Digital Magazine Case Study: Bentley Systems

Helping to improve the world’s infrastructure Bentley Systems (www.bentley.com) provides software for the lifecycle of the world’s infrastructure. The company’s comprehensive portfolio for the building, plant, civil, and geospatial verticals spans architecture, engineering, construction (AEC), and operations. With revenues now surpassing $400 million annually, and more than 2,000 colleagues around the world, Bentley is the leading provider of AEC software to the Engineering News-Record Top 500 Design Firms and major owner-operators and was named the world’s No. 2 provider of GIS/geospatial software solutions in a recent Daratech research study.

BE Magazine is a quarterly corporate magazine produced by Bentley Systems. It is a horizontal publication that targets small to large architectural, engineering, and construction firms and owner/operators in four main sectors: building, civil, geospatial, and plant. The theme of the publication is “improving the world’s infrastructure” with a sub-theme of “collaborating across the distributed enterprise”. BE Magazine is available to subscribers only in a digital format and is sent via HTML email to 200,000+ of their customers and prospects. They typically print 20,000 copies for distribution at trade shows, seminars, and Bentley-sponsored events. Carol Minton is the Editor-in-Chief of BE Magazine. It has been her vision to develop a completely digital corporate magazine to serve the Bentley Systems community.

BE Magazine’s goal is to engage an extremely large number of BE users in a format that combines text, images, HTML, animation, audio, and video in a single media-rich environment while featuring a value-add for advertisers by providing individual ad-specific metrics that are superior to general circulation numbers, bingo card responses, and pass-along readership estimates.

Carol Minton has been working to build the BE (Bentley Empowered) brand by establishing a positive connection with Bentley users, resulting in stronger relationships with users and prospective users. To help her reach her goals, she chose Nxtbook because of its technological flexibility. Their browser-based delivery mechanism does not require a download; interactive links take readers directly to more pertinent content; and the capability to print part or all of each publication is very convenient for readers. Nxtbook provides valuable connect time data and statistics, including page views, time spent on page, hits, click-throughs, etc., which BE then forwards to advertisers.

Results

• Open rates of the magazine’s HTML email blasts usually average close to 50 percent, which is extremely high for email distribution.

• Digital “shelf life” has translated into higher readership numbers over time as past issues are electronically archived on BE.org.

• No resources on Bentley systems are required to archive BE Magazines since they reside on Nxtbook servers. They have every issue live in the archives.

Lessons Learned

• The challenge is to find the right balance between providing the interactivity to attract readers to BE and keeping them as long as possible, while also providing interactive content and links that direct them elsewhere. They don’t want readers to leave Nxtbook too soon, risking that they will not return. Carol makes a special effort to include video, sidebars with links, etc., whenever possible.

• They keep all editorial content on the short side so that BE is a relatively quick read that stimulates readers to explore topics further.

• Digital editions offer a timeliness advantage that allows the editorial team to update materials right up to — and even after — the mass email blast has been released to the users.

Gilbane Group Conclusions

• It is the interactivity and linking that helps generate the excellent open rates and strong average session data. The willingness to allow readers to venture beyond the primary publication to further explore their interests makes it more likely that the reader will return to the primary publication’s Web site regularly.

• It is important that the Digital Magazine be well integrated into the rest of the digital strategy. In this case, they do newsletters and printed editions for trade shows, and are planning to add community features such as wikis, blogs, and forums.

• BE is an excellent model for others wishing to develop online corporate publications.

NOTE: Excerpt from the 2008 Gilbane Report