Direct Response

When I was in my late teens I saved up all my money (about $100 or so - my family was poor) and purchased a 12-month subscription to a popular US-based geek magazine. Each month I received the magazine in its brown paper wrapper usually somewhat worse for wear after the trip around the planet - it wasn't until a year later that they moved to the more durable, and enviromentally unsound, clear plastic cover.

About nine-months into my subscription I noticed a resubscription direct mail inset within my magazine. Resubscribe for $30. Even with the abyssmal exchange rate, that was under half the price I had paid for the original subscription. You see, what the publishers of the magazine had failed to take into account was that other people other than their typical US and Canadian audience would subscribe, or in this case resubscribe. This was years before the popularity of the internet. So, of course I paid my $US30 and resubscribed. By the time the next subscription was due they had learnt their lesson and it was back up to $A100 again.

But anyway, the reason I bring this heartfelt story to your attention is that direct response magazine insets have a problem. There is no guarantee that the response will be immediate. It may be years before someone sends in the form and once the money has been accepted by them then consideration has taken place and they're stuck with the deal. If they're lucky they might catch it before the money has been accepted but that's too much of a chance to take. Recently, the reponse forms have included an expiry date which is one way around the dilemma. But this too can cause problems. For example a recent computer magazine that I looked at had an expiry date in excess of one year before the magazine was published.

And people wonder why magazine subscriptions are plummeting.