Let us transform your organization into a digital publishing powerhouse – as we have for dozens of your colleagues and competitors already. Join us for the next Digital Publishing & Marketing Intensive!

If you have only a nominal understanding of digital publishing, or none at all, you must attend the Digital Publishing & Marketing Intensive!

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How every piece of content you’re already producing can be repurposed and cast into different roles

As Don likes to say, your magazine is not a website. And your website is not your magazine.

In fact, your subscription website isn’t even a website. It’s actually three websites: a portal, a magazine and a store. And the Mequoda Method, which is utilized by successful niche publishers both large and small, calls for deploying a single piece of copy across all three to maximize your unique visitors, subscribers and buyers.

Some of you may be familiar with our fun, fictitious publishing company that we use for instructional purposes, Green Gardens Network. Let’s take a look at how that single piece of content pops up behind the paywall in the May-June issue of Hidden Gardens magazine, appears as a chapter in a handbook in the Green Gardens Shoppe, and is eventually extracted into a blog post at the portal, Gardens Daily, to promote the magazine.

Subscription website marketing: Less work than you think

When we teach our quarterly Digital Publishing & Marketing Intensive, our version of subscription website marketing includes a daily blog and free reports to promote your products, and having more than just a magazine as products. Our participants start to look worried: Where will they find the resources to produce all these things?

Relax. It’s a lot easier than it sounds. The key is understanding how every piece of content you’re already producing can be repurposed and cast into different roles. And no, that’s not cheating. It’s making sure that every member of your audience can access your content in the way that works best for them. And that’s smart marketing.

At Mequoda, we call that single piece of content a minimum information unit, or MIU. The name is self-explanatory: It’s the smallest piece of content that tells a complete story.

For Green Gardens Network, the MIU is a book chapter. For today’s purposes, it’s a chapter on azalea care from The Azalea Handbook, a $47 product that founder and publisher Rose Harper has written.

And truth be told, Rose wrote the book on azaleas by compiling the articles she’d written on them over the years for Hidden Gardens. So you can start to see how this works: Articles are book chapters, or book chapters are excerpted as articles. Either way works for our purposes of publishing profitable subscription websites!

Green Gardens Network, in fact, currently has 2,600 book chapters compiled into 52 handbooks, each with 50 chapters. Those chapters are turned into magazine articles at a rate of eight per issue.

At the same time, Green Gardens Network also takes three or four chapters from every handbook and creates video from them, resulting in 26 DVDs every year. And finally, the online editor excerpts those magazine articles into blog posts to promote the magazine, publishing six of them every week.

Of course, those chapters – or articles, if you want to think of it that way – are constantly being updated and rewritten by Rose’s editorial staff, so it’s genuinely fresh content all around. Green Gardens regularly republishes the books, DVDs, articles and blog posts with that updated content.

Stocking up on content for subscription websites

So let’s look at the different websites I talked about up front.

Subscription websites: Magazine

Green Gardens has a subscription website for Hidden Gardens, where the latest article on azalea care, excerpted from The Azalea Handbook, resides.

Subscription websites: Portal

Being good Mequoda Method followers, Green Gardens has its online editor review this article in their blog at the Green Gardens portal, Gardens Daily, and include links to subscribe to Hidden Gardens (Gain instant access to the complete article!).

(Special note: This blog post also doubles as an email newsletter to subscribers. Providing real content in your free newsletter is Rule #1 for subscription website marketing!)

Subscription websites: Store

But back to the subscription websites: Remember that because this piece of content was originally a book chapter, it’s not only available on the Hidden Gardens website as an article in the March-April issue, it’s also hanging out over at the Green Gardens Shoppe as a chapter in The Azalea Handbook. And eventually it will be packaged with several other chapters into an azalea care DVD, also available at the store. Finally, Green Gardens fans can buy a single issue of Hidden Gardens at the store, if that’s what they prefer.

Finally, Green Gardens fans can buy a single issue of Hidden Gardens at the store, if that’s what they prefer.

What’s not to like? Green Gardens Network is maximizing its resources (Rose isn’t made of money, after all) and its content inventory. At the same time, the company is providing its audience with multiple ways to access its rich content. We like to think that any niche publisher can succeed using the Mequoda Method. If you’re one of them, let us know!

Tiered rate cards can be used for calculating hosting charges, interest rates, credit card fees, the list goes on.

Email pricing for publishers, the rate they’re charged to send emails, looks a bit like how retailers are charged to process credit card payments.

In retail, two popular forms of payment processing rates are the most prevalent today: Interchange Plus and Tiered Pricing.

Retailers like Interchange Plus the best because it’s transparent, with the retailer being charged a percentage per transaction. The tiered pricing model is less transparent, but simplifies pricing by providing bucket rates. Tiered pricing also often includes lots of extra fees that aren’t accounted for in the buckets.

The cost of email marketing typically works on a similar tiered bucketed pricing model, and like retail tiered pricing models, often ends up in hidden fees you weren’t expecting.

The same set of rates can be used to calculate two very different invoices

There are two ways a tiered rate card can be used to compute a bill when it comes to email: Best Tier and True Tier.

