Highbrow magazines aren't above direct mail gimmickry.
By DAVE EGGERS
Free! Special offer! No obligation! It's that simple! Act now! Don't delay!
Though these words may sound like the desperate urgings of someone hocking Ginsu knives on Channel 66, they're actually produced by some of our best respected and seemingly less excitable literary outlets. Yes, it's direct mail time in magazineland.
"No risk. No strings. No gimmicks," screams the The Nation. "Send no money!" warns the Utne Reader. "Last chance!" shrieks the New York Review of Books. In their relentless pursuit of subscribers, even the most editorially restrained magazines are forced to stoop to the hyperbolic schtick of a traveling wonder-cure medicine salesman. We expect delirious and slippery offers from people selling diet pills and hair-growth sprays, but it's somehow disconcerting to read the same breathless, exclamation-point-riddled offage peddled by our most esteemed journals. It's like having Monty Hall sell you a Stradivarius.
You can hardly blame them. Though it would be nice if subscribers fell from the sky like raindrops, until the day they do, all magazines -- even the most estimable and literary -- must fight and claw for their share of the periodical-reading public. June and July are prime months for their direct mail onslaughts. Within the last month or so, I received invitations from the Atlantic, the Utne Reader, Time, The Nation, the New York Review of Books, Granta, Zyzzyva and the New Yorker. Although they all shared a similar urgencyand penchant for gimmickry, they diverged in telling ways.
The Utne Reader's package, which they've been using for over 5 years, was pretty standard fare. The word "Free" was necessarily on the envelope and underlined throughout the enclosed material. Also inside were the holy trinity of direct mail design: the letter from the editor or publisher (a letter from Eric Utne? For me?), the long description of the unique work the magazine is doing (almost always typeset in that old typewriter font that, along with the handwriting in the margins, is apparently meant to make you think it's not a form letter), and the return postcard, which, according to some collusive agreement, must contain at least a few of the following words and phrases: No obligation! Guaranteed! Limited time! and Special!
The best return postcards allow prospective subscribers to separate themselves from the great unwashed, while indulging in what is surely a pleasure we all share -- playing with stickers. The last offer I got from the New York Review of Books included a choice of stickers to affix to the response card. If you were accepting their trial offer, you were supposed to use the sticker that said "Yes! I am an intellectual." If you were declining, you had to use the one saying "No! I am not an intellectual." Needless to say, the pressure got to me.
Almost all the magazines peddle something they call a "soft offer," wherein a recipient will be given the chance to "sample" the magazine in question for an issue or two before committing to a subscription. Of course, they usually don't tell you that they will bill you almost immediately after you start getting the "free" issues; will suddenly start referring to you as a "subscriber;" and, like a bad one night stand, will hound you for months unless you take the time to explicitly say you're not interested.
Yet as direct mail becomes more and more scientific -- and successful -- elite magazines have no choice but to play the game.
"It's the only way to get new subscribers," says Howard Junker, editor of Zyzzyva, a small literary quarterly based in San Francisco. "People tend not to subscribe off the newsstands." Junker and most magazine circulation directors swear by direct mail, but it's a messy, expensive, staggeringly wasteful system.
A magazine like the Utne Reader will "rent" about two million names from a broker who maintains vast databases of the subscribers to various magazines. It's almost shocking how little they expect in return. Of those 2 million recipients, the average response rate is 2 to 3 percent. That means that the magazines expect about 97 percent of the millions of pieces of mail sent to be tossed. Environmental groups are none too pleased with the practice, and suggest greater reliance on paperless methods like internet marketing. "Environmentally, we're not happy about it," says Jim L'Heureux, circulation director for the Utne Reader. In consolation, he says, "We try to use recycled paper and soy-based inks."
So why the recent onslaught? Junker notes that the phenomenon may have had something to do with a July 1 Post Office rate hike for bulk mail. Many magazines, he says, tried to get their mailings out before the increase took effect. With a mailing in the millions of pieces, the tiniest change in rates can add up to a fortune.
The high stakes also make the wording and timing of the mailings crucial. L'Heureux notes that there are basically two big times for mailings -- June and July, and December. Michelle O'Keefe, circulation manager for The Nation, has noticed that they get their best direct mail response when the plucky liberal weekly is battling a hostile political climate. The mailing that the magazine did in February was particularly effective, attributable in part to Pat Buchanan's rising popularity at the time. Whatever calculations they may make about the mysteries of direct mail, L'Heureux says, "Bottom line, I don't think anyone knows."
Despite the medium's plaid-suit-and-cigar schtick, magazines aren't losing sleep over the means to their ends. "We don't feel our integrity is being damaged," says Junker. L'Heureux is realistic: "We've had editors who have looked on our circulation efforts as against the grain of an Utne Reader subscriber. But when they've gone on to publish their own magazines, they've become much more realistic."
Dave Eggers is the editor of Might magazine.