Infomedia 18 - A Case Study

India's #1 publisher of special interest magazines

Infomedia 18 Limited is India's leading media company with strong market presence in business directories, magazine publishing, printing services and publishing outsourcing. Infomedia 18 is a publicly listed company on BSE and NSE, and is controlled by Television 18 India Limited. Infomedia 18 publishes leading magazines such as Overdrive, Chip, Better Photography, AV Max, Better Interiors, T3 and Entrepreneur to address communities of enthusiasts, hobbyists and specialists in fast-growing special interest areas. Infomedia 18 also publishes a dozen B2B magazines such as Search, Modern Medicare, Modern Machine Tools and Auto Monitor to bring together buyers and sellers in key industry verticals.

Infomedia 18 magazines reaches over a million readers per month through 40,000+ news-stands and outlets across 400+ cities. The most popular way of subscribing to these magazines is to first pick up a copy at the stand, fill out the form in the magazine, mail it to Infomedia 18 with a cheque or DD, and then receive the first issue within 2-6 weeks depending on when the payment was cleared. A handful of people in the subscription team ensure that subscription ids are assigned to all payments received from customers, ensure timely delivery of each issue, manage renewals and manage requests such as address change, missing copy, and other exceptions. Customers can reach this team at an office extension or call a toll-free number managed by a different group to shield the team from a barrage of live inquiries while ensuring that inquiries are routed to the right person to resolve. As such, the team is not equipped to handle live customer responses and therefore converts live responses to a format they can address.

The combined media presence of Television 18 group companies gives Infomedia 18 a unique opportunity to reach out to diverse consumers and harvest niche users for their magazines. Consumers can respond to an SMS keyword & short-code flashed on TV to receive a callback and assist them in subscribing to their favorite magazine. Expired subscriptions that do not renew by mail also result in a large database of potential subscribers. Several other offline & online media campaigns result in a database of qualified customers who have expressed an interest in subscribing to a magazine. Direct response campaigns to current subscribers generate a good deal of interest in new magazines and products launched. Since the subscription team was built for supporting subscriptions through mail, it is unable to keep up with the demands of direct customer response. As a result, thousands of potential subscribers drop out and Infomedia 18 cannot reap the benefits of several opportunities in a scalable & focused way.

The phone pe deal solution

When Infomedia 18 first considered phone pe deal to manage direct responses for magazine subscriptions, they were somewhat aware of the power as well as complexities of phone commerce as an alternate channel. While the value proposition was clear, there was risk associated with sudden migration to a new system. Infomedia 18 took a pragmatic approach and tested phone pe deal one bite at a time. In the first month of being live, phone pe deal was managing SMS responses and renewals for select magazines and was being tested for conversion rates. In the second month of being live, phone pe deal was highlighted on eshop.infomedia18.in as a way to subscribe on phone by calling 0-98-3333-1947. In the third month of being live, phone pe deal was highlighted in the subscription form of all Infomedia 18 magazines as an alternate method to subscribe by phone. The top three things that phone pe deal brings to the table for Infomedia 18 are:

1. Alternate channel at scale. The phone pe deal platform is built specifically for converting live consumer response end-to-end. Customers are pleasantly surprised with the experience and Infomedia 18 experiences a streamlined process. Instead of seeing direct response as overhead, the focus is to scale direct response quickly.
2. Reporting and analytics. The phone pe deal response management system comprehensively reports the conversion pipeline in real-time. Monitoring response and conversions by location, magazine, campaign, etc. reveals trends that were otherwise inaccessible.
3. Fixed cost to variable cost. A stand-alone phone process that was earlier incurring a fixed cost without completely replacing existing efforts, is now transformed to a variable cost channel that complements brick-and-mortar distribution.

A new sales channel

Media owners are in the business of reaching out to targeted consumers with differentiated content. In India, media owners are quickly understanding the power of combining media with phone commerce to monetize their inventory and get more ROI on their existing assets. Television and newspapers have led the innovation and validated new business models. Besides creating an alternate channel for subscriptions, Infomedia 18 and phone pe deal are focused on innovations that create new business opportunities for advertisers & brands, while bringing more value to the consumers.

For an assessment of how you can build an alternate channel using phone pe deal, please contact us.