Presteligence’s My News…On the Go offered the same features as what they currently used plus a lower monthly fee. "The ease of use for readers was key", says Mike Dampman, Circulation Operation Supervisor. "We knew we were going to introduce the e-edition to a larger audience so the ease of use for readers was a key component in selecting a vendor. My News…On the Go is extremely user friendly."

Seamless Transition

Greater Philadelphia Media (GPM) wanted the transition of software to be as translucent as possible to its current subscribers. Presteligence created accounts for GPM’s existing subscribers with their same user names and a ‘generic’ password since their existing password with the ePaper vendor was unavailable to export. This worked well, according to Dampman, "I sent out an email to our users alerting them to the exciting change with some instruction on how to proceed." The transition delivered positive results as the site is much easier to navigate. No subscribers chose to discontinue service.

New Subscribers

With the launch of a new service, GPM focused on promotional efforts for the e-edition. They introduced it to the Newspaper in Education program, allowing over 200 teachers to integrate My News…On the Go into their lesson plans. Teachers have one login which gives them the ability to register for keyword notifications, make comments and bookmark pages and stories. Students have a read-only version with their login.

GPM also began promoting My News…On the Go e-edition at physical locations, like grocery stores, at the same time they promoted the print subscriptions. For an additional fee, subscribers can access their news anytime, anywhere for the past 30 days. This includes email notifications when the paper is available in the morning. Within 6 months of launching My News…On the Go, Greater Philadelphia’s papers have increased their e-edition subscribers by 329%!

Ongoing Success

Each of these different type of subscribers are assigned a subscription type so GPM can easily run reports to see what type of subscribers are reading the paper. They are seeing an average of almost 2500 page views per day. Most recently, GPM initiated contact with PARADE magazine for inclusion in the e-edition, which is encouraged by the magazine. PARADE was given their own FTP login information to upload the magazine PDFs. The pages are inserted as their own section into the paper, just like print.