Just Hours Away

We are just a few hours away from our free webinar, Creating Commerce with Digital Catalogs. Don’t miss this opportunity to sign up and learn how digital catalogs contribute to conversions in the B2B and B2C marketplace. In this webinar, Caroline Ashmore of GRESSCO and Meg Duskin of ASHA will describe some of the reasons why their companies decided to produce digital catalogs, what ways they distribute and market the material, and lessons they’ve learned along the way. This is a can’t-miss opportunity for you to learn from others’ experiences.

Webinar: Digital Catalogs and Commerce

On May 26, 2011 at 2:00 pm, you are invited to our free webinar, presenting how and why digital catalogs are instrumental to today’s marketplace.

E-Commerce is a growing industry, and businesses are finding their buyers are turning to computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones for information on products. Join us to learn how two major companies leverage this shifting trend with digital catalogs and use it to open doors to new commerce opportunities.

Speakers:
Caroline Ashmore, Marketing Director for GRESSCO
Meg Duskin, Manager of eCommerce and Database Marketing at ASHA

Register here!

A Bit About our Speakers

Are you a catalog publisher? Or would you qualify yourself as a business owner (or staff member) who creates a catalog?

In both cases, you would benefit from hearing the stories of two professionals making digital catalogs work for them and their businesses. On May 26, at 2:00 pm EST, you have the opportunity to hear the following speakers talk about creating commerce with digital catalogs:

Caroline Ashmore

Caroline Ashmore is the Marketing Director for GRESSCO, a privately held manufacturing, marketing and distribution firm that provides furniture and supplies to public libraries as well as commercial and educational markets. At GRESSCO Caroline is accountable for all sales and company marketing. This includes direct ad business to business clients. Over the past five years, Caroline is responsible for more than 20% overall company sales growth. She produced and distributed all marketing materials, managed company sales channels, catalog production, and website marketing.

Meg Duskin

Meg Duskin has more than 20 years of experience in nonprofit marketing. In her current position as Manager of eCommerce and Database Marketing for the Amercian Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), she is responsible for managing, merchandising, data-mining and leveraging marketing opportunities within the online store and across other sales channels as well as strengthening the brand image of the products. ASHA is the professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more than 145,000 members and affiliates who are audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists.

To learn how they use digital catalogs in their business plan, tune in to the webinar, "Creating Commerce with Digital Catalogs" live Thursday, May 26, at 2:00pm EST.

Digital Catalog Webinar: Space is Limited

Space is limited: reserve your place now.

On May 26th, at 2:00pm EST, Nxtbook Media is proud to bring to you a webinar featuring both B2B and B2C catalog publishing. Join us as two publishers give an insider’s view on the process of creating a digital catalog. Among other topics, they’ll discuss their strategies and plans in creating a digital catalog, what features are important to their buyers, and how they use their catalogs in the buying process.

Join us as Caroline Ashmore, the Marketing Director for GRESSCO, and Meg Duskin, the Manager for ASHA e-Commerce and Database Marketing, give tips on how to use your digital catalog to extend your reach and return on investment.

Click here to register.

Beyond the PDF – Digital Editions That Deliver

Next week, Nxtbook Media is sponsoring a webinar with Folio:which focuses on creating quality digital editions that meet the rising expectations of readers. Jen Smith, the Creative Director for Network Media Partners, will be speaking, as will Marcus Grimm, Marketing Director of Nxtbook Media. (View the digital edition, Matrix, which Network Media Partners helped launch.)

On April 28, at 2:00 EST, tune in to "Beyond the PDF – Digital Editions That Deliver." As noted on the registration page, this webinar questions:

"But is flipping your pages on their side and boosting your font size enough? Join us to learn:
- The resource implications required to create a new magazine
- How publishers continue to adapt to an ever-changing landscape of screen formats."

To learn more, and to sign up for the event, click here to go to the registration page. Registrants will also receive archived presentation slides after the event.

Leveraging the Mobile Environment

In one week, join the Nxtbook team as we detail how publishers can leverage their digital publications in the mobile environment in this informative webinar:

Are you ready to deliver your digital publication to your mobile audience?  If the answer is “YES”, like it is for many of our clients, we have the tools to get the job done!  During this webinar, we’ll explain our mobile product offerings and be ready to take all of your questions about:

     

-Developing an app with YOUR branding for Apple’s iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch devices 


     -Getting on a multitude of devices like tablets, smartphones, e-Readers and more
     

-Looking ahead into what’s coming down the mobile highway 



What’s more, we’ll reveal how our current clients are being successful with their mobile editions.  You won’t want to miss this!

