Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Increases Mail Budget

THANKS TO A multimillion-dollar database investment in 2000, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will shift resources from telemarketing to direct mail this year and try to do a better job of targeting in both channels.

The paper has boosted its mail budget by 50% and expects to send out 470,000 acquisition pieces, compared with roughly 200,000 last year. But the drops will be smaller and more segmented than those the paper has been mailing in recent years.

In 2001, for example, the Journal Sentinel conducted one 70,000-piece mailing during the first quarter. This year, it mailed 130,000 pieces in five separate efforts, each targeting a special reader group.

One of these, a 20,000-piece drop, went to a list of golfers obtained from customer data services firm Acxiom Corp., and to golf contest entrants and participants in First Tee, a children's golf program. These prospects were offered tickets to a Wisconsin golf show as an incentive for ordering 26 weeks of seven-day delivery.

The pieces touted the paper's increased golf coverage — three special sections a year on the sport, and weekly reports on local courses.

Results for the $5,000 February mailing were not available at press time. But pay-up rates on direct mail subscriptions seem to be strong. And the initial test showed that people responding to postal offers take longer-term subscriptions and have a lower rate of bad pay than those coming in through telemarketing.

“We're doing better on margin this year than in years past,” said Tom Martin, the Journal Sentinel's database manager. “The quality of orders is higher.”

One other 20,000-piece campaign was sent out during the quarter.

Mailings Cost Less

One of the benefits of mail over telemarketing is that it's cheaper.

“Most of our mail is bulk,” Martin explained. “We try to be frugal.”

In addition, prospects may ask to be placed on the paper's do-not-call list. Once they are on the list, they can't be contacted even if the Journal Sentinel has a message that may be of interest to them.

However, the paper has not abandoned the telemarketing channel. Instead, as with direct mail, it will focus on smaller, more targeted efforts.

Martin anticipates that telemarketing will generate approximately 50% of the paper's new subscribers this year, compared with 60% to 70% in 2001.

The channel is especially useful in campaigns tied to current events. For example, when the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks signed a high-profile player last October, the Journal Sentinel immediately began phoning to capture hoops fans.

The Bucks denied the paper's request for the team's season ticket holder list, so the Journal Sentinel acquired a list of Wisconsin-area residents with an interest in professional basketball from Acxiom. The paper can import data from any source thanks to Group 1 Software's DM 1, which serves as the foundation of its database.

“We figured [these prospects] were Bucks fans,” Martin said.

He figured right, and the campaign quickly turned around. The morning after the Bucks made their announcement, Martin ordered the file and began to write a telemarketing script. By the time DM 1 had merge/purged the file with the paper's existing subscriber base, Martin's team had written a telemarketing script touting the paper's sportswriters.

The Journal Sentinel wound up with roughly 5,000 names, and closed sales on more than 13% of them. By comparison, campaigns based on random dialing usually net between a 2% and 3% close rate.

“These were full-rate, seven-day subscriptions,” Martin said. “It was great. The results were like those we have for new movers.”

What's more, the Bucks campaign drew 75% fewer do-not-call requests than the paper's white pages-based campaigns.

“Either way it's a no sale, but [with the targeted messages] we are not building a list that says ‘Don't call us,’ which is a pretty significant detriment when that list gets bigger,” Martin said.

The Journal Sentinel has a circulation of 430,000 Sunday and 250,000 daily readers. Given the economic climate and the probability that the population won't grow much over the next five years, the paper would be happy to maintain subscriber levels, Martin added.