{"id":548,"date":"2013-09-03T17:56:47","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T15:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.presspadapp.com\/blog\/?p=548"},"modified":"2021-03-04T11:29:37","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T09:29:37","slug":"sales-funnels-for-digital-publishers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.presspadapp.com\/blog\/sales-funnels-for-digital-publishers\/","title":{"rendered":"Learn Why Your Readers Are Dropping out \u2013 Sales Funnels for Digital Publishers"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you think of sales funnels as a piece of kitchenware and do not see a bigger connection between them and your magazine on the iPad, this article is for you.<\/h2>\n

The idea of funnels is widely known in marketing and in areas connected with sales. Marketers evaluating the efficiency of their campaigns use funnels. Likewise, salesmen use them to assess their efficiency as well. Even support teams measure their progress by looking at funnels.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, a funnel is a percentage value of the conversion from one step of the process to the other<\/strong> one. For instance, if my application gets downloaded by 1000 people on their iPads, I am interested in how many of them actually opens it on their device (fun fact: it’s not 100%).<\/p>\n

What Should Mobile Magazine Publishers Measure?<\/h3>\n

The most obvious sales funnel is the amount of downloaded applications on the iPad\/iPhone and then the conversion to purchased issues<\/strong>. Each publisher should observe this funnel a few times a month and check whether the marketing actions he or she takes have any impact on sales.<\/p>\n

This is however not the only sales funnel that can be built for magazines on the iPad. More advanced funnel is<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The number of people who saw an advertisement<\/strong>, mailing or social media entries regarding the new issue<\/li>\n
  2. The number of people who downloaded the application<\/strong> from App Store to their devices<\/li>\n
  3. The number of magazine samples downloads<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. The number of purchased issues or subscriptions<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Why Look at Sales Funnels Instead of Observing the Sales Alone?<\/h3>\n

    Observing the sales itself cannot answer where the users are dropping out<\/strong> and which stage of the sales process is not working. For example, an ideal funnel described above could look like that:<\/p>\n

    \"Example<\/p>\n

    As we can see, a number of people approach the application after advertising campaigns, many of them download a free sample of the magazine but in turn, only a small number buys the whole issue. Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Observing the sales values alone will not suggest where the bottleneck of the sales process lies and where the customers are dropping out. In turn, after seeing the above graph, a clever publisher can focus on solving the problem of converting free samples to paid magazines<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    The content of free issues might be chosen incorrectly. They might be too short (or too long). Or perhaps they should include a clear suggestion of purchasing the full issue on the last page?<\/p>\n

    After evaluating each option, the publisher should have another look at the sales funnel and observe the trend. If, for instance, after changing the length of the samples, the conversion trend saw an increase<\/strong>, it means that everything is going well. And so on.<\/p>\n

    \"Digital<\/p>\n

    The graph shows an example trend of converting free magazines into full issues over the last 30 days. It clearly shows that in one point, a change for the better occurred. It is the moment at which the publisher focused on optimizing his samples.<\/p>\n

    Good Practices When Working with Funnels<\/h3>\n