New Zealand’s no.1 magazine subscription retailer, isubscribe, has experienced 30% uplift in total subscription sales year on year (YoY) since the country returned to COVID Alert Level 3 on April 23, 2020.
Many individual magazine titles’ subscription sales are up over 100%. Magazine categories experiencing the strongest growth include lifestyle, home and garden and food magazines.
Hunter Drinan, Managing Director, isubscribe said, "We’ve seen a strong 20-30% increase in sales across those categories since 23 April. However individual titles’ performances show an even more dramatic and positive picture.”
• NZ Geographic magazine subscription sales are up over 500% YoY for the period
• Kiwi Gardener magazine is up 261%
• homestyle magazine is up 200%
• NZ Life & Leisure magazine is up 186%
“It’s really encouraging to see such a turn around given the immense uncertainty and concern for the sector’s future, particularly when level 4 restrictions preventing the printing of magazines came into force.” "Resuming our media spend, particularly radio, has helped our magazine subscription sales bounce back, together with the increased desire for magazine products.
“These results demonstrate that print magazines are still a much loved source of information and inspiration and will be for many years to come. " said Drinan.
While print is still king, digital subscriptions, typically a much smaller proportion of the overall magazine subscription market, have also experienced a huge uplift in recent weeks. Total digital subscriptions have jumped 300% in volume since 23 April.
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