Marketing and all things related

You often hear rumors that college-aged students never read a newspaper and rarely read magazines. That is not entirely true, naturally, but dropping circulation numbers are making publishing executives anxious. As such, the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) has decided to pilot a new program to supply free one-year electronic magazine subscriptions to selected students at five colleges. Offers for the electronic editions of these magazines will be targeted via email to about 4,000 to 5,000 students based upon their field of study and the topic of the magazine. Respondents must opt-in to receive the free electronic editions. Advertisers benefit in this arrangement, because the electronic editions, formatted by Zinio, include identical text, photos, and advertising found in the print edition of the magazines. The participating titles include Foreign Policy, Business Week, Elle, Premier, and Popular Mechanics. At least one hundred magazines are available in this digital format which provides opportunities to expand the pilot program in the future. We learned about this from Media Post Publications (free registration required.)