Sunday coupon sections: a new source for subs?

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, March 15, 1996

Value-conscious shoppers carefully clip coupons from Sunday papers, so what better place to offer multiple coupons for magazines? For three years now, Sullivan Media, a subsidiary of Sullivan Communications, has tested this bargain-hunter environment for its Magazine Value Center. It runs pages and spreads in free-standing inserts (FSIs), with a total circulation of about 45 million.

The coupon redeemers are mostly young women with families, many of whom represent new business. "Our client publishers tell us we have highly unduplicated subscribers when compared to their own subscriber file," says Harry Egner, president of Sullivan Media in Stamford, Connecticut. Brooke McMurray, director of agency marketing at Time Inc., confirms this. "This is heavily new business--95-plus percent for the Time Inc. magazines participating, and that's really high," she says. The industry-wide average of new business from stampsheet agencies is about 75 percent. "These people do not appear to be direct-mail buyers, and if they are exposed to TV, telemarketing or door-to-door sales, they are not responding to them," says McMurray. "But they are responding to the coupons." No one seems to know why. Dan Capell, managing director of New York City-based Vos, Gruppo & Capell and a consultant for the center, says, "When you buy a newspaper, you buy a market; you get the newspaper's circulation." While the price offer in the coupons is the same as Publishers Clearing House (the lowest price available) and the terms are the same, publishers get a remit of 15 to 20 percent. The big difference is that the FSIs do not include a sweepstakes. There was no lift at all from sweeps in numerous tests, and in some cases non-sweeps did better. Capell says pay-up on tests is about the same as PCH and American Family Publishers (about 75 to 80 percent). Time Inc. does not have a pay-up history yet. "Circulators have been wondering where the new sources are coming from. Here's one," he says. While Sunday coupon sections aren't major source of new business, McMurray notes, "it's not a tiny one either."