As an audience developer, you know magazine audiences are looking for new ways to engage with their favorite brands. Digital editions are increasingly offering this critical link between brands and customers, and a service called Coverleaf—which has already attracted the attention of some of the industry’s biggest publishers, including Meredith, F+W Media, and Disney—is taking that link to the next level.

Coverleaf, developed by Texterity, is a Web-based newsstand that allows consumers to browse and buy magazines. It also offers print subscribers access to a companion digital edition in exchange for an email address. “Every publisher we’ve spoken to says acquiring an email address for print subscribers is a number one initiative,” Texterity president Martin Hensel says. According to him, the value of an email address ranges from two to seven dollars. In the two-dollar range, publishers are looking to lower the cost of renewal efforts and cross-promote their products. The seven-dollar range includes publishers trying to sell books, DVDs and other ancillary items.

This is in part what attracted Meredith, which has signed on twelve of its titles including Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle. “It is important to us to have established ROI metrics with digital programs, and Coverleaf does that,” says Janet Donnelly, consumer marketing director at the company.

Beyond acquiring email addresses, Coverleaf is designed to improve publishers’ relationships with their audience. “There has been a lot of research that shows that if a subscriber has multiple connections with the brand, they renew better,” Hensel says. “We wanted to figure out a path to let a lot of current print subscribers also establish a digital connection with the brand, with an eye toward higher renewal rates.”

“Having digital editions is nice but to have the programs that support and add value to our subscribers’ brand experience is spot on to our long term strategy,” Donnelly says.

In terms of counting these readers, Coverleaf makes it easy by offering detailed usage and delivery reports so that publishers can qualify digital editions as part of their audited circulation.

Building a Community of Magazine Readers

Coverleaf is also designed to bring in new subscribers. Once the site officially launches in September, users will be able to see any spread in any of the magazines. It is designed to “recreate the low-pressure and no-pressure browsing experience of the newsstand online,” says Carl Scholz, Texterity’s senior vice president of technology and operations. Users can then clip, store, organize and share pages with others.

“We’re putting magazine content into the social network conversation,” says Hensel.

When a user tries to go beyond the free spread, he or she is presented with a sub offer or, if already a print subscriber, an offer to view the magazine for free in exchange for an email address. The goal is to create a community of readers who will sample new magazines and hopefully become either new or more highly engaged subscribers.

Coverleaf will help foster this by hiring blogging editors who will provide “snippets” or teasers on the home page pointing to new and interesting content in the magazines. Eventually, Coverleaf plans to have a dedicated editor for each category, which so far includes women’s, parenting, cooking and food, fashion and style, home and garden, sports and adventure, health and fitness, and craft and Do-It-Yourself.