Play your cards right, without the decks; reply cards lack the glamour of other advertising forms, but they can do wonders for you and your advertisers

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April 15, 1997 by Alan Douglas

Reply cards lack the glamour of other advertising forms, but they can do wonders for you and your advertisers.

Reply cards are the ugly ducklings in the magazine publishing family. Sales reps want those sexy double trucks with the big bucks. Ask an editor about response cards and you might as well be speaking a foreign language. The designers want to exercise their creativity on big projects, so response cards are at the bottom of their list. Production mavens do folios, and they know response cards can be a major pain. Circulation directors use reply cards, but they would rather do a cover wrap or, better yet, a nifty direct-mail campaign that wins an award.

So who really gets revved up about reply cards? Nobody important--just the readers and advertisers.

Reply cards have a variety of names--bingo cards. answer-back cards. business reply cards. But they all do the same thing: They make a magazine interactive, a participatory activity, by giving readers an easy way to communicate their desires and views to publishers and advertisers.

Unfortunately, too many magazines use too few reply cards--one card with a lonely stub on the other side of the signature is all too common. Consider this: Your media kit and research report tell the world that each issue has a pass-along readership the size of a small city, but you have only one or two cards. Is that logical? Call your printer to find out how little extra cost is involved in offering more cards. More cards means more response.

Response cards give such good value that we should not be shy about asking advertisers to consider, test and use them in our magazines. Card decks and direct mail can have some distinct advantages over reply cards. Direct mail allows advertisers to talk to potential customers without interference from any other vendors. It is fast if everything is already in place, and the response can be fast as well. (It's the "drive-through window" of advertising compared with the elegant meal served by magazines.) And although card decks lack the exclusivity of direct mail, they are easier and usually less expensive.

So why buy a card? If you have the right product or service, a response card in a magazine can be terrific. The cost per thousand is low. Add in the pass-along readership that magazines enjoy (and direct mail doesn't) and the equation becomes even more favorably disposed toward cards.

Then there's the shelf life that magazines enjoy. The same people who throw direct-mail solicitations into their circular files wouldn't dream of destroying one our magazines. It's efficient and makes good business sense for recipients to dispose of unwanted correspondence. But these folks want to read our magazines and save the articles--and even if they never get a chance to read it themselves, the publication gets routed, it goes into the reception room and into the lunch room. When was the last time you saw direct mail or card decks being read in a reception area? A response card in a magazine can cost less, reach more people and pull more responses over a longer period of time than direct mail. Not bad work for an ugly duckling.

Not a swan, yet

But before we start calling this ugly duckling a swan, a few words of warning are warranted. The product or service featured in a magazine response card must be appropriate. Cards won't show off or explain complicated features as well as print advertisements can. There's not enough space on a card to do that job. Because readers look at cards and ask themselves, "Is this something that I should fill out?" your cards must demand action and include an immediate motivator. Offer a demo disk, a free poster, a hat, a catalog or some other tangible re ward. Do not present general product information. The kiss of death is, "Fill this out if you want one of our sales reps to call you." A free subscription to the advertiser's company newsletter is a good card choice. (Next time you encounter advertisers who love their own newsletters, offer to sell them a card in your magazine to expand their mailing list.)

And if you want to be really user friendly, don't put the cards together. Place them close to surveys, contests, new-product reviews or advertising, where they will do the most good. And please don't forget to use the stubs that hold the cards. Print a message there so that the next reader can still respond after a card is gone.

Publishers viewed direct mail as an evil threat, and many are offering card decks and list rentals. That was smart, but let us not forget that magazines (and cards in them) are still powerful communication vehicles. We should utilize that power and remind the rest of the world what it can do for them.

ALAN DOUGLAS is president of Douglas Publication, Inc., Richmond, Virginia. He serves on the Strategic Planning Committee of The American Business Press.