Allrecipes Translates Its Online Data to Print Success

This interview is a part of a larger feature documenting some of the most exciting magazine launches and relaunches of the past two years. Click here to view more interviews with publishers of newly launched or relaunched titles. While the magazine industry as a whole may be seeing print revenues shrinking, publishers with powerful digital brands are still finding print to be a viable product. Allrecipes.com, a 16-year-old brand purchased by Meredith in 2012, took advantage of its online brand and readership data by launching a print edition in November 2013. Print has proven to be the best route for Allrecipes.com to monetize its content and mobilize part of its 38-million-plus monthly readers. Since its launch Allrecipes has experienced dramatic growth, jumping from an initial rate base of 500,000 to over 900,000 in its upcoming October issue. Following publisher Steven Grune discusses how Allrecipes uses its extensive online data to curate its print content and how that content acts as a unique extension of Allrecipes.com's vibrant online community. What does the print product accomplish that digital doesn't? What the magazine has allowed us to do is to garner revenue from consumers. It is very exciting and speaks volumes about the fact that print can deliver content in a way that no other media can. We are able to curate the 60,000+ recipes that are on Allrecipes.com and take the top-rated or most-reviewed recipes and present them in the way that print does so well. Do you include original content as well? Yes, absolutely. We have profiles of individuals behind the recipes. Those are our celebrities, if you will, highlighting real people from the website who discuss the story behind their recipe. We also have How To's -- how to cut a chicken, how to break open a lobster. We make those very visual and go beyond just the recipes themselves. How do you convert unpaid digital readers into paid print readers? The primary subscribers are really coming to us through the banner ads we have. They allow us the ability to track consumers that know the brand and want to get that information in an ongoing way in print. We also attract readers through testing different offers. We promote our base subscription offer on the site: $12 for one year of six issues and $18 for two years. We've also tested a three-issue, half-year subscription. What sets Allrecipes apart from competitor food magazines? What is unique about Allrecipes is that we come from a digital brand. We utilize data from an editorial standpoint to find out what this community of 38 million is searching for at any given time and curate that into a print product. We have this scientifically developed data-driven editorial calendar, which is unique in the marketplace. Almost no one has that capability because few have the audience data that Allrecipes.com has. The tone and tenor of the magazine is one of community, accessibility, and that social element is coming through in print, which is pretty unique. We're an extension of Allrecipes.com and you are part of larger community as you read the print product. Do you have a digital version of the magazine? We have a digital replica edition on Apple, Google Play, and Nook. It's performing pretty well. It's not a large part of our subscriber base right now. We are trying to link the print space with the digital space by using Blippar mobile activation. We used Blippar in the February/March issue. We have such great digital assets to use for this so we've been using it in every issue since. We're seeing an increase in unique visitors as well as page enhancements on every issue. It's another link from the print product back to the digital product.

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Allrecipes Translates Its Online Data to Print Success

Ellen Harvey

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Ellen Harvey