Digital Magazine News

Since 2007, IEEE, a global technical association and publisher, has launched five digital magazine editions and a new digital-only magazine, and converted its annual report and awards publication to digital-only. Two more digital magazine versions are preparing to launch in 2009, and IEEE is evaluating other digital options.

IEEE's approach to digital editions for its flagship Spectrum Group involved initial research and a six-month live trial/conversion period, a model that's been extended successfully for other publications. Digital Magazine News asked IEEE media staff director and Spectrum Group publisher Jim Vick to share the process and results to date.

Beginning in 2007, IEEE began exploring digital magazine versions as a potential means of both enhancing and expanding member services and realizing operational savings. Today, we're realizing both of these benefits across several publications, and those successes have laid the foundation for further expansion of the digital platform in 2009 and beyond.

The technical/computer-reliant nature of our overall membership/readers and our significant international membership component gave us good reason to believe that there was likely to be substantial interest in a digital-delivery option.

For context, here’s a summary of IEEE’s mission, membership and publications:

A Snapshot of IEEE

IEEE is the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology and publisher of more than 40% of the technology information disseminated worldwide. Our acronym originally stood for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, but we now touch so many fields through our 36 technical societies that we’re simply known by the four letters, IEEE (pronounced "eye triple E").

IEEE has more than 385,000 members in more than 160 countries, including nearly 80,000 student members. We publish the leading technical magazines, journals letters and transactions in electrical engineering, computing, biotechnology, telecommunications, power and energy, and dozens of other technologies.

As part of IEEE benefits, all members are eligible to receive our monthly flagship title, IEEE Spectrum magazine, as well as a quarterly newspaper that is delivered with it, The Institute (TI). Each of our 36 technical societies also publishes one or multiple magazines. Some are membership benefits, others are available by separate, paid subscription.

With approximately 42% of our total members based internationally, a primary goal was the ability to offer these members a truly timely delivery option for the publications that they depend on to keep them informed about their disciplines.

Given adequate exposure to the format and its timeliness, interactive, archiving and other benefits, we believed that a potentially significant segment of U.S. members would also opt to convert from print to digital delivery.

If embraced by sufficient numbers of members, the option would yield significant manufacturing, distribution and operational cost savings, freeing up resources for IEEE to invest back into enhancing and expanding member services. (One possibility being new digital publications serving specific member segments.)

* In addition to providing all members with the option of receiving Spectrum and TI in either print or digital format as part of their benefits, we saw an opportunity to offer members the option of receiving both digital and print for a modest additional charge.

* We would seek to enhance advertising revenue over time, as marketers "turned on" to the benefits of the value-added features offered by digital editions, including links to audio/video presentations and ad banners on the email notifications sent to readers when each digital issue is published/available via browser or downloading.

Still, we were not about to leap into digital based on assumptions, however logical or promising from a benefits standpoint. We wanted to be sure that this would be an option that would be welcomed and viewed as a true benefit by our members.

Focusing first on IEEE Spectrum and TI (S&TI, for short) made sense, since the potential benefits of digital conversions were obviously most compelling on these, our largest-circulation print publications. Further, in testing digital on these all-member publications, we would be getting a read on acceptance across all of the many technology segments served by IEEE.

In the initial exploratory stage, we included a question gauging interest in the digital-format option within each of four studies that IEEE was conducting to gather member opinions on a variety of association membership issues.

The upshot: In every study, 25% to 30% of members expressed interest in digital delivery of S&TI.

Given the nature of our membership, we assumed that most were familiar with the digital replica concept. The question was how well they would respond to a specific digital product.

Obviously, the next step was to define our product and service needs and short- and long-term objectives and select a digital vendor partner.

Our needs were no doubt similar to those of other publishers considering a move to offering digital versions. In addition to the obvious criterion of fair, competitive pricing, these included:

Core Digital Capabilities, Services Needs

* A digital product that would operate both easily and completely reliably from the user's perspective.

* Product features and an overall experience that would compel print readers to opt in.

* Capability to handle all record and log requirements necessary for BPA and ABC audit purposes.

* An e-commerce capability to manage subscription sales to non-members.

* The ability to continue to add features and enhance our digital products over time (via the availability of flexible feature sets), rather than be limited to a stagnant product or single solution.

* A vendor that would work closely and consistently with our team, integrate our system into the vendor’s system, do custom work as required and provide knowledgeable support and creative ideas on the marketing front.

After researching and vetting the options, we chose Qmags as our partner.

