The wealth of initiatives at Egmont Magazines includes trade fairs, mobile services, online games, satellite sites, travel tours and book publications, to name but a few. There are brand-related webshops where customers can buy gifts for their husbands, yarn for a woollen jersey or whatever else they might need here and now.

Webshops enhance the brand
Launching a webshop as an extension of a print brand represents an opportunity to increase the number of transactions with customers who already read or subscribe to the magazine. But it is also an opportunity to raise awareness of the brand and reach new readers.

‘When I started Hemmets Journal’s webshop in 2007 I had primarily envisaged it as a place to sell craft items, but the shop has grown into a small warehouse with articles for both him and her,’ explains Ulrika Frolov, marketing manager at Egmont Tidskrifter, continuing: ‘The net is open to a far broader target audience, so readers of Hemmets Journal are not the only people visiting the webshop – it also attracts other target groups beyond the reach of the magazine.’

A webshop is also a way of retaining loyal customers by developing the brand and offering readers a new dimension on a new platform. In Norway, Hjemmet Mortensen has seen this strategy at work with its webshop for Familien, which has a new issue out every other week. Aimed at a mature target group, the magazine enjoys extremely broad geographic distribution. The response to Familien’s webshop has also been positive. Hjemmet Mortensen’s sales and marketing director, Merete Simonsen, has observed an increase in sales via the net. ‘The webshop offers products that complement the products locally available to the target group. We have developed a product range based on our readers’ interests and taken it to a new platform. This has revitalised the relationship with our readers.’

Know your customers!
Ulrika Frolov and Merete Simonsen agree that a successful webshop requires an advance understanding of the brand and its target group. If you miss the mark with the group’s needs and preferences, you end up with a warehouse full of unsellable products.

One way of gaining direct insight into the group’s needs and preferences is to test new ideas on its members. The Hemmets Journal team make a point of getting customers’ advice when considering how to expand the product range.

‘If we want to add a new product and are unsure whether it will find favour, we sometimes launch a competition inviting customers to choose, say, their favourite bag from a selection of four. The customer enters the competition to win the bag by clicking on her choice. The most popular bags usually make it to the range of products offered in our webshop,’ says Ulrika Frolov.

‘Customer relations and brands will remain important, and digitalization offers new possibilities for engaging in dialogue with customers. We need to continue adjusting and improving our customer dialogue, exploiting the marketing opportunities and developing the commercial potential of the strongest brands. Scale will also be key, and that will spur us to work more broadly across Egmont, both locally and within the various divisions,’ Merete Simonsen concludes.

The shopping project started at Hjemmet Mortensen in 2009 and there are now eight webshops in existence, all built around print brands. The Hemmets Journal team at Egmont Tidskrifter plans to implement a better technological solution in 2011 to increase sales and customer numbers. The expected revenue of SEK 4.5 million in 2010 is to be doubled in the long term.