The Email Wars

At the end of last week I was working away when I took a moment to scroll through TweetDeck to see what I had missed while my head was down. I noticed a promotion from Time Magazine Inc that was giving away 5 issues of personalized magazines either in print or digital format. Well since eROI works with so many publishers (Inc., Fast Co., Maxim, Business Week, CBS Watch, Mediapost, Smithsonian, and a host of others) as well as with a client Zinio that is the leader in digitizing magazines I had to take a look.

Now the personalization of print and digital magazines was my the lead for my interest, but when I got to the landing page I noticed some great ideas as work. Now I would typically look at this landing page as asking for a ton of information, but you need to give to get remember, until I saw the “personalization” fields. They were not the typical questions I would have thought of myself in order to target someone with content later on, but they were good. Even great in my opinion as they asked personal information based on tastes and preferences rather than just do you A or B.

Questions like:

Which do you crave more? Sushi/Pizza

Do you sing in the car? Yes/No

Which would you like to learn? Juggling/Celebrity Impersonation

Who would you like to have dinner with? Leonardo/Socrates

Now they are all behavorial questions that in a stand alone or combined profile could be powerful to use to target with relevant content in regards to personalization.Although not the typical questions they were good because they were different. Making me think as I completed the form as opposed to autofilling a form and moving on. When you make me think, you make me think about you as a brand longer.

It was not only the questions and the thought, but the way that they selection of magazines worked was a modern way to engage with dragging and dropping (and being able to change) your selections.

I know I have a few weeks to get these editions, but I am excited to see how they used this data to construct a magazine for me. This is just the type of thinking that the publishing industry needs to start using. It is time to reconnect, reinvent, and adjust your strategies to work.

Even better from an execution standpoint they sent an immediate thank you email. Just tying all the loose ends up and making me love the campaign. Nice work Time Magazine. Glad to see you moving forward.