The APA helps clients understand customer publishing, and operates the only benchmark research in the industry. If you’re thinking of starting a magazine, it’s a one-stop shop.
Julia Hutchison, APA director, tells you why...
In a nutshell, what is the APA?
We are the industry body that represents the customer publishing industry. We have various audiences. These include our members, which currently number 48 publishing agencies. Some are small, some very big, some focus on B2B only, while others cover consumer and B2B – and there are some very different models. We work with them to drive best practice.
But, increasingly, our focus is on clients: helping them understand more about the industry and the benefits of using a customer magazine as part of their marketing strategy. We advise them on process and best practice. A traditional marketer might know how to put together a TV ad or direct marketing campaign. But a magazine, the rationale behind it and the production process, can be anathema. We help them through that.
What’s the difference between hiring an APA agency and a non-APA agency?
Clients of APA members have access to all our resources (see opposite). We offer a great opportunity to network. We only let members in based on financial probity – so clients can be confident that we have vetted them. And, crucially, we operate the only benchmark research for the industry, produced by Millward Brown, which has generated considerable interest. It’s only available to clients of APA members, and because of that we’re increasingly seeing APA-only pitch lists.
What difference has the Millward Brown research made?
A huge difference. Until about two years ago there were certain preconceptions in the marketing community about customer magazines. They were seen as a nice-to-have, rather than a must-have. In the past, if marketing budgets were cut, customer magazines were often the first things to go. The reason we invested so heavily in research was to prove the effectiveness of the medium. And the Advantage study really shows that: we’ve proved that customer magazines deliver.
What was the key finding for you?
The readership time of 25 minutes. I think the perception was that, because customer magazines are free, they’re not read. Now we can challenge that with the metrics – and, of course, just go on the Tube and you’ll see everyone reading Metro. It’s all about relevance and the quality of editorial content.
The other thing that’s amazed me is the levels of response. I mean, a 44 per cent response rate: nearly half of the people who receive – not read, receive – a customer magazine do something. Having worked in marketing for 15 years, I think that is just an outstanding result.
How has the industry evolved?
We’re seeing increasing sophistication of product. In some ways, customer magazines are driving creativity in publishing: they’re not just winning APA awards, but also industry awards, such as the Magazine Design Awards. That creativity is partly because they’re not limited by the newsstand conventions, but we’re also seeing publishing agencies and marketers being much more strategic about how they implement the magazine in their overall marketing activity.
In what way?
By looking at where it fits in the customer journey. A marketer might start a campaign with a brand positioning job, using TV and use direct mail as part of their acquisition tool and now they’re fitting magazines into that process – where, perhaps, previously magazines were left hanging on the outside, not really fully integrated.
What are the trends going forward?
Growth. Financial services are turning to the medium. They’re realising that it’s hard to sell financial services products and that there is a mass of messages out there. A customer magazine is by its nature a soft sell, and you also have space to get across what can often be a quite complicated message.
Online is interesting, with online retailers looking to a magazine to provide an offline brand experience. You go online for a different reason to looking at a magazine, I think: it’s about fast information, price. You can’t get a strong brand experience in the way you can with a magazine. You hop around, you find what you need through Google and you get out. And what other medium can you take on the move, curl up with on the sofa or in bed, or read in the bath or on the loo? There is some interesting work to be done on the interaction between print and online and how those media work together.
Catalogues are interesting, too. And government: there are lots of mixed and often quite complicated messages to get across. Again, a magazine is an effective way of doing that. Non-food retailers. There are the very high profile magazines such as Waitrose Food Illustrated, Sainsbury’s and Tesco – but if you look down Oxford Street there may be another 100 retailers who don’t use the medium, and who could do so very effectively. For anyone with a database of customers who wants to reduce churn, it’s a natural choice.
What about DM? Where do customer magazines stop and DM start?
They work together – and I work very closely with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). Obviously it’s a Venn diagram: there are issues pertinent to both industries. There are similarities, notably the majority distribution route, which is the post.
But what DM does is to use sales promotion copywriters very effectively, often for acquisition, while customer publishing is about editorial content – and the people who provide that content are journalists. That’s the big difference. Which is why customer publishing is so effective as a marketing tool: research shows that consumers prefer customer magazines to any other marketing medium.
Consumers are savvy. They know they’re being sold to. But as long as the editorial is valuable and engaging and useful, they will engage with it.
And the use of data?
Absolutely. More and more agencies are investing in planning skills, and there’s more and more segmentation. There is some very clever data usage and analysis. For example, you can create a magazine, not just for top-tier customers, but also for second-tier customers who may not be spending as much with you as they might – driving their loyalty and maximising their wallet share.
How have perceptions of the industry changed in other media?
I think we’re perceived as more of a grown-up medium, and as more of a threat to above-the-line media. I hope we are – it says something about our industry. Some of the other media revenues are declining: we’ve seen radio decline for the first time, for example. And we’re beginning to take some of that market share.
How about advertisers?
Some 50 per cent of magazines take some form of third-party advertising. In some cases, such as retail and travel, there will be enough third-party advertising revenue to be able to fund the magazine – and they may also have the infrastructure to sell it, too.
We see it less and less, but there are still clients who want to publish a magazine to develop a revenue stream. We strongly advise them that that is not a sustainable model. Because, when you see an economic downturn, when those ads dip away, the magazine will be liable to close. And I think marketers realise that a magazine, especially if it’s a loyalty tool, is a long-term burn.
We strongly advise that marketing objectives should be the starting point for launching a magazine. And the clearer the objectives – be it loyalty, sales uplift or acquisition – the better the magazine will work. It’s about determining what value is: you might get £3,000 for a third-party advertising page. But your editorial might be so compelling that it delivers three times that value to your bottom line.
And why should a potential client call you?
Because we offer impartial free advice to anyone interested in customer publishing. We’re a one-stop shop.
Also, we’re good at jokes and do good lunches. This is a fun, entrepreneurial industry and the APA reflects that, I hope.
