The collaboration follows the recent expansion of the service’s redemption network into Tesco and Waitrose supermarkets, says HH&S. Alongside WHSmith and extensive coverage across the UK’s 40,000 convenience stores, confectioners, tobacconists and newsagents through the PayPoint and Payzone networks, this creates a significant retail footprint through which publishers can reach and serve readers.
PayPoint and HH&S have a longstanding history, added the company. Their relationship dates back to 2007, through i-movo, when they launched the UK’s first open-loop contactless payment card for the Evening Standard. The organisations have since worked extensively across the print media sector, including the management of The i Paper subscription scheme.
David Tymm, innovations director at PayPoint said: “Magazine publishing has its own particular commercial dynamics, readership patterns and requirements. HH&S has a depth of knowledge and experience in this market that makes them an ideal organisation for us to work with. At PayPoint, we have developed a range of digital voucher capabilities and techniques for acquiring, retaining and serving customers. By combining these with HH&S’s specialist understanding of magazine publishing, we believe there is considerable scope to develop solutions specifically around the needs of publishers and their readers.”
Mike Halstead, managing director of HH&S said: “Magazine popularity in the UK remains strong, reaching more than 37 million adults every month, but with over 8,000 titles competing for attention, building reader loyalty and developing products that reflect changing reader preferences are increasingly important differentiators, while the quality of the content itself remains paramount.”
“With more than 35 years’ experience in magazine publishing, our role has always been to understand what publishers and their readers need and identify the marketing, fulfilment and technology solutions that can best deliver it.
“What particularly interests us about i-movo is the opportunity to rethink how retail vouchers can be used within the magazine sector. The convenience of having vouchers on your phone, the additional security and control of digital fulfilment, and importantly the ability to track individual voucher redemptions all open up new opportunities for publishers.
“Rather than simply using vouchers to fulfil a traditional subscription, publishers can develop a much more flexible range of retail-based offers, from free or discounted issues to flexible and full subscriptions. Importantly, the ability to track redemptions means that one offer can trigger the next, encouraging repeat purchase and building a longer-term relationship with the reader.
“Combined with i-movo’s expanding retail footprint, we believe this has the potential to make digital retail vouchers an important new marketing and fulfilment channel for magazine publishers. We are delighted to be working with PayPoint to explore and develop these opportunities.”
You can find out more about HH&S in our Publishing Services Directory.
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