But Seriously…

Last week, one of our competitors sent an e-mail to a lot of you. (This is bound to happen when you’re not afraid to promote your customers’ content.) The e-mail said (in part):

So Long Nxtbook. I’m Getting Serious With (insert classy competitor name here)

Sometimes you just grow out of a relationship because you may not be getting everything you need. We understand.

The Benefits of (working with said competitor) are endless:

Double audience readership (Compared to what??? Half audience readership???)
Track advertising and reader behavior (How very 2003)
Integrate keywords for better Google search (Cute… we had this four years ago. )
Enrich and keep sticky with multimedia content (Is it me, or does this just sound gross?)
Reduce costs of print and mailing by up to 95% (Insert baldness cure claims here)

First up, whoever is in charge of marketing for these guys should be fired. Or worse. Consider the strategy:

1. Even though the ocean of digital edition prospects is a million miles deep and a million miles wide, let’s poach them from a competitor’s website.
2. After we poach them, let’s make it obvious that we poached them in our e-mail. They’ll think we’re cool! (Judging by what we heard, most of them thought you were creepy.)
3. In the e-mail, let’s mention a bunch of features that they have and pepper it with unprovable statistics.

Are you kidding me? The only thing that was missing was a free order of steak knives if you act now.

When shared with a top ranking industry insider, he wrote, "No classiness in this type of advertising. On the other hand, you guys exemplify class… so it positions you well in an odd way." So there’s that.

All of that being said, aside from the intrusion to our customers, the only thing that stung was the idea that you and we aren’t serious about this industry.

We’ve written of the many publishers who carefully have mapped out a strategy to grow international readership through their digital magazines. We’ve promoted webinars for those publishers who’ve found six figure revenue streams. And we’ve helped others launch their first forays into the mobile space with Nxtbook Liberty. You’ve gotten serious results, and we’ve provided serious support.

Along the way, we’ve built an entire layer within our organization of Account Managers, whose only mission is to help you be more successful. We added Flash animators and video experts – specialists who exist for the sole purpose of pushing the technology as far as it will go. And along the way, we’ve added a small army of developers, whose job it is to push the boundaries of the product even further. In fact, as a full-service provider, our entire survival is based on delivering serious results.

At the end of the day, we share many traits with our customers. Our mutual dedication to pushing the digital edition envelope further is just one of them.