Exact Editions today releases a brand new tool for promoting magazine apps. All the Exact Editions iOS apps (7.4.1) now have ByPlace awareness which tracks their position in the real world. Taking advantage of this, opt-in only, on board ‘location awareness’, publishers can select locations from which their apps will be completely free and open access. In such publisher defined zones, the apps will be completely accessible. Free and open for as long as the customer remains in the relevant location. This will be a valuable tool for publishers who wish to:
- promote music magazines at concert halls
- make literary magazines freely available at book fairs
- give fans access to rock magazines at Hyde Park or Glastonbury
- target exhibitions or trade fairs with relevant B2B titles
- offer free trial access to yachting magazines at marinas
and so on. Every magazine has a unique and targetable audience. Promotion ByPlace is a way to reach those audiences, directly and with instant impact.
Exact Editions provides our publisher partners with a Publisher Account through which they obtain user statistics, marketing data and information about their apps. Now all the publishers with an app from the Exact Editions platform also have access to this unique promotional tool. With some simple map-based tools publishers can set up ByPlace hot spots where the magazine will be freely available. The option to create free ByPlace locations is now ‘front and centre’ on the publisher account.
Publisher Account with option for ByPlace
The process of setting up a ByPlace promotion is as follows:
- find the rough location on the map zooming to convenient scale;
- click the ‘Add Venue’ button on the zoomed map;
Adding another ByPlace location to a group in London
- a pin will drop to the centre of the map in view and drag this pin to its precise position. The pin is surrounded by a blue shadow, roughly 150 metres in radius, this blue shadow shows the approximate coverage of the ByPlace promotion
- then add some essential details: a name for the location, a ‘greeting’ message that will appear in a courtesy pane in the app, and select the exact magazine from a list of those which may be available to the publisher. One magazine per pin.
- Press the Save button to confirm the venue details and set up the ByPlace promotion.
- Done, the ByPlace open zone will now run until you go back into your account, select the pin and remove the magazine by choosing ‘None’ from the drop down list
That is all there is to it.
That is a summary of the practical details from the publisher’s point of view. Now the really good news. This is a promotional technique which will be welcome by users who trial magazine apps at particular locations. It makes a lot of sense to publishers, since users who have a good experience of trying a magazine app at an event or a venue are more likely to buy a subscription when they leave the venue. This is a simple and highly targetable way of promoting and enjoying magazine apps. It is something that publishers want to do and something that a magazine platform should be encouraging them to do. As Daryl Rayner, Exact Editions Managing Director, puts it:
“This is a fantastic innovation for promoting magazine apps and Exact Editions are not charging their publishing partners for using this effective marketing tool. Instead we are making it very easy for publishers to do promotion ByPlace and the solution is free!”.