Who is Reading Your Magazine?

How well do we know our audiences? If you're publishing a magazine for a small liberal arts college you probably have a pretty good idea of who your reader is. But if you are a big state university publishing 100k+ copies, do you really know who is reading your magazine? It is one of the unique challenges I see that editors of alumni magazines face. I got my start in the consumer magazine world where the reader demographics were much more focused. But for an alumni magazine there is a broad age range, multiple genders, locations, and interests to consider. So how do you know if your magazine is engaging and not going right to the recycling bin? 

Survey Your Audience

Quick reader surveys can give you feedback on what interests your reader. Some of our clients follow-up each issue with a quick survey, asking their readership which articles they preferred, how much time they spent with the issue, and what types of content they want to see in the magazine. If the yoga studio I go to every week can send me a follow-up survey (total overkill) then an annual or bi-annual survey to your readers is not intrusive. Of course, you will only hear from a select few, but aren’t those your engaged readers?

Also consider a more in-depth survey to delve into the demographics of your audience: Beyond age, location, interests, and ties to the school ask questions to understand their habits. What else are they reading? Where are they reading your magazine? How are they finding your digital content? What's catching their eye? How well does the magazine represent the school?  What increases their sense of connection, nostalgia, or pride with respect to their alma mater? 

Market Researcher, Anne Lee Groves notes, “I was chatting with some other market research friends and one said that with the political, economic, and social landscape changing so incredibly quickly these days, audience insights you may have previously gathered are now irrelevant because people's priorities, fears, and hopes are shifting so rapidly. You can imagine that, for example, a car purchase today will have very different consideration factors today vs. 6 or even 2 or 3 months ago. Same goes for college applications and donation decisions.”

Utilize Digital Data

Publishing a magazine for your community extends beyond print and developing a content strategy is crucial. One of the benefits of having a digital presence is that it allows for quick data. You might think that the cover story you spent months reporting and writing is a top pick, only to find out a short piece in the front-of-book widely appealed to your readers.

The metrics pulled from digital engagement — including demographics, devices, pageviews and time spent on page — can help to finetune the editorial plan. Not just which stories you tell but how you tell them.

Develop Audience Personas

With a broad audience it is imperative to define who is primary, secondary, and beyond. Having this framework will help filter content and priorities. We all know that the magazine is a coveted channel for storytelling and at times institutional leadership wants to publish content that doesn't align with the editorial plan. Having audience profiles helps make the arguments that your readership will not be interested and there are more suitable channels. Or if rankings professionals are one of your core audiences then sharing accolades is important.

Take time to develop readers' profiles—four to six is ideal—and update them at least every other year, if not more frequently. These personas, along with your mission statement, will help to focus the stories.

Update Your Mailing List

I have lost track of the times a client has mentioned how out-of-date their mailing list is, noting households that get more than one copy, they have out-of-date addresses, or don’t have a strategy for overseas recipients who increase mailing cost exponentially. 

Our Georgetown McDonough client, Teresa Mannix, Associate Dean and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer concurs, “This is a huge issue at most schools. While my team produces the magazine, we rely on the ecosystem of both the Georgetown University and McDonough School of Business alumni offices to maintain the database. I'd say that the larger the school, the harder this is just due to the scale of the database. But even for small schools, they might not have the resources to devote to the constant updates that need to be made.” She shared some tips for updating the mailing list:

Low cost: Rely on bouncebacks on email or returned mailings (pay extra for the information from the post office about undeliverable addresses and publicize a link or email for alumni to update their information.

Medium cost: Run a campaign proactively asking alumni to update their information. Or engage with a vendor that will help you build an alumni directory at a low cost.

High cost: Hire a firm whose job it is to keep alumni emails and mailing addresses up to date. They do this behind the scenes and feed that information into the school's systems.

As paper and mailing costs rise and budgets tighten the cost of publishing the magazine will be scrutinized. Therefore there should be investment in making sure people get your magazine—and just one copy.

Plan for the Outlier

Full disclosure, despite having been an art director for alumni magazines for the past 25+ years, I actually did not receive one from either of my alma maters, until recently. I am proud to say that I now receive the Sibley winning VCU Magazine. I will admit I was suspicious when I first received it—what alumni profile did I fit? I even asked Jay Davenport, Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations, if I was now getting it because I was an alumni of a certain age. The answer was that 1) they had launched the magazine in Fall 2022 and 2) they did have a target audience, publishing 85K copies of the first issue and then after an overwhelming positive response they increased the mailing to 120k. 

Kristen Caldwell, Executive Director, Donor and Alumni Relations (DAR) Communications, shared that VCU has a complex system for evaluating who receives the magazine, including previous donors, engaged alumni, members of giving societies, DAR staff, and VCU faculty and staff—all based on the engagement with the university and potential as brand ambassadors. For each issue they run a fresh mailing list and thoughtfully add people to the list—and once you are on the list you stay on. “In the past someone might receive one issue and then not the next creating disruption. We want them to know that once they get the magazine they will continue to get it,” notes Caldwell.

I graduated from VCU in 1989, live in the Northeast, and haven't been back since before the pandemic. Yet here I am feeling more connected with the school than I have been in years. I have always been proud to have attended VCU and would recommend it to anyone considering going, but now I am more informed about what it is like there today.

At the end of the day the magazine needs to be engaging, we all know that. And your readership will never be as focused as consumer magazines. But the more you can know about your readers—from how engaged they are to what their interests are—the more successful your magazine will be.