I recently emailed a number of publishers asking for information on open rates for their digital versions. Typically this information is kept pretty quiet, with the notable exception of TechInsights, who publish their data monthly – well done guys! With open rates much more accurately measurable than for print titles, I’m guessing some publishers are worried that the number of unopened copies will be viewed as “bad”.
So I asked several publishers about unique open rates, and got responses from ED Europe, EPN, EPN France, and all of TechInsight’s European publications. I didn’t get a response from some titles, with ICC Media and Reed UK (Electronics Weekly) the two big publishers that offered no stats. To be fair I only sent one email, so don’t read too much into their lack of response.
The results were very interesting:
- four titles had open rates of 11-12%
- one title had an open rate of 16%
- one title had an open rate of 19%
I tried to find some cause of the difference in open rate, but there was no link between circulation, publication frequency or publisher and the open rate.
So what does this mean? Certainly it suggests that digital magazines are less likely to be opened than their paper sisters (if you believe the readership surveys). I’m not surprised that today print is still the favoured medium. But with the huge cost advantage of digital, I think the figures are pretty respectable. They’ll also be slighly under-reported as pass-on readership will not register as another unique reader.
There are other more important questions: what is the quality of the reader (who is opening them), how is the circulation managed (requested or unrequested circulation) and would these readers read print magazines or is digital the only way to reach them? Frankly there is a big question over whether publishers should be doing more to promote readership of each copy than just sending a single email. In fact digital titles have many uses – Marcus Grimm of NXTBook sent me a great link to a story about how the BBC used digital to drive an increase in print readers.
Digital magazines will also change the behaviour of readers, forcing a more linear approach than print (do you remember the Adams survey some years ago that said the cheap back third of a magazine was almost as well read as the expensive front third?). How many pages do readers view of the digital editions? Is this different from print titles?
Personally I believe that digital magazines are going to be really important in the future. Opening and browsing a digital magazine is a much bigger commitment on the part of the reader than visiting a web page. Digital magazines also deliver news in a push format, highlighting new products and technologies to readers who would be unlikely to learn about them through search engines.
What does the emergence of digital titles mean? Please feel free to post comments and let me know your opinions.
Footnote: please do not imagine this was – in any way – a scientific study. Typically I got just one issue’s stats and I had to completely trust the publishers’ figures.
The fact that opening rates are low is disturbing. Reading the blog of vendors like NxtBook, one is lead to believe that email opening rates are not really important because digital magazines can get a bigger readership from other sources like social media (of course). This is very fashionable at the moment…
The problem is that the readers who are invited via email by magazine publishers to open the digital version represent their core audience, probably comprised of subscribers to the print version and other carefully pre-selected individuals. If they don’t open the magazine, you have a serious problem because you need to control how your readership evolves over time. You can’t really control who will post a link on facebook and Twitter and when. So, your readership could drop dramatically a quarter, dragging ad revenues down and possibly killing a title.
Frankly looking at digital magazines like the example you have listed in the article, I can understand why people refrain from reading them; they are quite simply to hard to read. If magazines and newspaper had been printed in a format that required readers to carry around their magnifying glass with them, both media would have die a long time ago. Even the social networking sites of the time (beauty salons, pubs, etc…) would not have been able to save them 🙂
Digital magazines have a future because they are more in tune with our digital lifestyle. But publishers need to do a better job at providing a pleasant reading experience. So, don’t kill the web site yet. The future digital magazine could be a fusion web site / publication.
Mike
You have some good points about the quality of readership for digital magazines. If controlled circulation is important, then it is difficult to give the same value to readership from other sources such as social media. The numbers I have quoted should not include any sources other than the subscribed readers – effectively reducing the readship stats.
I take what you say about readability, although with a decent monitor, many titles are – in my opinion – pretty readable today. I’m sure that as both the magazine’s technology and the display technology improve, the readability will get better.
Finally I completely agree with your plea “don’t kill the website yet”. In fact I don’t see digital magazines ever killing websites: I believe that magazines and website do different jobs, and are used in a completely different way. In the long term, when the reading experience of digital magazines is good, then I’d see both digital magazines and websites working in synergy.
Mike
Thank you for a great post.
I used the stats from this post as a way to jump into the whole issue of response rates in digital magazines and how they are being audted.
http://jgordon5.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/do-digital-magazine-open-rates-matter.html
Josh Gordon