Here is a hypothetical, ballpark figure of what a large mailer would expect the cost of email marketing to run them from a tier of one email service provider.

• 0-5 million at $1.5 per M
• 5-10 million at $1.00 per M
• 10 million+ at .75 per M

Of course, these rates may be all-inclusive with some providers and other providers may charge for services on on an a la carte basis, like customer service support for email delivery management.

Best Tier Method: Some email service providers use a tiered rate card to find the highest or lowest  rate that a client qualifies for  in any given month, and then uses that rate multiplied by their entire email volume to calculate the cost of emails sent.

• Best Tier pricing: Sending 12 million emails  using a fixed rate is:
  • 12,000,000 / 1,000 X $.75 = $9,000
  • Total Cost: $9,000

True Tier Method: Other email service providers take the more complicated route of charging for the emails sent at each tier of the rate card.

• True Tier pricing: Sending 12 million emails at different tiers is:
  • 5,000,000,000 / 1,000 X $1.50 = $7,500 (bottom tier)
  • 5,000,000,000 / 1,000 X $1.00 = $5,000 (middle tier)
  • 2,000,000,000 / 1,000 X $.75 = $1,500 (top tier)
  • Total Cost: $14,000

As you can see, even if the two email service providers are showing the same tier rate, the bill the client would receive at the end of their first month would be very different.

Read the fine print, or pay the hidden costs of email marketing

We recently experienced a customer story in which the publisher had interpreted their deal to be the simple Best (fixed) Tier where they got the best rate for all email sent during a given 30-day period.

After switching to the new email service provider, and after setting up their system and warming up their IP addresses, they got a monthly bill that was much higher than they had budgeted for or anticipated.

When they disputed the bill based on their understanding of the contract, they were instructed to take the finer read of the actual contract fine print, so to speak.

The contract they had signed was not for a Best Tier, and did indeed indicate that they would be charged for emails sent at each of the tiers, True Tier. The contract they signed is a two-year arrangement that will be difficult to terminate and will place them significantly over budget for the entire two-year period.

Thankfully, the email marketing manager that did the negotiating has solace in the fact that both the company’s Chief Financial Officer and Chief Marketing Officer also read the contract and misinterpreted the way charges would be calculated.

Perhaps the saddest part of the story is that in 20/20 hindsight, they would have gone with a different email service provider then the one they selected, had they understood how the bill was going to be calculated.

In real life, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a publisher misinterpret a tiered rate card. There is no right or wrong way to interpret the rates when calculating a bill and one must look at the actual contract language to see how the rates are going to be implemented.

This goes side-by-side with not understanding that the contract often calls for customer service to be paid for by the hour, email delivery management services to be paid for by the hour, email delivery audits to be paid for by the hour, and all system development to be paid for by the hour. Often the client misunderstand the scope of services being provided by an email service provider to be all in conclusive when they seldom they are.

While some might not think that $.50 or a dollar per thousand makes a big difference, given that most publishers earn $10, $20 or even $50 per thousand emails sent from a combination of commerce and sponsorship revenue, that doesn’t change the fact that an extra $5000 per month over a two-year period is $120,000 in expenses than were anticipated.

As the first wave of digital magazine apps has passed, we’ve discovered one thing: People hate apps with nothing in them.

And yet, the vast majority of digital magazine apps available today are nothing more than a retail outlet for single copies and subscriptions!

They are labeled as free, but have nothing to offer unless a purchase is made within the app. This practice is the reason why so many magazine apps have low ratings, as can be witnessed by reading the reviews.

While I’ve been blogging recently about prices, and opining on the dire need to raise them, at the same time, magazine readers are like many other digital consumers in expecting something free on their tablets. And disappointing them right out of the gate when they first download your app is not exactly a marketing Best Practice.

In case you hadn’t noticed, your competition and peers are starting to solve this problem. So it behooves publishers to rethink their app strategy pronto, if not sooner! But fear not, we have some solutions to the app customer service nightmare, courtesy of some very savvy publishers.

What kind of apps do people want, #1: The magalog

Condé Nast, as we’ve mentioned before, is on the leading edge in digital magazine publishing. So it’s no surprise that they’ve developed an app for SELF (Motto: Tap into your best self!) that combines free content – enhanced with videos and extra “tapable” content, with sell copy urging you to subscribe now.

If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it’s a lot like the magalog of old – a carefully crafted blend of free content and marketing messages. SELF does it with a back issue from 2011. On a page titled Let’s Get Physical, featuring two exercises that are illustrated with video, SELF proclaims, “Buy it now! Get the new issue of SELF and let us be your personal trainer!”

There are variations of this message on every page, from beauty to fashion to healthy eating. One quibble: You can’t get to the “Subscribe” page by tapping on these messages. You have to know enough about apps to tap on the Home icon. At least one of them includes instructions, at least; “Go to the home screen of this app to buy the newest issue! You’ll find tons of easy ways to eat better today.”

All in all, a clever approach that combines the best of free content with marketing. Watching someone actually do an exercise is roughly 2,376 times more useful than looking at a static image, and that tempted even an old marketing hand like me to hurry up and subscribe.

