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THE FINAL WORD ON INSERT MEDIA
“The true extent of risk associated with press inserts needs be exposed and national newspapers and magazines need to be encouraged to be more open and transparent about errors in insertion and shortfalls in circulation as soon as they occur.”
That’s why I’ve decided to take the unusual step of publishing commercially sensitive details of our return on ad spend (ROI) across press inserts, off-the-page press advertising, digital advertising and direct mail. I’ll be doing that over the course of the coming weeks through Direct Commerce online magazine and emails.
With so many issues surrounding press inserts, I am now migrating a large proportion of Scotts & Co’s advertising budget from press inserts to direct mail. Part of the reason for this is that it’s in the home where purchase decisions are being made these days. When you evaluate all the metrics, no other form of advertising can compete with personally addressed mail. There’s no wastage, no circulation shortfall, no squabbles with publishers, no risk of existing customers responding to your 20 per cent Off ‘new customer’ offer. And with direct mail we can exert greater control over the timing of sales demand, to protect our hard-pressed call centres from unforeseen spikes and troughs in demand. At Scotts we very rarely go for half measures. We’ve already more than doubled our mailing quantities in the second half of 2020, from 8.7m to 21m. I don’t regret the migration away from inserts as response rates to our mailed catalogues have been astonishing, with over 100,000 new customers recruited and 88,000 dormant customers reactivated.
homeofdirectcommerce.com | Direct Commerce
If any of you have suffered similar experiences with inserts or are as disenchanted as I am by the lack of transparency offered by news publications, please get in touch and share your experiences. The true extent of risk associated with press inserts needs be exposed and national newspapers and magazines need to be encouraged to be more open and transparent about errors in insertion and shortfalls in circulation as soon as they occur.
I can recall that in November 1978, The Managing Directors or owners of the 8 biggest direct response advertisers and catalogue inserters got together for a grand dinner at the Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge, hosted by the late Bob Scott, then of Scotcade. This was the very first meeting of direct response advertisers. It was convened to create solidarity around a single issue – the most contentious issue of the time. Yes, you guessed it. It was the problem of shortfalls in circulation across national press media, and publishers’ reluctance to acknowledge them and issue credits! History has a habit of repeating itself. It is sad nevertheless that we have been unable to resolve this issue in the intervening period of 42 years!
Nigel@mailtrainmedia.com 69
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