Christopher Gaydos

Reader’s Digest Consumer Services, Inc.

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Monday, March 30, 2009

Direct mail may be taking a beating as an integral part of the audience developer’s source mix, but Christopher Gaydos, circulation director, Reader’s Digest Consumer Services, Inc., and his team have managed to make this more traditional tool work for them again and again.

Since launching Everyday With Rachael Ray in 2005, Gaydos and his team have mailed more direct mail pieces out each year for the title than the year before. So how did Gaydos and his team do it? By getting out of the gate early at executing promotions and driving customers to order online before the first issue was even printed.

“We followed that up with a big promotional push with QSP, partnered with other Rachael Ray properties, like her TV shows and other Web sites, and capitalized on having one of the largest databases of cooking enthusiasts in the world,” Gaydos says. “By testing multiple creatives and offers, we were able to maximize the pull on our campaigns and have grown the title to a 1.7 million rate base.”

Gaydos added that for FY2009, 25 percent of all new subscriptions came from DM campaigns with response rates increasing almost 17 percent and cost-per-sub decreasing by almost $3. It was accomplished through what he calls a “team mentality” and testing.

“Our consumer marketing group handles direct marketing activities for dozens of products marketed to over 34 million customers,” he says. “The experience of the group helps bring new products to market faster and allows for easy transfer of knowledge. Having such a breadth of product and large customer base also allows us to test, test, test. For Rachael Ray in particular, over the last three years, we have been able to shave almost 10 percent of package costs from our control through testing.“

As far as direct mail is concerned, Gaydos is sure that it can still work—it’s just a matter of how it’s used. “There is no question that a lot of direct mail in the industry has moved down the source rankings in terms of profitability, but we do still find room for it in our source mix,” he says. “With smart targeting and modeling, direct mail is still a viable source. If you have a product that consumers want, I don’t think there is a faster way to build an audience than through direct mail. The industry will still use direct mail in the next few years though as more and more people are cutting back on mail quantity, the available mailable lists are going to shrink and we will all need to find creative ways to get more from less.”

VITAL STATS
During FY2009, 25 percent of all new subscriptions came from DM campaigns with response rates increasing almost 17 percent and cost-per-sub decreasing by almost $3.

Click here to return to the '09 AD All-Star list.