What kind of apps do people want, #2: The free issue

Interestingly, the publisher who perfected the magalog in the olden days, Consumer Reports, doesn’t do an app magalog. Instead, it delivers free issues. This is the most common style of content-rich app, and you can choose to offer either a free back issue, or a special issue you’ve put together for this purpose.

Consumer Reports does the latter, although I suspect it’s actually an existing back issue. Why do I only “suspect?” Because there isn’t a single date in this free issue, not even in the car reviews. The reader has no idea which model year is being reviewed, and that goes for the tablet reviews, the washer and dryer reviews, and everything else in the free issue.

As a marketer, I love it. You get the full flavor of Consumer Reports’ rich content, yet nothing is really being given away – who would choose a car based on data that could be years old, and then decide they already got what they wanted and exit the app without subscribing?

What’s more, at the end of every article is a full-page ad featuring an image of an iPad with a cover related to the content of that article – the Best Tablets, Cameras, TV, Phones, E-readers and More issue after the tablet review, the annual auto issue after the car review, and so on. The text is the same on every ad: Enjoying your free preview issue? Subscribe today and save up to 59% off the single-issue price.

What kind of apps do people want, #3: Updated free content

Instead of just offering a free issue, you can really step up your game like New York magazine. This is the most entertaining, awesome digital magazine app out there. I kid you not.

New York has broken new ground. With this free app, you get daily content including news, features and columns. Pages and pages of free, new content. You could easily spend an hour or more reading it.

Then, when you’re done, and you’re well and thoroughly dazzled, you simply tap on the magazine link at the bottom left, and you get the table of contents and the opportunity to buy.

If you’re already a subscriber, you still enjoy the free content, and when you’re ready to read your issue, it’s only a seamless swipe away. Finally, for the pièce de résistance, there’s a link on the “Latest News” page – the home page for the free content – to the website.

New York’s free news content and paid magazine content are both easily accessible at all times with their unique “window shade” feature – just pull the handle with a finger. And then there’s the thumbnail menu of the magazine’s pages at the bottom when you’re in that part of the app. There are just so many ways to love this app, I can’t list them all.

Everything New York magazine does is readily available, free or for a price, seamlessly connected, and easy to navigate. Clearly you need a fairly large staff of journalists to make this kind of daily content happen for free, but the app, launched on March 28 to mark the magazine’s 45^th anniversary, is a home run. Of course it’s far too early to tell how it will impact circulation and website visitors, but we’ll be checking back in a few months to report on that.

Meanwhile, please share your favorite digital magazine apps, and let us know if there’s a model we haven’t mentioned.

To put this post together, we banged together the heads of everyone on the Mequoda team to consolidate some of the mishaps that have occurred with our clients. We’re calling these editors Mequoda editors because they’re running a Mequoda system, but the principles apply to any editor in the magazine world.

There have been some truly talented print editors that were either let go, or who left by themselves because they couldn’t weather the print-to-digital transitions. Ones that refused to SEO their content and wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars in content that had to be re-optimized later.

Any editor who wants to survive in the magazine publishing industry today needs to be able to write great content and optimize that content so that it’s an evergreen source of traffic for years to come. And any editor who wants to become invaluable to their publication embraces it with open arms and takes the initiative to learn from the mistakes of past editors. Like the ones below:

1. Only covering news stories. If all of your posts are focused on the latest trends and hot happenings, you may get traffic but it is fleeting and unsustainable. Dedicate a certain percent of your editorial resources to producing evergreen content.

2. Ignoring your blockbuster posts. These are your perennial performers and need to be cultivated and carefully nurtured on a regular basis. If Google finds a broken link or other fatal error, then the damage may be irreparable. Keep these posts current, clean and evergreen. Re-promote them on social media every once in a while to keep up appearances.

3. Forgetting to make lemonade when you have lemons. If you have a single post that accounts for nearly 40% of all organic search arrivals, take advantage of this good fortune rather than ignore it. Come up with ways to increase conversions through that page. Even if the subject matter is not in your preferred wheelhouse, or you don’t have a sponsor that aligns with this topic. Find a new sponsor.

4. Skipping editorial meetings. The Mequoda strategy can only succeed if everyone is working towards the same basic goals. Not showing up to a meeting is a pretty strong indicator that certain members of the team have their own agenda.

5. Coming up with excuses not to SEO. If you’re continually making excuses not to optimize content, you’re wasting money. Some editors claim SEO will sacrifice editorial quality or integrity, but remember that you have complete control over how you optimize a blog post, so if it looks “spammy,” then whose fault is it?

6. Missing the big picture. In a Mequoda system, everything is connected. We create blog posts that align with categories, that align with white papers, that upsell to paid products, that may then upsell to higher priced products. We work really hard on aligning the bottom of the pyramid, the blog posts, with the top of the pyramid. Focus only on the blog, and you’re forgetting where your salary comes from.

