Publishers test four-day delivery - new magazine subscriptions - Brief Article

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 1994 by Lorne Manly

Consumers who shop by mail receive their items within days, and those who access information services get their data almost instantly. But new magazine subscribers must still wait up to eight weeks before their first issue arrives. It's a point that's been made many times in recent years, but now the industry is actually ready to take some action on the problem.

Beginning in September, four major publishers and the Magazine Publishers of America will test a pilot project to get first issues out to subscribers within four days. (See "Why circ doesn't work," Folio:, February 15, 1994, page 46) Called RID - Rapid Issue Delivery - the program binds together the two big fulfillment houses, Neodata and CDS, along with the U.S. Postal Service, Meredith Corp., Times Mirror Magazines, Rodale Press and Reader's Digest Special Interest Publications in a coordinated effort to speed the delivery process and improve subscription pay-up rates.

Here's how it will work: The fulfillment houses will generate the new labels within 24 hours. The labels will then be sent to a post office subcontractor - an Indianapolis-based freight consolidator called Quick Pack - that will affix them to the magazines within four hours. Each magazine will then be shipped overnight to the most highly sorted mail-entry point. There, the local postmaster will enter the magazine as second-class mail, with the publication arriving in the subscriber's hands two to three days later.

Each of the six to eight magazines participating in the program will process 5,000 of their direct-mail or TV-derived subscription requests in this manner, according to Michael Pashby, senior vice president/consumer marketing for the MPA. The postage will rise from about 22 cents per magazine to between 80 cents and $1. In the long run, however, that will be a small price to pay if the program boosts response and improves customer satisfaction.

"We have the hopeful assumption that we'll get better pay-up rates," Pashby says. "But even if that's not the case, it's become painfully apparent that in an age of information-on-demand, taking eight weeks to deliver that first issue is out of line."