Analytics Help San Jose Mercury News Pull in the Right Readers

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Influence factors

The database has also influenced the paper's direct mail efforts. Across all channels, the San Jose Mercury News has realized more than $233,000 in annual marketing cost savings, and anticipates spending $24,000 less on direct mail in 2009 than it did in 2008, without a corresponding loss in subscriber base.

This is where G2 Discovery, an analytics program from Marketing G2, has helped the most. The software/hardware combination allowed the paper to conduct a variety of tests within a single effort. A single direct mail drop can produce stable results on up to 20 cells that have variations in content, offer and creative design. This multivariate testing system, Garza says, is vastly superior to standard A/B testing splits.

To date, the biggest impact Garza's analysis has yielded is how his department should use former subscribers. He found that readers who previously received the paper seven days a week tended to come back after one offer — if at all. They either wanted the paper or they didn't. Subsequent mailings weren't as productive. Conversely, those with whom the paper didn't have a relationship, or who took the paper on Sundays only, responded better to two offers apiece.

Free but inefficient

The analysis has also demonstrated the inefficiency of free trial subscriptions. Former subscribers who refuse to re-enroll after being called three times during a six-month period are sent “bill-me” offers. A previous strategy of giving a trial subscription to this group didn't generate enough paid orders to be effective.

The system has even allowed Garza to evaluate approaches to readers who signed up to receive the paper but didn't pay for their subscriptions. He is testing a variety of offers and payment-in-advance tactics with this group, and preliminary results are encouraging.

Why go after them at all? Given the relatively limited reach of the paper, ignoring these readers would eliminate a substantial chunk of prospects, Garza says.

“We are also interested in appealing to customers living in areas important to advertisers,” he notes, adding that future analysis might lead to a borderline unprofitable prospect segment being brought over the line, provided advertisers respond to deeper penetration within select locales.