7. Forgetting the upsell. On that same note, know that that SEO is used to drive traffic to your articles, which makes every article you write the beginning of a lead flow. You don’t have to turn every article into an advertorial; that’s why all Mequoda operators are equipped with a simple code to add a text ad into the middle of each post. Don’t forget those simple but often forgotten text ads! Going back and adding them back in is a giant waste of resources.

8. Doing without testing. Editors who make decisions without testing often fail the hardest. What we think doesn’t work (long copy, pop-ups, etc.) often performs best when we A/B test. Don’t make decisions based on opinions rather than testing, because when someone finally has the smarts to test, your intuition will be shocked and so will the person writing your check.

9. Doing what you’re told. This is the time of innovation, and the most valuable editors keep up to date on current trends come to their managers with new ideas for creating better content and using it to convert more visitors into subscribers in line with your brand guidelines. Some organizations make it hard for one person to make a difference, but this is a time when innovation and a fresh perspective should be welcome.

10. Getting lazy. Perhaps you did all of these things correctly, you saw the return, you got excited, you got credit, and you took a break. This is a slump any successful editor can get into, because a blockbuster combo of valuable content and optimized copy can get exhausting! Keep up the good work and you’ll see traffic for your site double and triple over the next year. Talk about landing job security.

There are also a few things our Gold Members, maybe your bosses, sometimes forget about, that editors should keep on top of because they’re fundamentally your duty, even if nobody tells you so:

• Making sure every category gets a free report, and making sure every article in that category promotes it. The more aligned a report is with the content, the higher your conversion rates will be. If you have a goal of building your email list (as all Mequoda System editors do), this is ultimately the responsibility of the editor, although the publisher often forgets to assign it.

• Not setting up the conversion architecture for those free reports. You’re probably not a web designer, but every free report should get its own Rapid Conversion Landing Page, OFIE, OFIN, Text Ad and Floater (more about those). You’ll be responsible for writing the copy for the landing page and possibly writing the ads. So every time you create a new free report, provide your web person with the copy they need to update the ads. Tell them which category to implement them in, too!

• Creating an SEO campaign around each new free report. Each one should have a press release written and distributed for it. We also recommend scheduling tweets at least once a week promoting that report for the next month or two. Also, write a post on the blog that promotes your new release. Basically, create as many inbound links to this page as possible.

If you want to become a model editor at your publishing company, join us at one of our upcoming Digital Publishing and Marketing Intensives!

Let us transform your organization into a digital publishing powerhouse – as we have for dozens of your colleagues and competitors already. Join us for th next Digital Publishing & Marketing Intensive!

If you have only a nominal understanding of digital publishing, or none at all, you must attend the Digital Publishing & Marketing Intensive!

—–

Landing page optimization begins with your headline and ends with the thank-you page of your order flow

When a visitor arrives at your website landing page, you have about five seconds to make a good impression and capture her attention. If you don’t succeed immediately, she’s likely to click away and you’re apt to lose her forever.

Your landing page needs to be a fast, effective messenger.

With a quick glance, visitors to your site should know exactly what your landing page is about and how it benefits them. Determine what image and message you want the customer to “get” in those first few seconds, and design your landing page toward that objective. Anything that distracts from the central message or image you wish to project should be eliminated.

Landing Page Test: Headlines

Write several forceful headlines that capture the interest of your customer and test them all against each other with no other variables.

Far too many landing pages fail almost immediately by offering up lackluster headlines and subheads. A good landing page delivers a compelling headline for a single product or service.

Think benefits and features when writing headlines. The visitor who is reading your landing page wants nothing more than the answer to this one question:

“What’s in this for me?”

Answer that question well and you’ll make a sale.

All the other messages about your corporate image, company background, brand, etc., are of little importance to your prospective customer at this stage. Stay focused on the site visitor’s interests. On your landing page, that process begins with a compelling headline.

A great headline is really an advertisement for an advertisement. It grabs the reader’s attention with such force that she can’t resist reading the next sentence.

Landing Page Test: Your Story

Buying decisions are largely emotional. Consumers buy what they want, not necessarily what they need. Compelling benefits (read reasons or rationalizations) provide the congruency required to justify a subconscious purchase decision. An engaging, believable story enhances this process.

And great products seldom stand on their own or sell themselves without someone creating a story. A great landing page is a sales letter that begins with a story that heightens desire for the product and prompts a purchase decision.

Think of one person and write (speak) directly to him personally.

For instance, suppose you write a landing page for people who work in the food service industry.

Do you think people who work in the food service industry think of themselves as “food service workers?” They do not. So, which lead for a specialty coffee ad is more pleasing to the targeted reader and creates better rapport?

“Food service industry workers like those of you who read this newsletter know good coffee.”

or

“If you’re a restaurant owner, executive chef, or specialty food buyer, you know excellent coffee even before you taste it. Its color, freshness and aroma tell you volumes about its quality.”

The first is impersonal, unfocused and lumps a whole group into one general category. The second identifies its target audience, gets rapport, and compliments them.

Note, also, that plain old “you” is a lot more personal and intimate than “those of you.” This is another place to test although the word “you” is widely tested to make a much better impression than “I” or “us.”

Landing Page Test: Webification

By “webification” we mean the most efficient use of all the multi-media and interactive technology available.

