Although custom magazines deliver against the hard criteria of boosting sales, their real value is in their ability to engage customers in a way that makes them value and trust your brand. Custom publishing is a means of deepening your relationship with your customers and sustaining an essential dialogue.

We start the process by gaining an understanding of your customers: their unique demographics, lifestyles, and consumer behavior. The magazine must have relevance, and the editorial material must be interesting to them, not just glorified marketing—a tangible benefit that exceeds their expectations. Our team of experts (editors, designers, and marketers) will help you find the best way to engage your customers.

Secondly, we address your marketing objectives. Whether your objectives are to address customer loyalty and retention, increase involvement and receive feedback, build or reposition your image, target your customer more precisely, or just increase sales to existing and prospective clients, our team will work with you to help create a marketing strategy with clear, measurable objectives.

With an understanding of your customers and a clearly defined set of marketing objectives, we then begin the process of developing a magazine brand, design format, editorial voice, and style. We work with you to achieve the appropriate mix.

Our design director and art director will create the prototype and oversee the design. Both have wide experience in local, national, and international marketing. The graphics and design will not only reflect the unique character of your brand, but be different enough to make your audience sit up and pay attention.

We employ specialist writers for each project, so we can deal with everything from extremely technical subjects such as engineering and finance to lifestyle subjects like food and fashion. We offer complete editorial services including copy editing, fact checking, and proofreading.

SPOT ON media uses freelance writers from around the world, with standard author contracts that give us full rights to all editorial. We are highly experienced in copyright law issues.

• Baseline prelaunch research and measurement
  We recommend testing the concept in focus group settings, which are used to assess and validate our initial assumptions. In these sessions, we present magazine cover options, tables of contents, sample spreads, and editorial formats. We gauge participant reaction to the style, design, and content. Based on this feedback, we are able to make adjustments prior to the launch of the magazine.
   
  Customers need to receive the magazine several times before ROI can be accurately measured. We recommend using a process with several methods for baseline measurement: database modeling, surveys, and focus groups.

  Database modeling compares a sample of the target database with a national database to derive a model or profile of the target reader. Predictive models are based on demographic data such as age, gender, education, marital status, income level, and home ownership. Lifestyle information on subjects such as as art, gardening, travel, sports, kids, pets, spirituality, and religion is also evaluated. Predictive consumer models help us to understand the personal interests of your customers and potential readers and provide a methodology for finding new prospective clients, if desired. This information allows our editorial to be aligned as closely as possible with the personal interests of your readers.

  A baseline survey by phone, mail, or e-mail gives us a starting point for comparisons over time. We ask questions about what customers want or need, where they turn for information, and what is valuable to them and what not. The results of the survey will help us in positioning the magazine and serve as a basis for the comparison of future survey results.

• Postlaunch ongoing measurement
  Once we have our baseline data, we will look at comparative information regularly. Some of these measurements can be integrated into the magazine program itself and others will be conducted periodically.
  Periodic surveys—again by phone, mail, or e-mail—will be carried out to collect information and monitor changes.
  Reader feedback can be solicited with a business reply card (BRC) for new subscribers bound into the magazine and a BRC for customer feedback on the other side of the binding. We will devise a simple rating system for each article and column that readers will find easy to respond to. Web-based rating forms can also be developed for web publishing solutions.

• Sales trends measurement
  Comparative studies of sales trend data allow us to compare customers who receive the magazine with those who don’t. We can make detailed measurements by including incentives or product coupons in the magazine and then tabulating sales results shortly after the magazine is delivered.
  

SPOT ON media’s partners and digital staff have been involved in software and multimedia online development for many years. All our projects incorporate sound web design principles that focus on ease of navigation and content that is smartly and cleanly laid out. We combine three-dimensional graphics, sound and text, animation, still images, and digital video in a single, powerful package. Our in-house staff includes web designers, programmers, database and e-commerce developers, computer architecture specialists, and digital project managers.

• E-mail custom solutions
  E-mail accounts for 85 percent of corporate communication and has rapidly become the most important tool of business communication. It is therefore a key requirement for every business to control the flow of e-mail and leverage its full potential as a marketing and communication medium.
  

SPOT ON media offers e-mail products and services designed to manage and enrich your everyday and group e-mails. By professionalizing your e-mail communication, you can increase your sales, improve customer relationships, and ensure legal compliance. An e-mail communication strategy can be integrated with other marketing objectives.

We also offer a digital “page turning” version of your magazine, which will increase its frequency. Click here for more information.

Circulation is most often drawn from databases already owned and managed by the client. We also examine other ways—often more creative ones—to distribute the magazine. These might be based on what we learn about the unique lifestyle and consumer behavior of your readers.

SPOT ON media will manage the BPA, ABC, or MPA audit for the magazine. Independent association audits will enhance perceptions of the magazine's professionalism and value.

Clients have the option of managing this process themselves or using SPOT ON media. Our relationship with print brokers and printers allows us to pass on our preferential discounts. By working with the printer’s sales and customer service representatives, we coordinate all the scheduling, quality control issues, and transfer of files and materials. SPOT ON media sources and prints on recycled paper and is a proud member of the Environmental Media Association.

Basic mail processing services (such as inkjet label production, sorting, bundling, and delivery to the post office) are handled by the printer.

Plastic cards are unique in that they invite your customers to carry your marketing collateral with them. Unlike brochures and leaflets, which are generally thrown away after a cursory glance, a plastic card, like a magazine, has a high retention value. It serves as a permanent reminder of, and can establish loyalty to, your brand.

Cards have psychological significance, reminding the user of their purpose every time the wallet is opened and stimulating the desire to use them. Best of all, they are attractive and can be effective as part of any custom publishing and CRM marketing strategy. Our cards are manufactured to the highest ISO standards, using stringent production control mechanisms.

• printing of almost any design, including holograms.
• printing on PVC litho or silkscreen
• lamination
• die cutting
• signature panels and magnetic strip encoding
• thermal printing, embossing, and topping
• database programming
• development of encoding information