While working with Los Angeles magazine and Publisher Emmis, who also publishes Texas Monthly and Orange Coast among others, we discovered additional revenue drivers that had not been fully realized before LAmag.com went online (that was an easy meeting to get).Our commitment to our clients’ success led us to create Circles— an online user engagement club built to monetize the publication’s digital readership. The web application idea for Circles was simple:
create a loyalty club that allows its members to experience special offers and events in the city they reside in, offers and events that are typically reserved for the “well connected”. This entertainment miracle that instantly made its members ‘well connected,’ would be achieved by using the magazine’s own resources and connections. Utilizing the available (low cost) CMS ‘Business Catalyst’, we extracted and customized all functionality needed to create the loyalty club. This included social network integration, membership sign-up, customer service/fulfilment, email marketing and populating the site with new offers. Members were given one executive offer every 30 days, and had access to other perks and events throughout the year. These executive offers could be anything from a free stay at a five-star hotel to VIP access at the Hollywood Bowl.Brand awareness was generated through a combination of ad placement as well as several large email campaigns. These email campaigns were wildly successful, with 35% of all email subscribers opting to become Circles members.The publication itself also saw collateral benefits such as a 23% traffic increase on the editorial content, and a 28% increase in small business advertising. And if that wasn’t enough, 21% of all club sign-ups also bought a yearly subscription to the magazine in all its printed glory.