results, which list magazines by their verified circulation figures, customer titles occupied eight slots in the top ten magazines — and all of the top seven spots.

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— or opting out of receiving marketing communications.

customeR magaZines — fLexibLe and pRacticaL One increasingly popular method of effective customer communication is to employ a customer magazine to outline and build on the brand offering.

To put it simply, a customer magazine is a publication produced by a brand and containing themed editorial designed to entertain and inform the organisations’ customers. It avoids the hard sell, instead seeking to build a brand by including articles based on the company’s core values and products and, most importantly, designed with the interests of the customer readership in mind.

Another benefit of customer magazines is that they can convey very detailed and complicated information in a depth other channels cannot, particularly time restricted marketing methods such as TV and radio advertising. Using a customer magazine to convey this information to the reader means that the consumer can take as much time as they need to fully understand the product or service, and if necessary keep the information for further future reference or comparison with other materials.

In addition, readers of customer magazines often approach the medium expecting to receive new information and ideas, so the magazine can often be a more suitable method for conveying detailed product small print

or lengthy terms and conditions than other media channels.

Customer publishing has proved itself to be a powerful medium in recent years, as it presents a flexible and practical way of communicating an organisation’s messages to its customers and stakeholders. And it’s a successful one: in the latest ABC results, which list magazines by their verified circulation figures, customer titles occupied eight slots in the top ten magazines — and all of the top seven spots.

impRoving LoyaLty and incReasing saLes Not only do customer magazines deliver loyalty for brands, they can address a number of different

marketing objectives simultaneously.

Research by the APA (the Association of Publishing Agencies, the trade body supporting customer publishing in the UK) and MINTEL has discovered that 32 per cent of customers state that they feel more committed to the brand after reading a customer title.

The MINTEL study also found that while encouraging loyalty was cited as the main objective for many customer magazines, providing information to customers and selling more to existing customers were other important factors.

Further APA research places the success of customer publishing in greater context. The Advantage Study, undertaken with Millward Brown and sponsored by Royal Mail, demonstrated

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the Advantage Study revealed that readers spend an average of 25 minutes with a customer title; the equivalent of fifty 30 second TV spots. that the average sales uplift that can be attributed directly to the influence of a customer magazine is a substantial eight per cent, which counters the myth that consumer magazines do not affect consumer behaviour. The research further discovered that customer publishing can increase brand loyalty by one third, by actively engaging readers which leads to stronger brand relationships, enhanced brand image and behavioural change — all areas which organisations are currently looking to encourage.

With per cent of publishing

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agencies citing existing clients as the most important target audience, the MINTEL report demonstrates that customer magazines can be useful tools for cross selling or up selling products. Nearly one half of titles were also used to reach prospective customers, underlining the medium’s use for attracting new customers and introducing the available products and services.

a peRsonaL appRoach A further bonus for the medium is that the content and even style of the

magazine can be tailored to appeal to specific groups of consumers, such as students, different customer demographics, or pre existing customers who may be interested in more of the company’s services.

Furthermore, if the magazine is distributed to its readership through the post, a customer title can be customised on an individual basis if desired, using the personal data held on the magazine’s readers including how many products they use or their past interactions with the brand. As Royal Mail delivers to the UK’s 28

million addresses, organisations can ensure that their targeted messages are received by the right customers.

Over the past few years, there has been a marked increase in the number of customer magazines which are personalised in this way — nearly three quarters of customer titles which are mailed out to recipients are individualised. This has the benefit of making the magazine’s content and messages even more likely to appeal to certain chosen customers.

Customer magazines have also been found to communicate effectively

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with even traditionally hard to reach audience segments such as the grey and youth markets.

One example of a magazine using segmentation as a key strength is IKEA’s magazine, produced by August Media to support its loyalty programme. Rather than focusing solely on print, IKEA Family LIVE combines an online and offline approach to connect with consumers.

The title is issued internationally and published in 21 languages worldwide, with each magazine tailored to the needs of shoppers in each specific regional marketplace.

This title, one of the most widely circulated internationally in the retail sector, works in tandem with the IKEA website which is currently rolling out across Europe. The magazine is distributed in store with a low cover price, with the majority mailed out free of charge to all members of the IKEA FAMILY loyalty scheme. The website and magazine are both designed in the same style but with slightly differing content, however both work together to produce tangible results; generate sales, increase customer loyalty and build brand awareness.

engaging ReadeRs — the 25 minute medium Naturally, for a customer magazine to be engaging, it needs to be entertaining. To this end, many customer magazines now rival their consumer newsstand counterparts when it comes to style, design and content. The success of the medium is further underlined by the influx of consumer editors moving to head up customer titles — for example, Scott Manson, former editor of Loaded

at Business Life, and Simon Geller (Men’s Health) joining Sky. And such an approach is working.

As the ABCs have proved, these magazines are actively picked up, read and enjoyed. In fact, in terms of actively engaging with their readership, a burning issue for marketers at the moment, the Advantage Study revealed that readers spend an average of 25 minutes with a customer title; the equivalent of fifty 30 second TV spots.

Customer magazines also often have a life which extends long after the initial read — the research found titles are generally picked up more than once, retained for a week or more, and then passed on to others or filed for future reference. Clearly, the customer publishing industry has evolved, with readers now actively seeking out publications to read and gain useful information.

Customer publishing can bring brands to life in a way other media might not permit. Independent investment company Liontrust

produces customer magazine ROAR. On the face of it, fund management doesn’t offer many possibilities for a provocative and entertaining magazine, but ROAR provides just that and it won the Most Effective Financial Title category at the APA’s annual awards. The magazine’s core objective is to build the brand using a combination of Liontrust’s values of rigorous thinking, scepticism and unconventionality, with heavyweight journalists providing key talking points from today’s financial world. Research shows that it’s working — 3 per cent of customers read either all or most of the magazine, per cent rate the tone as excellent or good and seven per cent actually invest in a Liontrust fund as a result of reading ROAR.

customeR pubLishing — coming of age It is clear that the customer publishing industry has come of age, and is now becoming widely recognised as an effective and versatile technique for improving and deepening customers’

interaction with a company, whatever sector it operates in.

Throughout 200 , there was a new customer magazine launch for every working day, and customer publishing proved to be the second fastest growing medium after online. The medium has enjoyed a staggering growth of 244 per cent over the past decade, and is now worth £ 88million and the MINTEL report forecasts that medium will continue to grow, with a predicted turnover of over £1 billion before the end of the decade.

Clearly this is a medium which has come into its own, and can not only deliver results for brands but also provide customers with the communication and added value they are coming to demand from organisations. n

Emily fovargue Head of Publishing Royal Mail

www.royalmail.com

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