With the specific product/service chosen, we developed our plan for giving members ample opportunities to "test-drive" live digital issues and decide for themselves whether digital or print best served their individual needs.

While we could have chosen to create a single real or simulated issue in digital format and send that repeatedly to members, our thinking was that enabling them to experience a series of actual issues in the format—the exact content and service that they would receive if they opted to convert to digital in 2008—would enable them to make a truly well-informed decision.

We believed that enabling that comfort level would ultimately pay off both in initial conversion rates and in minimizing the potential for some readers to opt for digital and subsequently decide to revert to print. Based on our results, the decision to build in this trial period was a sound one.

We decided that the trial period would run for six months, between July and December 2007. During that time, all members who had given us their email addresses would receive both their print issues and emails providing them with digital access via browser and a downloadable, enhanced PDF format to the same actual, current issues.

The messaging content of the emails accompanying the trial digital issues needed to be succinct, yet accomplish several purposes: introduce the digital-version option; get members to try out the digital issues; convey that, during the trial period, they would need to choose either to convert to digital delivery or to continue to receive S&TI in print as of 2008; and ultimately get those who liked the format to click into a simple link to confirm their desire to convert to digital delivery.

The dynamics were similar to those of a free-to-paid or forced free trial campaign. We devoted considerable thought and effort to creating our message series, drawing on Qmags’ experience with such conversion series.

While I obviously can’t spell out all of the copy specifics for the series here, a few highlights may be useful or of interest to some DMN readers:

Copy Highlights, Trial/Conversion Email Series

The communication sent with the first digital issue email focused on quickly conveying the digital-delivery and trial-period concepts and moving members to try the digital format. (See email sample below.)

The first effort in Spectrum's
digital trial and conversion
series.

The large headline under the Spectrum logo, "Your digital version of the July 2007 IEEE Spectrum Magazine is available to VIEW or DOWNLOAD," included live links on "view" and "download" that corresponded to the browser and PDF download options. In addition, the issue's cover was prominently displayed near the top of the message, with another link into the browser version underneath, as well as a prominent PDF format symbol with another link into that download option.

The main message spelled out, in bullet-point format, that the digital delivery would soon be an optional member benefit; that the July issue was the start of a digital introductory trial to run through December and designed to acquaint IEEE members with the digital-delivery experience; and that during the trial, members could make an informed decision to opt into digital delivery, which would commence with their January 2008 issues.

We emphasized that a decision to opt for digital meant no longer receiving print as of 2008, but that those who did not opt in would continue to receive print. A bold-faced sentence stated: "There is absolutely no plan to dispense with print for those members who prefer print."

Additional bulleted copy further explained the 2007 introductory trial: "You will continue to get these alerts for each month's issue through December. Each alert will contain links to the enhanced PDF and Web browser digital formats for the month's issue. We’ll also tell you a little more about digital delivery in each [trial issue] alert." This area of the message also reemphasized the optional nature of digital, and that the decision to convert to digital could be made at any point during the trial, but that digital-only would not commence until January 2008.

A quick explanation of the two ways to read the digital edition, and some of the features of the format (navigation bar, settings button, help button, enhanced search, forward-to-a-friend) followed.

Finally, this first message provided a visible link for easily opting in to digital delivery starting in 2008—followed by a link to opt out of receiving further trial series emails, in line with email best practices. However, we also made it clear that those who opted out of receiving the trial series would receive one more email in November to "give you a chance to reconsider opting into 2008 digital delivery."

Each subsequent message in the trial series provided more information about the benefits of digital delivery, including the advantage of simple, 24/7 access to the online S&TI archive with no need to take up hard-drive space by saving issues on computers; faster delivery; keyword archives searching; and digital’s environmentally friendly nature.

Naturally, the emphasis on making a decision about whether to opt for digital became more prominent and urgent as the series progressed. The final message was headlined: "Last chance to switch delivery of IEEE Spectrum beginning January 2008 to digital only! The 2007 digital trial ends with this December issue. Just CLICK HERE to opt in to digital-only for 2008."

The trial resulted in 45,000 members opting in for digital delivery of Spectrum and TI, representing an initial conversion rate of approximately 13% among all members who received the trial series.

For 2009, we are projecting that 20% of existing and new members, or about 65,000, will opt for digital.

Based on that assumption, the net savings on production, manufacturing and distribution for these two publications alone would be approximately $600,000 for the year. (Those savings, by the way, include the costs of polybagging for delivering TI with Spectrum on four print issues during the year.)

