What’s more satisfying to Cooking Light magazine’s management than low-fat teriyaki stir fry with jasmine rice? The recipe for that same dish being delivered into an ever-increasing number of readers’ hands.
The epicurean publication has increased its rate base through a combination of aggressive direct mail and electronic marketing. A 50,000-person boost starting with its January issue put the number of guaranteed paid readers at 1.7 million per copy for 2005.
That’s fairly close to its actual circulation. The magazine has long prided itself on delivering stingy bonus circulation to its rate base.
The increase comes after two years of fattening up its direct mail activity after a lean period. In 2002, the magazine hit its lowest prospecting mail-out level in years. That year, only 1 million pieces went into the mail, compared with average annual levels of several million. During 2002, however, the magazine found that most of the lists it had used were exhausted, and that list tests weren’t bringing in the responses it needed to maintain its rate base increases.
In 2003, the company returned to more traditional levels and mailed to 7.2 million. By the end of 2004 it set a single-year high, sending out 9.3 million pieces.
Most of the additional names have come either from other Time Inc. titles, such as Real Simple magazine, or from going deeper into traditional lists. It’s also mining expires, ramping up from a test in the tens of thousands culled from six-month expires two years ago to hundreds of thousands of names pulled from the last four years.
That’s about as bold as its current lists tests get. Cooking Light is mining files that have worked for it in the past, such as other cooking magazines and cooking book publishers. As a Time Inc. publication, it’s also taking names from the corporate database, using look-alike names of other subscribers and related-field book buyers.
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