Many personal brands use an audio or video clip that speaks directly to their audience. This is one of the more effective ways of making a sale that is personal and requires trust.

If the product you’re selling could benefit from an interview, a demo, or a backstory, consider testing video or audio on the page.

However, technology should be used to enhance the sales message, not to replace it. Don’t let your readers be so dazzled by the bells and whistles that they forget to buy. If you’re using video, it should be focused on the sale, not on comic relief.

Landing Page Test: Email Capture

Once you’ve captured your prospect’s interest, it’s important to keep your name, product, and/or service in front of them. Offering a free newsletter or a free report is a handy, non-invasive way to accomplish that. These items have a high perceived value and are surprisingly cheap to produce and distribute.

Some different methods of capturing an email that you can test include the following:

• Capturing their email before you allow them to see the price of your product

• Testing pop-unders as a mechanism for capturing a prospect’s email address if they’ve decided to abandon your site before buying

• Test the copy surrounding your email capture: Does it instill trust? After all, this might be the first time they’re meeting you.

Auto-responders can be very effective at getting your potential customers eager to buy more of your product or services.

Some publishers have built an entire business model using auto-responders. On one publisher’s website, once the user submits her email address, an auto-responder starts a series of “lessons” from the editors, delivered once a day for five consecutive days.

Landing Page Test: Testimonials

Buyers love having their purchase decisions validated. It comforts and reassures them to know that other customers—just like them—have bought and been very satisfied with your product or service.

The credibility of your product or service is invaluable. The authenticity of your user testimonials must likewise be completely believable. Good, credible testimonials are a vital element of any sales letter.

The most credible testimonial messages feature individuals who share similar demographics to your target prospects or their heroes. Testimonials should be an accurate transcription of your customer’s own words and ideally should include a full identification of the buyer by name, city, state and occupation.

When testing testimonials, try working with how you reveal the person giving the testimonial.

A statement of support for your financial newsletter from Tom S. in North Carolina is obviously less valuable than one from Tom Smith, Certified Financial Planner, from Boone, North Carolina.

In fact, under-identified testimonials can inspire suspicion and work against your sales message, sending your test results through the floor.

Landing Page Test: Order Flow Links

Links and buttons are the vehicles that allow a prospect to navigate your landing page. Your objective should be to make them as easy as possible to understand and use.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to the links to the order flow. In regular text email promotions, some publishers want the whole story told before taking the user to the order page. In many cases, the user doesn’t even know the price of the product or service until taken there.

Guerilla marketers believe that in long copy, if the prospect “gets it” and is ready to order, then she should be taken immediately to the order page.

They argue that when the user is ready to buy, nothing should get in the way.

They believe there should be “Convinced? Want to order right now?” buttons throughout the landing page. Why make the prospect read any more than she needs to before making the decision to buy?

We say it depends. Our testing shows that eight out of 10 times, response rates are neutral or higher when peppering order buttons and links throughout the copy.

What makes the difference? Here’s our best guess: If the product is well-known, easy-to-understand and cheap, the “pepper them everywhere” approach almost always wins.

But we also believe that for each unique combination of product, buyer and the hundreds of different elements on the landing page that may cause them to buy or click away, the only sure way to increase landing page conversion rates is to test the variations and go with the winners.

Landing Page Test: Labeling and Language

Experienced web surfers are familiar with what have become the traditional “road signs” of well-designed web pages. Violating these familiar navigation standards and you go against the norm, taking them out of their “comfort zone” and perhaps detracting from your website’s credibility.

For example:

• Most of us have come to expect hypertext links (not graphic buttons) to move us from one page to another. Links connect to additional information.

• We expect graphic buttons only to initiate processes, such as “Click here to join!” Buttons create action.

• Traditionally, hypertext links are underlined.

These are our expectations after nearly 10 years of online experience with the best designed and most successful websites.

Testing your button copy is one of the most important tests you can run on your website. Some publishers see a drastic increase in conversions just by mixing words around on their buttons.

Landing Page Test: Content Density

Often someone involved with online marketing believes that “long copy doesn’t work on the Internet”—a myth we know to be patently false from extensive testing, but we welcome you to test it!

If a landing page is comfortable and easy to read, your prospects are far more likely to keep reading and respond to your sales message. The more expensive the product, the longer the copy should be. Rarely will someone read the whole page when you’ve packed in 3,000 or more words, but as long as you’ve provided every bit of information they need to make a purchasing decision, you’ve done a good job.

So, if you’re testing long and short copy, just be sure that you’ve given them the answers to everything they could possibly want to know.

Much of this is the responsibility of the copywriter, whose job it is to keep the message flowing in interesting and easily assimilated (bite-sized) chunks.

Test formatting, font size, fonts, and colors. Making your copy easy to read will make it easier for the reader to make a decision. The contrast in font sizes can also direct the attention of your potential customer, while some sizes and fonts get completely glossed over.

Seek out a designer who understands the online medium and won’t impose graphics on your site that overpower the sales message. Remember, it’s not creative unless it sells.

