17 Great Gift Marketing Ideas

Circulation Management, March 1, 2004

Gift promotions are a great way to generate subscriptions, since the source is generally very high paying and has strong renewal rates.

At the Direct Marketing Association's 18th Circulation Day, several savvy circulators shared their best practices for gift subscription marketing in a session moderated by Dawn Zier, group VP-circulation and consumer marketing, Reader's Digest Customer Services.

The speakers who contributed the ideas below were Alec Casey, consumer marketing director, Sports Illustrated for Kids; Kitty Carroll Colbert, VP-consumer and member marketing, National Geographic; and Lou Sassano, consumer marketing director, Reader's Digest magazine.

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If you think the gift-giving season starts the Friday after Thanksgiving, you're wrong. Think about kicking things off in late summer and consider extending the push through December.

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Look for themes that work for your subscribers. Sometimes it's very easy to fall into the trap of "Oh it's a holiday, I need a bow on the outside." For Sports Illustrated a picture of a football player on the field is going to be a lot more effective than a silly little bow.

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One of the things to look at is your actual donor file and promoting people for additional gifts. People who give gift subs are good candidates to give more gift subs over time.

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Look at the pricing of your gift offers. Gifts tend to be a little more price sensitive than a person's own subscription.

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Look at giving an active subscriber a deal to renew their own and give a gift sub at the same time. It's very cost effective since you can receive two mail orders from one mail effort.

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Once you have a gift donor program, you need to do a gift acknowledgement and send a card. Figure out the timing on that - there are people that actually order their gift subs in August. So maybe you wait til October to send out the gift cards.

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Think about sending the gift card directly to the recipient. It is a nice touch to personalize it on behalf of the donor.

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Offering deferred billing until after the New Year has given many publishers a lift in response with no extra promotional cost.

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Make sure you do source evaluation on all the different offers in the gift stream.

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Telemarketing can be a successful source of new gift subs and renewals. One of the critical things in a telemarketing call is the timing. Look to call in November and December, since as you get closer to the holidays, the urgency to find the perfect gift increases.

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Gift fulfillment is the hardest thing for any operation to fulfill. Order your own gift sub and see how they handle things, like change of address on the gift, etc.

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Be careful that you don't create a gift offer that competes with your regular sub offers or renewals.

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In your donor renewal efforts, it's key to get the recipient's name on the piece. It's the most powerful piece of info you can put on there.

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In your gift series, look for opportunities to use a mixture of cash and credit offers. Early in your gift series, cash offers and incentives to pay up front are good. But as you get closer to the holidays, pitch more of "no money now" or "deferred billing."

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Thank donors for their gift last year. If they are a non-subscribing donor it can just be a thank you card; if they are a subscribing donor it can be afixed or poly-ed with their sub.

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Start thinking about the point at which a donor becomes a big donor. If someone is giving three gift subs, is it worth your while to give them a customer service benefit line that they can call for any of their gift needs?

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At the end of the gift season, promote your un-renewed donors and recipients with a Last Chance offer. Post Holiday promotions when the hectic Holiday season is over give you a great opportunity to re-start those subscriptions that lapsed at the end of the season.