Significant Living, a sister ministry of Total Living International, has acquired Today’s Christian magazine for an undisclosed sum.
Today’s Christian will relaunch as Significant Living’s Today’s Christian in January 2009. The two magazines will be fully combined as Significant Living by the middle of next year and are expected to reach 140,000 readers. As part of the transition, Today’s Christian will move from its digest-sized format to full-size. Significant Living currently has a distribution of 25,000 and a readership of 75,000.
“One of the difficulties today is starting from scratch to do subscriptions or membership acquisitions,” said Randy Swanson, EVP and CFO of Total Living International. “We looked at the demographics for Today’s Christian and saw that people reading that were almost identical to the readers of Significant Living. We saw an opportunity for a captive audience that was already readers, and we knew they liked the content and were very close in age and interest area to our readers, so it made sense to purchase that asset and then invite those people to become permanent fixtures to our magazine.”
Both magazines are geared toward middle-aged readers with an interest in Christianity and inspirational stories. Significant Living’s core age group runs from early-40’s onward, while Today’s Christian aims for the 50-55 year old range.
Promotional and premium offers are going out via e-mail and direct mail to promote the January relaunch of Significant Living’s Today’s Christian. Online lead generation also is part of the marketing mix. Bulk orders of Today’s Christian will continue to be available to churches under its new ownership.
Swanson said the goal is to keep around 60% of the current Today’s Christian subscriber base and continue to add to it with new readers throughout 2009.
The Significant Living staff will take on all duties for Today’s Christian, and new staff members will be hired in the circulation and advertising departments. Swanson expects the magazine’s former staff to stay on with parent company Christianity Today.
Christianity Today opted to sell Today’s Christian — one of its many titles — because the company is becoming more Internet-focused and is looking to fill a niche in Christian leadership.