Landing Page Test: Content Freshness

Few things destroy the credibility of a sales letter landing page more quickly and effectively than content that’s out of date. How can you expect the prospect to take your message seriously if you’re not even interested enough in the content to keep it current?

Aim to convey a sense of freshness, excitement, timeliness or discovery.

Some of your potential customers will only visit your site once. If they don’t buy immediately, they may never return.

But if you offer a mouthwatering, gotta-have-it special premium that they will receive immediately upon buying, you can significantly increase your conversion rate.

Something as simple as displaying the current date on the site can help with content freshness. Or create urgency by letting the reader know that the price is a “market test” and may change soon. Alternatively, announce an expiration date for the offer—a deadline by which the user must respond to get the free bonuses.

Landing Page Test: Aesthetics

Beauty is relative, cultural, genetic and ever-changing. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and aesthetic judgments are subjective. So how can you decide on the right design for your landing page?

This testing process can be endless. Buttons are a good start.

The answer is to know your target market and create an appearance that conforms to your visitors’ expectations. We call it the “user’s mental model.”

There are innumerable options here. So many, in fact, that it’s easy to get overwhelmed and lose all direction. Before you settle on a design, take a good look around at other site designs.

As you consider designs, keep in mind your main objectives: a professional look, without clutter, that’s easy to navigate.

Landing Page Test: Order Options

Posting a landing page with a confusing or inadequate order mechanism is like opening a new WalMart, but forgetting to install cash registers. What’s the point?

In direct mail advertising, one of the two most important elements of the package is the order form (the other being the outer envelope). If you get everything else right and blow the order mechanism, your sales letter landing page will almost certainly fail.

Some points to test:

Your customers should be able to fill in the fields of an online screen and check boxes to select their preferences. Simplicity and brevity are priceless. Ask only for the information you need to process the order.

It’s unwise to offer more than three options or three price packages. Having three asserts value to each level so that fewer choose the bottom option.

Include alternate order options like  a toll-free number for phone orders and a printable order form for fax orders.

State your guarantee and return policy. In general, longer guarantees—the longer, the better—will increase sales and diminish the number of returns.

Remind your customers that their credit card information is protected by SSL. You can state this on your order form, and include the logo of your SSL provider.

In traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, there is a theory of management called MBWA. It stands for “management by walking around.” Getting out of the office and onto the work floor. Talking to people. Experiencing the business first hand, much like a customer would.

When’s the last time you tested your own order flow like a customer would?

Some tools that make it easy to test your landing pages include Google Content Optimizer (technical), Unbounce (less technical), and Five Second Test (asks users to judge you in five seconds).

Even more, we’re releasing our Landing Page Testing & Optimization webinar video for FREE that was hosted by Matt Humphrey, Chief Marketing Officer at Fortis Business Media, and Rafael Cardoso, the Senior Online Marketing Manager at Business and Legal Resources. You’ll be really impressed with what they tested and which changes made the biggest difference!

Organize email marketing campaigns by creating an editorial and promotional calendar that keeps editors on track and in line with email revenue goals

It used to be so easy to define an email editorial calendar. There weren’t so many different “types” of email newsletters.

• Email snippet-based newsletter
• Email newsletters with a featured image
• Email newsletters with a featured product hero shot
• Email newsletters with text ads
• Long-form email newsletters
• Short-form email newsletters
• Circulation building promotional emails
• Long-form promotional emails
• Short-form promotional emails
• Text-based sales letter emails
• … the list goes on.

Your website exists primarily to build customer loyalty, to increase your most valuable asset, which is your active email database. For some of our Mequoda System Publishers, email generates 60 to 80 percent of all their revenue.

For reputable copywriters, editors and publishers, email is not just a marketing channel, something that you build and blast.

It’s a tool for building loyalty. It provides frequent, valuable information to users who become enamored with your brand, love your content, and want to buy the other types of information products you sell, or do business with your sponsors.

Using a combination of email newsletters and email promotions will build customer relationships and maximize customer lifetime value. And if you spend the time to write content that people want to read, they’ll be more likely to read, respond to, and even enjoy receiving them.

Determining an editorial strategy

Begin by creating an email editorial calendar that aligns with your products and sponsorships. The simplest plan works on a one-week cycle.

While the daily tip email newsletter might have a Monday, Wednesday, Friday frequency, the email promotion newsletter might have a Tuesday, Thursday frequency.

Additionally, more than half of the Mequoda publishers with whom we are working have a summary, week-in-review edition of their email newsletter that is delivered on Friday or Saturday.

The One-Two Punch

One hugely successful strategy we’ve seen in action comes from an interview we did with Jay Schleifer, former Managing Editor of HR Daily Advisor. He explained  the “1-2 punch,” their unique approach to email promotions.

Schleifer told us right off the bat that they do not cycle regularly through their entire inventory of products. After much trial and error, HRDA settled on this method: “We promote what sells.”

Schleifer does look for opportunities to sell less popular products but gives a 4-6 week headway between using a product that they know sells less.

