Digital Magazine News - May/June 2005
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Sample digital editions play a wider role in marketing digital, Web and print (Partial Excerpt)
To better play the highly competitive circulation game, ESPN recently turned to sample digital issues to promote both its premium Web content and print magazine.
Visitors to the website were offered a bundled subscription offer to ESPN Insider premium Web content and its print publication, ESPN the Magazine. To entice potential subscribers, visitors to the Web site were allowed to peruse a sample digital edition of the magazine, which was produced in-house with Olive Software, and offered a tour of the premium content available on the Insider.
The promotion illustrates how sample digital editions can be used in ways that go far beyond simply promoting digital subscriptions. “They are leveraging all of their efforts—print, online, direct mail, pop up ads,” noted Kim Dail, VP of Marketing at Olive Software. “Sample digital editions can be a very effective part of the strategy.”
ESPN isn’t the only title experimenting with sample digital issues to promote a wide variety of products. McGraw Hill, Time, Inc., and Hearst have all used sample editions.