With the relaunch of its industry leading website, Gale Media set an ambitious goal to increase revenue from site content and services—building on impressive gains from its initial MDM.com launch.  The publisher planned to tap ePublishing’s Enterprise Publishing System to increase subscriptions and create new revenue streams by selling individual articles and monetizing its new Buyers Guide.

Background

To recap MDM.com’s ongoing success story: the publisher first reported modest traffic gains, but quickly saw significant improvements in traffic and not surprisingly, increased subscriptions and revenue.

Building on the spectacular gains from 2010, MDM.com then focused on its eCommerce capabilities to increase Average Revenue per Reader (ARPR).  With the launch of its industry data site, IMIdata.com, Gale Media expanded to a multi-site business featuring an enhanced shopping cart to reduce cart abandonment by 40%.  The PCI compliant eCommerce system supports a product catalog, offers, discounts, bundling and an intuitive checkout process. 

Most importantly, keeping buyers on site ensures Gale Media captures all purchase data, tracks buyer behavior and avoids data silos by aggregating audience data in a single database to target marketing offers and product development.

Response
With its most recent relaunch, visitors will find a fresh design, featuring a new array of products, with Gale staff putting the pieces in place to engage readers and grow revenue:

1. Monetize services, such as Market Research Reports, to supplement subscriptions.
2. Reduce steps to subscribe by placing a subscription form on article preview pages.
3. Simplify the renewal process.
4. Leverage the innovative Buyer’s Guides to create new revenue streams.
5. Enhance the mobile-friendly design to increase readership.
6. Offer individual premium articles for purchase along with edition and subscription sales.

Result
With enhanced eCommerce and Audience Data Analysis tools, MDM.com—already the market leading BtoB information service for wholesale distribution executives—is poised to grow organically and with new product releases.   The publisher maintains its laser focus on delivering critical resources to its readers. With ePublishing’s Enterprise Publishing System, MDM’s relatively small staff delivers original and exclusive content, including news, economic data, business intelligence, in-depth analysis and expertise. 

From a single tools dashboard, staff efficiently manage editorial content, eNewsletters, Buyers Guides, reports, video and other media, plus sales, subscriptions, renewals and marketing – to make MDM content leaders in wholesale distribution and the place where industry executives look to help them run their businesses and plan for the future.

Gale Media focused on three critical components of its business model:

1.     Subscriptions

• Reduce steps to subscribe: leverage registration data to autofill forms
• Synchronize data with subscription and payment systems
• Automate the renewal process

2.     Monetize individual articles and downloads

• Leverage eCommerce tools to create a catalog of articles and monthly issues; to present purchase offer when customers are reading premium article preview or browsing monthly editions
• Use semantic tagging to present related products to articles and in Search
• Analyze audience database to target specific buyers, guide product development

3.     Buyer’s Guides: introduce sponsor-generated, premium virtual storefronts

• Create a new revenue stream with minimal editorial investment
• Generate leads for sponsors by presenting searchable listings that include product spec sheets, downloads, video, RFP form
• Present listings in Search results, in featured ad positions and in eNews

MDM Readers can now subscribe, buy an issue, or buy individual articles, pay, and then access the premium content without leaving the site:

What’s Next?

Look for ongoing additions to MDM.com and IMIData.com, as Gale Media benefits from ePublishing’s commitment to Software as a Service (SaaS), adding features and enhancements, including multimedia, an updated mobile-friendly design and a metered paywall.

Key Features:

• Integrated eCommerce, Content and Audience Management
• Audience Data Analysis
• Taxonomy-Driven Publishing
• Buyers Guide
• Responsive Mobile-Friendly Design
• Secure PCI Compliant Shopping Cart