The webinar is taking place Wednesday, March 16, at 2:00-3:00 EDT. To register, click here.

Designing for Digital Webinar (Exclusive)

Part of Nxtbook Media’s 80 touch points with our publishers includes specialized webinars formed with our clients in mind. Next week, Nxtbook’s creative team is presenting "Designing for Digital," which will focus on the process of optimizing publications for the iPad and other tablets.

For Nxtbook Media clients who are looking to take their publication to the next level, especially with regards to tablet audiences, this is a must-see. To steal from the invite, "You’ll learn what media is RICH for readers but easy on the wallet!" You’ll also get practical steps to repurpose your content, see how to use style guides for quick optimization, and take a look at some examples of other clients who have excelled in this field.

Don’t miss it: click here to sign up. Join us on December 15, 2:00 pm EST.

Webinar Q&A

The following was written by Marketing Director Marcus Grimm regarding yesterday’s webinar, The State of the Digital Magazine Industry. Due to technical difficulties, it merely appears that Joy was the author.

Thanks to the kind folks at FOLIO, we had a great webinar yesterday. In that webinar, we took a look at our Satisfaction Survey Results, where we asked publishers how satisfied they were with the performance of their digital magazine.

Time didn’t permit me to answer all of the questions, so I’m taking the liberty of addressing them here:

1. I met with a vendor that offers and iPad version that allows the publisher to update images in photo galleries, swap out video clips and even modify text on their own, without having to ask the vendor. This is a very appealing feature because having to contact the vendor every time we want to update content would take longer and cost more money. How common is it? What are your thoughts about giving publishers this type of personal control over digital content?

It’s easy to see why this would be an appealing feature, and many digital magazine solutions can handle this in several different ways. In most cases, however, it’s a feed-driven system, populating new content via RSS feeds or something similar. Despite teh fact that such technology has been around for years, we don’t see it used often in the digital magazine space. I speculate it’s because most publishers – and readers – like the permanence of their magazine collection of content. More and more, magazines are put together with specific purposes, whereas websites are put together with an emphasis on what is new.

2. Can you show some screen captures of your iPad app?

To see Nxtbook apps in action, you can view this YouTube link or download Uptime Magazine or Teradata Magazine directly from iTunes.

3. Are publishers developing apps in-house or via a vendor?

Though we’ve seen publishers doing both, in most cases the math won’t justify you doing it in-house. Keep in mind, a good digital magazine will be read by 15% of your audience, and an app will be read by a small fraction of the 15%. Most publishers conclude it’s not a good use of resources to do their digital magazine in-house, so why would you undertake an app in-house?

4. Do interactive magazines tend to have as high a "page count" as digital magazines that replicate print?

In general, how much more time per page does it take to create an interactive "page" compared to a print page? How much additional staff does it require?

Currently, it seems as if most interactive magazines have a higher page count, because publishers take the print version and give it a new layout with larger fonts. However, I suspect that page counts will fall as we begin to more thoroughly optimize for the online reader. In terms of time, our experience is that laying out and creating and optimized version of your magazine – using the print layout as a guide – takes about 50% of the time as doing the print. If you don’t have the resources on hand to do that, Nxtbook now offers this service. Ask your Account Manager for details.

5. Where do designers learn to create digital optimized magazines? This is like the Wild West, and things are changing quickly. For the smaller publishing company, where and how do they A) train current staff? B) find qualified staff?

You’re right. Things are changing quickly. However, we’ve made a digital design guide, which is a good place to start. (Ask your Account Manager for details!) In addition, our creative team is available to evaluate or tweak work your team has done, or even create a new style guide for you. As far as where you find qualified staff, in a word: you can’t. You are very unlikely to find someone with these skills. Instead, hire for flexibility and versatility because the market realities are changing every day. The design team at Nxtbook is a perfect example. These are all guys (and girls) who had only done print work until a few years ago. Now we’re optimizing content for new devices everyday.

6. Could you give a quick/brief overview of the main reasons to opt for a digital edition of your magazine rather than a website?

A magazine is a collection of content assembled together in an order and manner in which an editor intended. Your website is arranged in the way that search engines want. Consequently, websites generate more visitors, but without the systematic aggregation and flow, they lack the deep engagement times found in digital magazines. Finally, engaged readers click-through at a much higher rate.