Equally important, members who opted for digital continue to be very happy with the format. Follow-up surveys, anecdotal feedback, high open rates (particularly downloads of the enhanced PDF format) and the extremely minimal rate of reversion to print all confirm that digital delivery is indeed valued, appreciated and preferred by this significant portion of our membership.

As anticipated, we are also going ahead in 2009 with adding the option of receiving both the print and digital versions of S&TI for a small additional fee ($9.95).

In July 2007, as we were starting our S&TI digital issues trial, we also tested the waters for digital delivery of the traditionally print-based annuals that go out to our full membership.

We began by creating and distributing both a digital and print version of the "brochure" (which is actually about 40 pages in size) that we produce to feature the winners of our annual IEEE Awards program.

The excellent reception to the digital format of the awards brochure—more than 46,000 members viewed it digitally—led us to go digital-only with that publication in 2008. This saved us approximately $100,000 in manufacturing and distribution costs in the first year of digital-only distribution.

Similarly significant savings benefits are also being realized by taking our annual report digital-only. We've done this twice now, for both 2007 and 2008, and more than 30,000 members have viewed the report digitally each time.

Beyond IEEE's S&IT initiatives, thus far, two of our technical societies are employing digital editions of their publications as an option/benefit for members or as paid-subscription options.

In addition, the availability of cost-effective digital publication technology has enabled our Women In Engineering (WIE) committee to launch a digital-only magazine as a membership benefit.

* Computer Society: Once we had our vendor partner and the digital capability in place in early 2007, IEEE's Computer Society was particularly enthused about putting that capability to work.

This society publishes Computer, a monthly magazine that is a benefit of society membership (and also sold to non-members), and also publishes a dozen vertical, technical magazines (plus 16 scholarly journals). The technical magazines are sold by separate, paid subscription. IEEE and Computer Society members are eligible for special subscription rates; non-members are charged higher rates.

The Computer Society decided to begin using digital versions in 2007, with an initial focus on testing these as a paid subscription platform. We began offering a paid Computer digital subscription to non-members in January. Paid digital-version subscription offers for both members and non-members to IEEE Security & Privacy and IEEE Design & Test of Computers magazines were started in April and August, respectively.

The digital paid-subscription offers for Security & Privacy and Design & Test have continued, producing moderate incremental revenue for the society.

Meanwhile, Computer has moved to the S&IT model, using a four-month/issue member trial and conversion period that will end this December. Digital delivery for those who've opted for this format will begin in January 2009.

In addition, the Computer Society is now creating a digital version and a marketing plan for its paid-subscription IEEE Software magazine, with the digital edition to be launched sometime in 2009.

* Communications Society: ComSoc's member-benefit monthly Communications magazine, also following the S&TI model, conducted a four-month/issue digital trial/conversion series from September through December 2007 and commenced regular digital delivery for opt-ins as of January 2008.

Because of ComSoc members' enthusiastic response to digital, the IEEE's Publications Board has recently voted to make the digital version a standard ComSoc membership benefit, along with the monthly print version. ComSoc members will also have the option of forgoing receiving the print version, in which case their society membership fee will be reduced to reflect IEEE's savings on print production/distribution of those copies.

In addition, ComSoc's guide to membership benefits, which is updated and distributed annual to all of its members and distributed in batches during the course of the year as new members come onto the rolls, was converted to digital-only as of September 2007. Again, members have been very receptive to the guide's new digital format (including the ease of saving and retrieving it), and the production/mailing savings are enabling ComSoc to enhance other member benefits.

* Women In Engineering: This committee has wanted to offer a membership-benefit magazine for some time, but we had determined that a traditional print publication would be cost-prohibitive.

In this case, the digital publication capability enabled creating a digital-only biannual Women in Engineering magazine. The first two issues were published in January and July 2008.

Existing WIE members are extremely enthusiastic about the magazine, and we're confident that the added value that it represents will support both WIE membership renewals and new-member growth

Given the significant member and operational cost benefits being realized through implementation of digital versions of our largest-circulation magazines, as well as digital-only formats for various member materials and the new WIE magazine, it will come as no surprise that IEEE plans to evaluate how the digital publication format might be further leveraged.

In total, our societies publish another 30 or so magazines. Individual societies will explore whether some of these might be candidates for a digital version, either as a member option or on a paid basis, depending on the title's business model and the society's goals. The societies also distribute member materials and annuals that might benefit from going digital.

Further, new publications are launched each year by IEEE's societies, which may present opportunities for print launches that start out with a digital edition option, or additional digital-only publication launches.

In short, my bet is that we'll find more ways to benefit from the digital publication format going forward.