Free gift card to email

Email, in conjunction with Web sites, is already showing real promise as a gift marketing channel

Proving that the wise circulator never looks a gift horse in the mouth, many took their holiday appeals to the Internet in 1999--and saw these nascent efforts produce some promising results.

Men's Health adapted a traditional new businesss sweeps package to create an email promotion that was sent to 110,000 names acquired through the publication's weekly electronic newsletter. "The email offered a special holiday gift rate, delayed billing, a no-purchase-necessary invitation to enter a $300,000 'You Can Win It' sweepstakes and a free copy of the 128-page book, "The Best of Men's Health," for the donor," reports consumer marketing manager John Phalen. "The response went like gangbusters. The letter contained a link which the recipient could click on to arrive directly at our Web site. We got a 10 percent click-through and 335 new subscriptions." Considering the effort's low cost, and the profitability of gift subs, this was quite encouraging. In fact, although premiums are used in all of Rodale's promotions, this email effort was more successful than last year's cold donor direct mail campaign--a sweeps promotion that produced "dismal" results, says Phalen. "The email package proved to be a good marketing technique," he adds. "Between now and next Christmas, I definitely expect that we'll do another electronic gift offer."

Outside's email gift promotion to its opt-in email addresses "rocked," says consumer marketing director Michele Givens. "It outperformed our cold donor mail efforts by more than 100 percent, and 60 percent of these orders were paid for up front with credit cards."

Furthermore, this was not a discounted offer, and no premium was used. "We emailed the promotion in early December, using a simple, text-only format," Givens says. "The copy was short and to the point and included an embedded link to a gift sub sales page, which resided on our server, and was then linked to an order form residing on the fulfillment bureau's server."

Because the offer went out close to the holiday, Outside promised gift-givers that their friends and family would receive a gift card announcing the gift subscription within three days. This meant doing some of the gift card fulfillment in-house, but proved well worth it. "We all got an incredible rush from these results," Givens enthuses. "You can be sure we're looking for more creative ways to leverage email and the Internet in the year 2000, keeping consumers' concerns about email glut and privacy in mind. I'm sure we'll test gift renewals via email."

Outside of the virtual world, Givens includes gift offers in every issue, and promotes gifts through wraps, stuffers, telemarketing and other means. And she says she'd also like to exchange some portion of Outside's gift file with another sub marketer to see if both parties can increase their gift files by cross-promoting to known gift-givers.

Enews.com also reports good results from an email promotion for its new service, Speedy Delivery. "Because of the Internet, we believe that magazines can be more of a gift product than they ever were before," says marketing manager David Gitow. The email promotion offered a free bonus issue that could be wrapped and shipped to the recipient within four to eight days, with a personalized gift card. The service was also promoted on the Web site. Enews is now considering similar gift promotions for Mother's Day and Father's Day.

Taking the email channel in another direction, GDS's New Media Services Group will, beginning in the second quarter, offer a new holiday service that interactively processes gift transactions and provides donors with the opportunity to email a personalized gift card to donees.

"It's comparable to the cards offered by bluemountain.com," explains Annette Duffy, business manager. "Donors are given the opportunity to send a personalized note with their cards, and publishers save on traditional mailing costs." The gift form dynamically generates a page according to response key, allowing publishers flexibility in designing gift promotions.

Naturally, without email efforts, the performance of gift offers on Web sites tends to closely reflect the level of popularity of a site, as well as how much the online gift ordering option has been promoted elsewhere. But marketers do report seeing results increase each year, as graphics and offers become more effective.

Sunset VP, consumer marketing Rob Gursha won't cite specifics, but says that the magazine's site, with a gift sub page that featured a blinking-nosed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as the ordering icon, drew twice as many gift orders as last year's page.

At Cooking Light, 25 percent of all Internet orders are gift subscriptions, according to Internet marketing manager Michael Woodrum. The magazine's Web site was relaunched this past November 1, with a targeted plan to promote online holiday shopping. The gift page showed a festive-looking CL cover and a 50 percent-off offer. Now, the company plans to market gift subs for other holidays, starting with Mother's Day.

At Red Herring, gift offers have been online for about two years, producing a steady stream of orders each month, according to VP, consumer marketing June Sargent. The company also plans to do a gift upsell on its post-order thank you/confirmation page, and is planning to supplement a very successful two-for-one direct mail campaign with an email version of the same offer. Holiday and other gift subs doubled this year--as did overall traffic on the recently relaunched site, Sargent reports. "We hope to see this growth curve continue," she says.

SWEEPS: Still Kickin' at Playboy

Although sweeps have been taking it on the chin for years now, they can still be extremely strong in the gift category, according to Playboy retention marketing manager Erin O'Mara. In fact, Playboy uses sweeps in both its cold donor and donor renewal programs, in conjunction with list modeling.

"The cold donor promotion is really the workhorse of our gift plan. It brings us the most new orders and also allows us the flexibility to test ideas and to get to know our customers," says O'Mara. "Each section of our subscriber file receives two to four efforts, depending on its model ranking or performance."

The first effort in the four-effort series is polybagged with the October issue, to selected subscribers. The issue is also cover-wrapped with a tie-in message. Polybagging the effort instead of mailing saves over 70 percent in postage costs, and also achieves other cost savings. "We polybag every issue anyway, so it's a fixed cost. We just use a promotional, printed bag which allows us to replace the expensive paper envelope."

"When we use attached mail, we cannot personalize the package because of technical constraints. We have worked around the technical issues by turning the prospect's address into an involvement device. Instead of printing the address directly onto the form, the address information, the early bird deadline and the sweepstakes numbers are ink-jet-printed onto a label, which we call the entry label. The subscriber is instructed to place the label on the entry form to be eligible for the sweepstakes and to subscribe.

The large package covers the whole issue, and when unfolded, the form inside is 22" X 10." "We've tried cheaper formats, but our audience is really responding well to the traditional sweepstakes look," says O'Mara, who adds that the large size also provides ample room for promoting the sweeps and selling the gift subs.

The promotion is currently themed "Wildest Dreams," but the theme and structure change every two years. The contest features a $100,000 grand prize, a $25,600 early-bird prize, cars and electronics, but also plays heavily on Playboy-related prizes, including branded merchandise, vacations to Playboy Club or casino locations, New Year's Eve at the Playboy Mansion, or a date with a Playmate. "This promotion pays attention to what our readers like," O'Mara stresses. "A simple, editorial-based sweepstakes is a very strong sell to our subscribers."

A simpler, editorial-based prize is more effective for the publication's donor renewal program, she adds. "The donor renewal sweeps awards one winner entry to Hef's New Year's Eve party. There are 10 efforts, which begin mailing in June. The first effort features a personalized letter and form. The message reads, The person named here received a gift from you last year[ldots]don't you want to renew that gift this year?'"

This program also employs editorially-based premiums, such as pictorials and videos. "We've found that reserving exclusive premiums for gift-givers gives us an additional lift," O'Mara reports. "For Playboy , the right premium can boost response by as much as 30 percent."