Objective: Increase customer satisfaction, grow circulation and increase revenue.
Background: Game Developer Magazine, a monthly CMP publication, provides technical and industry information to over 35,000 professional interactive entertainment developers. Part of the CMP Game Group, Game Developer magazine compliments gamasutra.com, its online professional development site as well as CMP's multiple game industry conferences and events. With this multi-channel strategy, it was a natural step for Game Developer to extend its reach by offering digital editions.
Challenge: Game Developer is always looking for new ways to increase customer satisfaction. With many of its subscribers dedicated to online technology, digital editions offer the opportunity to increase customer satisfaction and gain a cost-effective marketing tool. With 83% of their audience saving back issues of Game Developer, offering Texterity's online digital archives enables subscribers to quickly search back editions while saving precious hard drive and office storage space. Furthermore, digital editions provide the opportunity to generate additional revenue by simplifying cross-promotion and by implementing single copy and subscription sales from their website.
Solution: Game Developer began offering digital editions of their publication using Texterity's Published Web Format (PWF) in June 2005. In addition to using Texterity's conversion services and comprehensive tracking and reporting capabilities, CMP also chose to take advantage of two of Texterity's circulation-building programs. Game Developer chose to implement "digital sampling" to increase subscription conversion rates. They also decided to offer "send-to-a-friend" capabilities to increase subscriber satisfaction and to drive additional grass-roots subscriptions. With these programs building circulation and generating revenue, Game Developer quickly reached a positive ROI for its digital editions.
Result: Offering digital editions has been very successful for the CMP Game Group. In less than one year, Game Developer has sold over 2,500 single digital copies, at full face value, from their website. In addition, CMP averages 100 paid digital subscription sales per month. With this direct revenue from their website, Game Developer's digital editions already pay for themselves and create additional revenue. "We are delighted that we quickly broke even on our digital publishing investment and are already making money on this endeavor, " Peter Leahy, executive producer online products, stated.
By cross-promoting these revenue-generating programs across the CMP Group's properties, CMP has the opportunity to maximize its revenue. Digital editions also offer future growth potential. CMP can generate additional revenue by selling digital sponsorships and advertising or by incorporating multimedia material from its other media outlets into video or audio enhancements for Game Developer Magazine.
