For publishers in the public, trade, and higher education sectors, the reasons for upgrading the digital experience is a mandatory requirement to move the organization + brand into the future where the majority of readers are now digital. For those that need to present a strong revenue ROI to the CFO and want their marketing and sales teams on board for the new sponsorship and advertising revenue, we’ve included those areas too.  And, YES – VERTIQUL handles all these requirements beyond the custom branded and domain ownership you present to every reader!

So forget the limitations of your current tools or process.  The digital brand is too important to be just another print replica or flip edition thrown in from your printer just to check off the digital edition box.  Almost half the new publishers starting digital publishing solutions are going all digital or plan to be digital first within 12 months.

First, why maximizing revenue and growth of the digital edition is critical:

• The digital publication is the perfect tool to market every issue – it’s the deliverable for the conversion goal
• Advertisers recognize a excellent digital program promoted from the brand
• The digital publication can reach many new audiences & must be available instantly (preview or full edition)

Let’s leverage the premium digital publication for revenue opportunities and audience growth.

10 Key Modern Considerations

MAKE IT WONDERFUL

# 1 – Make the Digital Publication Content Experience Wonderful

Subscribers, members, and general audiences know when when you’ve taken the care to make the content experience perfect.  A wonderful or poor digital edition reflects immediately on the perception of the publication brand – especially during the first impression scrutiny of a perspective subscriber or advertiser.

Test it: Put yourself in a potential subscriber/advertisers shoes to view your digital publication conversion path. Was every step from the homepage of your website a perfect advancement down a conversion path that was ultimately rewarded with a beautiful issue view on desktop, and as you instantly switch device, on your tablet, and on your mobile phone?

# 2 – Stop Making Readers Work for Every Page

Once inside the issue, testing on your desktop/laptop, tablet, and also mobile device: Imagine the reader or advertiser impression of the content presentation.  Is the experience delightful and wonderful? Are you pinching, zooming, and trying to find page edges to advance?  Give them a scrolling experience they control. It’s how they use the internet for most of their other content. 

If all you could think about is “I’d bet this looks good in print” while sliding hard to read thumbnail pictures (especially for the over 50% of audiences now using mobile devices) it’s time to ask how much digital content is actually being consumed.

 

AD REVENUE & RESULTS

# 3 – Preview Editions Achieve Results for Upgrade Advertisers

Preview editions allow advertising to expand beyond the subscriber only boundary and reach your brand’s full audience. This strategy can provide double the value and results to advertisers and confirm double or better results over subscriber only exposure to ads.

 

# 4 – Introduce Responsive & Dynamic Ad Upgrades

Advertisers that enhance their ads for digital stand out from the flat print layout ads in a dynamic and digitally responsive format. Plus, the action target conversion button produces double the clickthrough results on enhanced ads to the advertiser landing pages. Digital provides immediate results for lead generation or ecommerce actions and UTM’s confirm the digital edition produced the results when viewed inside the advertisers source/medium analytics.  

Note: Beyond the VERTIQUL ad upgrade options that allow publishers immediate revenue, if the publisher has additional creative bandwidth you can work on new ad enhancements and charge for this work.

 

SUBSCRIBER GROWTH

# 5 – Leverage Editorial Design for Edition Marketing

The design and layout of issue content are perfect tools for content marketing in digital formats – show that cover and those category opener layouts on digital marketing graphics.

 

# 6 – Adopt a Marketing Workflow to Promote Every Section of the Issue

As you share everyday a new preview edition section of the issue to your social audience (and provide their full issue access link), add current comment blockquotes to these social posts.  This comment feedback cycle at the share source drive growth of the daily posts and encourages engagement and comments where they get interaction results.

 

AUDIENCE EXPANSION

# 7 – Customize the Edition to other Delivery Partners

Expand your digital delivery partners including upgraded digital advertisers. Give partners sharing your Full or Preview Editions a landing page to reward them for their content distribution partnerships.  Does your advertiser also have marketing materials, annual reports, or custom publications you can produce on your premium digital platform?

 

DIGITAL STRATEGY

# 8 – Re-Position Digital as a Primary Deliverable

View Digital as a primary engagement channel and not alternative or secondary replica.  Even with a print edition, the digital version contains “place” and “time” convenience for ongoing (not just once) issue delivery.  The digital issue carries more content and premium upgrades not possible in the print offering. Plus, it’s updatable anytime. It’s no wonder that some publications are choosing to go fully digital with their publications.

 

# 9 – Make Instant Full Access the Top Conversion Focus

The issue as a deliverable is inherently the best conversion vehicle for new subscribes seeking specific editorial content.  For controlled circulation or paid subscriber/member publications, a Preview Edition has the highest ability to convert someone to opt-in/upgrade to the full edition.

 

# 10 – Don’t Make it Confusing

If your digital edition presentation needs instructions, steps, downloads, app installs, configuration or a step by step tutorial on how to use the interface (you all know who you are that use the old print replicate flip, slide, or page corner turn tools), you’ve already lost the ability to make the experience wonderful.

VERTIQUL delivers all the assets your team needs to promote each edition with details for the above guide customized to your publishing model.  Take back the time you spend uploading PDFs to a flip tool that dilutes your value due to poor reading experience and have these staff promoting workflows paid for by advertiser enhancements. Upgrade the experience for readers on your domain and own the delivery medium you promote each issue.

We look forward to learning your needs and telling you how our full service handles everything using your existing print files.  Our design team completes your issue production within a few days into the premium digital format (using your Adobe InDesign Files.) The premium edition is published on your branded domain you’ll review and advise any changes before you send the issue URL to your readers.

Plus we will talk about the new revenue and audience growth capabilities in our first call! You’ll never look at digital editions as a cost again. The premium VERTIQUL revenue platform grows the entire brand.