BRC Response Rates- Niche Publications

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Permalink Reply by Michael Barbee on December 16, 2008 at 2:52pm

Ted,

First I am assuming you are running the ad together with the card. That will have the most impact. Also, will you be doing blow-ins, bind-ins or both? In my experience, your response will depend on how well your new publication sells on the newsstand. The better the magazine sells, the better your insert response rate will be. First, you'll need to estimate final sale based on your draw and calculate your insert sales as a percentage of copies sold..A better selling magazine might pull up to a 3% response (or better) off the number of copies sold (not draw distributed). On the lower end, you could see a 1% response on the number of copies sold. Also, are you putting your Web address on the cards? If so, some people will choose to order online and this will bring down the overall response on your inserts. Insert card sales have been falling for many magazines in recent years, which is likely due to the Internet. The good news is you are still getting the order -- just from a different source. Good luck.

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Permalink Reply by Ted Stazak on December 17, 2008 at 10:58am

Thanks Michael.

We thought that the BRC rate might be quite a bit higher, since we are launching into a niche market with limited competition. The 1%-3% range seems to be in-line with mainstream consumer magazines.

I noticed that you work for a publisher that serves multiple niche markets. What is the best response rate on a new launch that you have experienced?

To answer your questions:

We are only doing bind-ins. We avoided the blow-ins for the first issue. The house ads and the BRCs are not together. Does this appreciably increase the expected response rate?

We are estimating a 50% sell-through rate on the newsstand copies.

We have listed our web on-line subscription portal on the BRC and we have an 800# listed. We are using a specific promo code on the card that gives the subscriber a discount. This will allow us to track on-line and 800# responses driven from the BRC creative.

Thanks again.

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Permalink Reply by Margie Stocker on January 14, 2009 at 3:46pm

A good resource to use is telemarketing on a remittance basis. Let the vendor handle your invoicing and collection...your payup rate should be 65% or higher (depending on the source(s) you supply).
A successful vendor will be able to promote any product or service you like as well as be knowledgeable and understand ABC/BPA rules...including the fundamentals of circulation marketing.
Let me know if you'd like to discuss further, Ted.

Glad to see your name
Margie

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Permalink Reply by Dick Benson on December 21, 2008 at 11:44pm

We work with several publication and response rates can vary widely. We have experienced response as high as 8% but 2 or 3 % is more realistic. Some points:

We source by type of distribution- subs, public placement, newstand.
We source by placement and position
Make sure a billing series is in place and send an order confirmation soon as possible.
Link the order to a web offer.
Make sure your customer service teams knows what offers are in place.

Bind in order forms can be a great source of new orders- but as with any source tracking results and the renewal of the efforts is important to determine the longterm profitability.

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