Customer magazines

Every company's success is based on stakeholders who trust and endorse the company, whether as buyers, investors, employees or opinion leaders. They all perceive a company in a very personal way and judge both emotionally in terms of the company's personality and rationally in terms of products, sustainability, performance or other measurable factors. This means that successful companies are both emotionally and rationally convincing and have earned the trust of their stakeholders. Companies gain this trust not least by maintaining an honest and transparent dialogue about their activities.

Credible source of information

An ideal platform to cultivate this trustworthy dialogue in terms of understanding both values and products of a company is a customer magazine. This can appeal to stakeholders both emotionally and rationally. In addition, a regularly published customer magazine is used continuously and intensively by readers, as it is regarded as a competent and credible source of information.

Dialog relies on trust

The assessment of Credit Suisse's client magazine "bulletin", for example, revealed that "many readers want to recommend the magazine to others and that they have a better image of their bank after reading it. In addition, eight out of ten browse through all five issues in a year, and they do so for quite a long time: on average, clients read an issue for 45 minutes." Customer magazines thus make an important contribution to trust and customer loyalty within reputation management.

Positioning through authenticity

The customer magazine offers an ideal platform for bringing the company and its offerings closer to customers. In order to achieve a stringent perception of the company and strengthen its positioning, the content and form are aligned with the corporate identity, strategy and philosophy. Authenticity in the choice and preparation of topics is just as important as the consistency of quality and message with the sender. A traditional Swiss company like Swisslife, for example, chooses an approach in which Swiss stories play an important role. A high-tech company like IBM, on the other hand, focuses more on technical innovations that are of interest to its stakeholders.

Information through entertainment

Customer magazines are interesting for their stakeholders when they offer entertainment and information in equal measure. Stories from the company are just as necessary as topics from the corporate environment that are only indirectly related to the company but offer an exciting new perspective or an additional benefit for the stakeholders. By telling and conveying them in a credible way, they simultaneously demonstrate competence. However, those who only tell their own stories jeopardize credibility and bore readers. Therefore, a skilful mixing of topics of own and other people's stories is suitable.

Swisslife, for example, dedicates each issue of its customer magazine "Swisslife " to a topic that is loosely connected with the insurance company: "City stories", "1750 metres above sea level" or "The world of the automobile".

Creating exciting perspectives

"Young people". Thus, the view beyond the company's own "edge of the plate" is already guaranteed with the choice of topic. Customers can look forward to a wide variety of stories about life and people in Switzerland. This provides an entertaining reference to Swisslife, as the company deals with its customers in all phases of life. Nevertheless, background information on specific services, aimed at direct interaction or even a business transaction with the customer, is not lacking. In this way, Swisslife offers entertainment and information at the same time.

Trusted content

In order to maintain an honest dialogue with stakeholders, trustworthy and truthful content is imperative. Only those who are able to convey transparency and truthfulness can achieve credibility. For this purpose, serious, journalistically prepared forms of presentation that offer neutrality are preferable to a classic PR text. The reports should be carefully researched, professionally competent and offer a high text quality.

"Verde", Coop's magazine for organic and sustainability, for example, was launched to give the topic a face and bring the trustworthiness of the products closer to the readers. With background reports written by independent journalists, readers learn what it takes for a product to be labeled organic or sustainable on the shelf. At the same time, the stories put the focus on people from all over the world who produce sustainably. Stories that convey authenticity and thus educate readers about the complex background of sustainability in an entertaining way.

Interaction for customer loyalty

Another success factor of the customer magazine is interaction. As the example of Swisslife shows, concrete offers that aim at an interaction with the customer are definitely desirable. If the information is presented in such a way that it unobtrusively arouses curiosity, the desire can be generated to decide directly in favour of a service or at least to find out more about it. This moment should be used. In order to promote interaction, it is advisable to offer exclusive offers for readers or to involve them via other channels, which can be implemented in particular with a cross-media approach. Moreover, continuity creates a long-term effect. If contact is continuously maintained via this channel, the chance of interaction is significantly higher. In this way, a customer magazine is an efficient instrument for customer loyalty and for the successful positioning of companies and products on the market.

Crossmedia - added value included

Print products have the clear advantage that they are used longer on average. Nevertheless, electronic media are unavoidable. Reader behavior has changed and will continue to shift. Media usage is already possible practically everywhere. If a customer magazine is implemented on as many channels as possible, the possibility of contact with the desired stakeholders increases accordingly. The new media thus offer attractive ways of maintaining even more intensive contact with customers. Lufthansa Magazine makes clever use of such a new channel: With the December 2012 issue, a dedicated application for the iPad appeared for the first time. While Lufthansa customers were previously only able to receive the magazine during a flight, the free iPad app now provides a new way to bind interested readers - in addition to existing customers - to the company, even when they are not flying.

In the case of cross-media implementation, topic management is necessary, which requires careful

Top priority: credibility

The choice of media is tailored to the company and the content, and the realisation is adapted to the respective medium. A mobile device has different requirements and demands than a web implementation or a Facebook page. In addition, the variety of media requires skilful coordination so that a consistent image of the company is created.

It is also essential with electronic media to create added value. It is pointless to display the existing information 1:1 on the web or to show the same static images on the iPad. Additional information supported by video, audio or animation promises increased customer interest and thus closer customer loyalty.

Each issue of the Lufthansa magazine in the app version therefore contains multimedia functions such as videos, various types of image galleries and animations in addition to the editorial articles. The first issue features a special on the Airbus A380 - a film showing the giant jet in flight and an interactive 360-degree view of the cockpit.

Moreover, electronic media offer the advantage that direct dialogue is possible without detours. For example, forums, contact forms or hyperlinks with company offers provide the customer with the opportunity to contact the company directly and the company with the advantage of selling possible offers directly. Feedback options are also recommended. After all, those who skilfully use them to respond to inputs and suggestions cultivate transparent dialogue and thus ensure a long-term basis of trust.