Schleifer told us, “The way we do it at the Daily Advisor is that we establish on Monday and Wednesday an issue the industry is having. Then based on that issue, we come in the following day, Tuesday and Thursday with a solution to that problem. If your problem is an HR issue, like that people don’t listen at meetings, then your solution is to have a much more motivational meeting. We ask our editors if we have anything that would help this, and if they tell us ‘yes we do,’ then we offer that product as the solution.”

We mocked this type of calendar up for our fictitious Flora Daily case study and extended it through Friday and Saturday, since we know that B2C publications fare well on the weekends, too. You could certainly mix it up by adding a Week in Review to Friday and a Magazine promotion on Sunday. If Flora Daily had nine main topics, we could reach them all in a period of three weeks using this calendar. We could reach them in four by following HR Daily Advisor’s plan of only using Monday-Thursday for the 1-2 punch strategy.

The Full Cycle

Publishers who have a greater number of products can have two, three and four-week cycles. Johns Hopkins Health Alerts has a three-week publishing cycle to feature all of its 15 products. The baseline sponsors are the Johns Hopkins White Papers.

Some B2B publishers send out 11 email newsletters each week — five email tips, five email promotions, and one-week-in-review summary.

The Hybrid

Back in September I re-designed our email templates to feature more long-form content and multiple, targeted calls to action. The major change is that each of us have our own templates now. When I send an email, my face is at the top of the email and my bio is in the right rail. Same for Don and Mary. They are the “products” we’re promoting. Since this change, we’ve seen a 3x increase in leads from our daily emails.

We’ve also played a little with our editorial calendar. We used to post five days a week, but decided to bring it back to four days a week and really make every post count.

On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we send out single-topic emails on Strategy, Magazines, Email and Websites. On Tuesdays we promote our upcoming digital event and on Thursdays we promote our upcoming live event. On Fridays we send out a week-in-review.

What does your email marketing calendar look like? Do you have a method all your own? Share it in the comments!

I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last, to comment on magazine pricing strategies in the online age. It’s a topic of burning importance to publishers, after all, now that the new digital versions of their products are in growing demand by a tablet-addicted public, and advertising revenues are falling.

Interestingly, an article in PCWorld published just weeks before the iPad’s debut in 2010 speculated that publishers would continue their traditional pricing models of $10 to $20 per year … and “I hope that’s the model iPad magazines go with,” added the writer. Of course you would. You’ve been getting thick, glossy, content-rich magazines for pennies since the beginning of time. Why would you want to pay more?

One of Don’s biggest pet peeves is the decades-long policy that magazine publishers pursued – mostly to ensure that they had as many readers as they had promised to their advertisers – of pricing their publications dirt cheap. $9.99 was indeed a common price for 12 full issues of a consumer magazine.

As Don notes, that policy trained generations of consumers to believe that magazines are cheap, throwaway products. Mind you, this seems to have been restricted to the U.S. When we taught our Digital Publishing Course in London to global publishers recently, the eyebrows in the room rose collectively to the ceiling when Don mentioned the prices of some well-known American magazines. They were astonished that any industry would shoot itself in the foot in that way.

Don’s angst over this issue made him practically float out of his chair with happiness at the recent MPA Swipe 2.0 conference in March when Hearst Executive Vice President John Loughlin declared war on cheap magazine pricing now that digital versions are so popular.

What does Loughlin think is a fair price? “19.99 is the start of fair value,” he said, adding that nearly 900,000 Hearst subscribers have already agreed with him. Loughlin isn’t shy about his position: He also sounded this theme when talking to the Wall Street Journal in January. “I hope that this is the demise of $6 and $7 and $8 and $9 print subscriptions,” he said at the time.

Digital magazine publishing as camouflage

As the WSJ noted, Hearst is joined in this campaign by publishers such as Bonnier, owner of Popular Science and Field & Stream, and by Condé Nast, publisher of Vogue and The New Yorker. In fact,as I recently wrote, The New Yorker has not only raised its prices, it did so in a somewhat surreptitious way by simply attaching a $20 higher price to the magazine, print or digital, when it launched its digital edition in 2011.

Nowhere did The New Yorker actually announce a price increase, thus completely camouflaging that extra $20 behind the dazzling debut of its app.

The Economist has also joined in this sleight-of-hand. While we love the universal pricing that the venerable publication adopted from the beginning for its digital and print editions – one price for digital, print and archive access – they’ve recently not only abandoned universal pricing, they took the opportunity that move provided to bump the price from $129 to $160 for the bundle, while leaving the $129 price in place for digital-only or print-only.

What makes digital magazine publishing worth more?

So 2013 would appear to be all about higher digital prices being accepted by the consumer, and at the same time driving higher print prices. But are digital magazines really worth more than the old print magazines? At Mequoda, we really do believe that higher prices for digital subscriptions are about more than just correcting decades of underpricing.

Digital magazines, as Hearst’s Loughlin points out, offer extra value, including instant delivery, enhanced and extra content, and interactivity, not to mention being easily archivable and searchable without taking up space.

And for younger consumers, it also appears to be important that digital magazines are green.

