Moving customers up the ladder of loyalty

The Goal

The objective of The Tennessean, located in Nashville, Tenn. (181,343; 250,575) was to convert marginal customers, which are accounts less than 18 months old, to EZ Pay.

The Story

Customers who had been subscribers for more than six months but less than 18 months were offered a free software CD or magazine subscription for a switch to EZ Pay via a direct-mail letter.  The letter had a perforated reply voucher and a reply envelope enclosed to ease the response process.

“The only challenge that we encountered was that in-house staff was not available to process the quantity.  We had to send the direct mail to an outside vendor for mailing.  It turned out good for us because we took advantage of using the vendor’s pre-sort mail privileges to lower our postal costs," said Circulation Sales and Marketing Manager Tim Baumgartner.

As of July of 2004, the response rate was 1.185 percent.  There were a total of 774 customers who made conversions to EZ Pay.

The Moral of the Story

Segment customers according to their tenure and offer them targeted inducements to retain their loyalty.