But after a recent survey we conducted to readers of our Healthcare Packaging digital publication, I'm not so sure. The survey, specifically targeting those who hadn't opened the last several issues, asked why they weren't reading it regularly. Possible answers included too busy, technology problems, content not on target, prefer print, plus a host of others.
The anwers were interesting:
41% Too busy...with the remainder of the responses fragmented
8% Prefer print
8% Don't remember asking to receive it
Turns out technology or content were never an issue (my two biggest fears).
Instead, these readers are simply too darn busy to read online. Verbatim comments fell into three broad categories, as far as I was able to tell:
1. Readers get slammed with up to 100 legitimate emails a day. That's our competition as publishers. Not spam. Regular email. These comments were typical:
I'm a very busy manager and I don't have too much time to read electronic news. I give priorities to my customer and suppliers' e-mails. I get a bunch of e-mail as spam and delete all of them including unread e-mails which are business information. [I added italics for emphasis]
I receive a few hundred emails every day and sometimes I just can't get to them all.
I just get too many emails. I prefer to have a hardcopy that I can flip through and clip what I need.2. In general, readers are just simply busier than ever:
When reviewing email, I am usually reviewing or responding to immediate business issues and do not feel I can can afford the time to peruse a journal and therefore defer it. In hard copy I can review when time permits without cluttering my email inbox. The impulse to throw away a hard copy without taking a look is not as easy as hitting a delete key!
Too many irons in the fire. I am fortunate when I can briefly scan the numerous publications I receive as they relate to a specific project either I or a member of my team is working on.
You don't need to do anything differant unless you can figure out how to clone me. Bear with me, I will catch up and read your emails.
It's not your problem, it's strictly a "time available" issue with me, your subscriber...
As I am sure you have heard before, I only need another hour in the day to get this read. Everything about your e-mag is good, I am just incredibly busy.
3. Finally, as more and more readers spend more of their day in front of a computer, the last thing they want to do is read electronic content:
I still consider the paper copy handy because you can read any part of it at anytime and [at any] location. Especially after day-long facing the terminal, I try to stay away [from] on-line as much as possible.
I rather read the hard copy than off a screen. I'm slammed by 100+ business related e-mails a day and I'm just burned out sitting at the screen.So there you have it. The things publishers of B2B digital media fret about the most--whether our content is on target, are we bypassing the spam filter, do our fancy technological contraptions work universally--are NOT at issue.
We've never really focused on what happens after the email is delivered. And that's where the trouble starts. Worse, all of these factors are entirely out of our control.
What's fascinating is that an uber-theme that emerges from most of these conclusions is that print publishing is most often regarded by these readers as the antidote to electronic media. Now that's a message that needs to get out to those advertisers who have lost faith in the power of print.
