A couple of sentences at the top of the spread explain how
The Economist enables readers to be better prepared for changes with ahead-of-the curve reporting and insight in its monthly magazine. "One of the reasons we're a success is because we talk about things far in advance of anybody necessarily even paying attention to them. We were talking about America's housing crisis a few years ago ... and we had a correspondent talk about AIG back in 2002," Press comments.
The package is a test against a more businesslike #10 control package with a letter and reply. "This is an entirely new package, and it was so new and so different from our current control ... It's risky in a sense that it's not Direct Marketing 101 where you just change one thing and you're able to read the test, but it's kind of a breakthrough from things we've done before," Press shares. So far, the test is behind the control, but Press plans to look further at certain segments for which the new test format may have pulled a higher response.
Press says The Economist includes a landing page and offer code in most of its direct mail, and the URLs tend to pull about 20 percent of total response. In this test package, he's included a BRE to accept cash with order but says so far there hasn't been a lot of cash with replies.
Sent to national magazine lists, for all types of publications from Scientific American to Mother Jones, Press says it's hard to nail down his readership via typical demographics. "One of the challenges as a direct marketer is that you can't just buy a list and find The Economist customer, because the customer who's going to read us and the customer who's never going to pick us up may have the identical demographic profile. What makes a reader a reader is this need to be intellectually stimulated because they're curious about the world, and some people just aren't like that," he says. To better understand its audience, Press says The Economist invests in a lot of modeling.
Press is not certain he will send this package out again next year. "If the results don't pan out then we'll probably do something different than this package," he states. One thing is certain, Press has no plans to pull back on his direct mail efforts during the downturn. "Perhaps this gives us an opportunity, because if everyone else is cutting their marketing spend and we're not, we'll have a bigger footprint in the marketplace," he notes.
Focus Efforts on a Specific Market
"Direct mail is a very, very important part of what we do, but we're constantly trying to find new segments and channels and ... we use absolutely every channel you can imagine," shares Alan Press, SVP of marketing for the Americas for The Economist. With direct marketing, circulation, branding and advertising strategies all in play, Press says his organization tends to integrate those efforts through city-specific campaigns. "We often will have brand campaigns in several cities ... and what we try and do is join up our circulation efforts with our brand efforts and our ad marketing team, so we can all swoop in and focus on a specific market and leverage the opportunity that's there," he describes.
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