Email newsletter becomes the first to gain ABC figure

A small online publisher has beaten the press establishment to gain the first ABC Electronic official audit of distribution for a UK-based email publication.

Headstar, a Brighton-based company, has set this publishing benchmark with 'e-government bulletin', an email-only title with a six-year history covering government, politics and democracy in the Internet age.

Following a rigorous audit process that validated live email addresses, the ABC Electronic certified figure for December shows that the publications fully opt-in distribution was 6,864.

Dan Jellinek, managing director of Headstar, said: "We knew that our email newsletter was achieving a significant penetration to our target audience but wanted to prove it. ABC Electronic was the natural choice as we wanted to demonstrate the same level of accountability for our virtual publication as other organisations have for print media.

"I am delighted that a specialist publishing house like ours is making the pace in email publishing in its purest form. This new development is a milestone in specialist trade publishing with strong potential for consumer and national news publishing as well. It also spells the arrival of email as a viable and robust advertising medium."

ABC Electronic, a subsidiary of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), is a not-for-profit, industry-owned organisation that works with, and on behalf of, advertisers, media buyers and media owners to provide third party, independent auditing services. It is used by media planners and owners trust to verify electronic media and website traffic statistics to agreed industry standards, as defined by JICWEBS (The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards) - itself created by the UK media industry.

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