Then there’s the data starting to trickle in showing that tablet owners hit two of marketing’s most desirable demographics: They’re young, and they’re affluent. It’s not often you can get both of those demographics in one product. This two-fer means that the target audience for digital subscriptions is more willing to spend money because they have more to spend – and on top of that, they haven’t been trained to think that print magazines are birdcage liners.

How often do you get a win-win situation like that? And oh by the way … as I discovered recently, Condé Nast’s tablet subscribers are renewing their subscriptions at a higher rate than print-only subscribers – and they’re also paying higher prices for their renewal subscriptions. By my count, we’re now up to a win-win-win.

So we have a massive advantage for digital magazine publishing in terms of price. But that doesn’t mean everyone is on the bandwagon with Hearst and Condé Nast. Time Inc., for instance, told the Wall Street Journal that because they never discounted their subscriptions in the first place, they’re not raising prices now.

Walking the walk

Fair enough. We’ve seen from Time Inc. that they understand online publishing pretty well.  Among the country’s top magazines in circulation, TIME and People are two of the only three publications (the third being National Geographic) to boast an OMI above 1 – that is, they have far more unique visitors to their free website than they have paid circulation. The OMI is one of Mequoda’s key metrics for measuring the success of an online publication, specifically, its audience development strategy.

Just for fun, I decided to see how these “top” publishers are pricing their subscriptions, as an exercise in digital publishing savvy. I also checked out a list of Don’s “Nimble Niche Leaders” who all have solid OMI numbers.

Here’s what I found:

Magazine pricing policies are as varied as snowflakes. Even within one publishing company, there’s no standard.

Print prices:

• All the Nimble Niche publications but one, with OMIs over 1, are charging at least $15. National Geographic is the low at $15, and most are at $19.97-$29.99.
• The Nimble Niche exception is Eating Well, which charges only $9.99 for print ($5 on Amazon!).
• Hearst may talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk. They still give away print, under $8 for their two represented magazines. They also defy the other pattern: Magazines on our list found on Amazon are all less there than on their websites, except for Woman’s Day. No, I have no idea.
• Meredith is the biggest sinner. $5 on Amazon, or $15 at the website, for Better Homes & Gardens – and even less for other publications? Boggles the mind.

Digital prices:

• Prices are impossible to characterize. But note the jaw-dropping $4.99 charged by Autoweek!
• Some publishers with outstanding OMIs haven’t gotten around to bundling (and thus have no opportunity for disguised price increases … yet).
• Some folks have apps, others have digital editions available only from the website … and Videomaker says it’s available in iTune, not in the Apple Newsstand … but I couldn’t find it there.

Pricing is sure to continue as a mystery for many publishers in this completely new era. At Mequoda, we’re still voting for strategies of universal pricing for all editions and raising prices in print. And as these things evolve, we’ll follow developments and come up with some best practices.

In the meantime, what are your experiences? Do you have a carefully-thought-out, bulletproof pricing policy? Or are you winging it like the biggest names in the industry?

I’m a big fan of planning.

And I believe that your website is a reflection of your entire business and business model.

A visitor to your website should quickly be able to understand your mission, your audience, the scope of your content, and even how you make money.

It always surprises me that people don’t start the process of building a profitable website by building a website plan. While the website planning process can seem complex, it really can be boiled down to answering a few simple questions:

• How will your website make your user’s life better?

• How will your website content fit into your brand pyramid?

• How will your website generate revenue for your organization?

• Who are the people that will be running your website?

• What process will you use to build an audience for your website?

Let me illustrate, by answering the above questions for the case study we use to teach our quarterly Digital Publishing & Marketing Intensive:

Green Gardens Network – 1 Page Business Plan

Mission: Provide gardeners of all experience levels with the inspiration and knowledge they need to create beautiful gardens in any climate.

Content: Our website is home to Hidden Gardens Magazine and our online store, which includes 48 in-depth gardening encyclopedias. We produce a daily newsletter and blog posts that offer curated content from our magazine and encyclopedias. We use social media to distribute gardening tips and photography that will promote our brands and bring new and repeat visitors to our website.

Revenue: We sell digital and print subscriptions to our magazine, we sell our encyclopedias, and we partner with leading gardening suppliers to sponsor our content and brands.

People: Our website is operated by our marketing department. Our staff includes a full-time online marketing director, daily editor, store manager, email marketing assistant, and customer service assistant. We partner with Mequoda Group for strategy, analytics, design, development and systems management.

Marketing: We use a variety of organic sources including search engines, link building, and social media to bring new visitors to our website. Once there, we make every effort to convert them into free email subscribers. Finally, we monetize those relationships over the long term by offering our subscribers great deals on our premium products and our sponsors’ products.

Obviously, there’s a lot of detail that falls behind the above. But the above is a great place to start. It frames the scope of the website as it relates to the total business. It is written in simple language that anyone can understand.

Whether you’re launching a business from scratch, expanding a legacy franchise into the digital arena, or just thinking about optimizing a digital business that already exists, I think you’ll find this exercise a valuable one.

If you’d like to take a deeper dive into the process of building profitable websites, I invite you to join me and our team at the next Digital Publishing & Marketing Intensive.