7. Do you see a digital newsstand in the future that sells both digital and print?

Why this hasn’t been done, yet, is a mystery to me. Nxtbook partners with eMagazines.com to sell digital subscriptions, but eMagazines is owned by the same bright fella who runs ValueMags for print pubs. I don’t know why they don’t combine them into one, and told him as much two years ago, but it’s his company, so he can do whatever he wants. In all seriousness, I like the idea of selling content, first, and then allowing the reader to choose the format, rather than the other way around.

8. Is ad revenue potential on digital editions mainly based on volume/circulation?

It’s certainly partially based on it, as you need some readers to generate volume. However, you’d be wrong to sell it based on volume alone. If you read#6, click-throughs will be higher and the audience will be more highly engaged, which means you don’t want to fall into the trap of selling it like a banner ad.

9. What are the metrics you would use to measure digital edition audience engagement?

Time spent per visitor is a huge one, as most digital magazines have 4-6 times the minutes per visitor as a website. Click-through rate is another one. Engaged readers tend to interact with your product more, and one way they do this is by clicking on ads. A final interesting – but less monetizable – form of engagement is how interested the audience is with sharing your content via social media.

Finally, there were a handful of questions asking about paid subscriptions versus unpaid supbscriptions, and if we split the data that way. We did not, though we split it BtoB and BtoC. Historically speaking, most (but not all) of BtoB titles tend to be free and BtoC sell subs online (or would really like to), so viewing the data that way can be helpful.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be finishing up the analysis and putting into a white-paper. Keep your eyes on this blog to know when!

Creating Commerce with Digital Catalogs

In one week, Nxtbook Media is sponsoring a webinar with Internet Retailer entitled Creating Commerce with Digital Catalogs. Donna Lowe from Henry Schein, Inc. and Alexis Geslani of TechSoup Global will be giving their tips and ideas for using digital catalogs to increase reach and revenue.

CLICK HERE to register for the event, which is taking place Thursday, October 28, at 2:00 pm ET. During this webinar, you’ll learn:

1. Why going digital works: Discover why Henry Schein, Inc. and TechSoup, Global decided to go digital, and how their digital catalogs work with – and surpass – other media.
2. How to make buzzwords calls to action: Get a sneak peak into how these companies use the popular tools of today, such as social media and mobile platforms, to increase circulation and commerce capabilities.
3. How to create super-catalogs: Want to seamlessly integrate print with exciting rich media? You can do it using audio, video, shopping carts and animation to maximize returns.

 

 

 

 

Exclusive Webinar Invitation, Take 2

Wow – response to our exclusive webinar invitation last week was impressive as much for the quality of the respondents as the quantity. Honestly, we could’ve used the names to field an All-Star Digital Publishing Team, so thank you to those who expressed interest.

Because it’s summer vacation season, we’re going to post the invitation one last time. Next week, we’ll let you know if you’ve been chosen to attend this very limited-attendance event. If you’ve already responded, no need to do so again:

 

How would you like to get a glimpse into the future of digital publishing? Better yet, how would you like to be a part of it?

On Thursday, September 9th, Nxtbook Media will be holding an exclusive webinar at 2pm EST, entitled Nxt Mags – Future Visions of the Digital Edition.

What will it feature?
Not 1, not 2 but 3 different concepts of future versions of the digital magazine.
We’ll introduce you to each one, discuss the intended use and audiences for each and invite you to give your input on these never-before-seen concepts.

Why is this event different?
This isn’t just a webinar, but also an opportunity for you to help the shape our future offerings. All attendees must submit to an interview in the days following the webinar, where we’ll elicit detailed feedback on what you liked and what you didn’t like and which visions are the brightest in your opinion. If you’re not looking to engage with us about the products, this probably isn’t an event for you.

Sounds like a lot of interviews…
Not really. The number of people attending will be small – quite small – and will be hand chosen by us. I won’t tell you how small, because if I did, you might not think you’d get in, but you shouldn’t think that way! We’re looking for a good cross section of long-time customers, short-time customers and even a few non-customers, but here’s the thing: it won’t be a big list. The quality of the feedback we’ll be getting is infinitely more important than the quantity.

Would you like to attend?
Great, keep in mind:
1. You must be available September 9 at 2pm EST.
2. You must agree to a 10-15 minute interview in the days following the webinar.
3. You must write mgrimm [AT] nxtbookmedia.com and answer the following question: Why I want to attend Nxt Mags – Future Visions of the Digital Edition.

Questions? Feel free to call me direct at 717-735-9756. We hope to see you there!

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