April Case Study Featuring Baltimore Magazine

The April 2010 issue of our ‘Sample of the Month’ newsletter is a follow up to the case study we featured last year highlighting our client Baltimore Magazine and their faux label package.

Quick Summary

To summarize last year’s case study: Baltimore Magazine’s control was a simple monarch voucher package with a small 4-color form and BRE. In their December 2008 mailing, they tested this control against a more expensive faux label package that performed very well, but lost to the voucher due to its higher cost per net order.

New Control

Baltimore Magazine’s Circulation Director saw potential in the faux label package. Since the magazine only sends out direct mail once per year, she didn’t want to wait until December 2010 to roll out with the new package. As a result, she made the faux label package the control in their December 2009 mailing and included a panel that had a less expensive yellow buckslip versus the previous 4-color buckslip.

The Results

Baltimore Magazine ended up with a much higher net response than they had budgeted, resulting in about 2,000 more orders than the 2008 campaign. Looking at the 2009 responses by panel, the panel with the 4-color buckslip and the panel with the yellow buckslip netted almost the same amount of orders. The cost per net order on the yellow buckslip package, however, was about 7% less than the 4-color buckslip package.

Future Plans

Based on the 2009 mailing, the control for the 2010 campaign will be the faux label package with the less expensive yellow buckslip.

Never underestimate the potential effectiveness of small, simple changes.

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