Tuesday, May 13, 2008
 
You Only Hurt The Ones Who Are Loyal Customers
In an era of shrinking newspaper circulation, it's good to see that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch thinks so little of its loyal readers and its delivered circulation, which helps with its ad rates donchaknow, that it's taken to helping part them with some extra money because they can. Notice the cutesy line at the bottom of this subscription card?

Shipping and handling extra
Click for full size


The line is: Subscribers may pick up the newspaper to avoid delivery costs. That would seem to indicate that the Post-Dispatch adds shipping and handling to its home subscribers who make up the bulk of its audience. Does it really?

Here's a bill:

Shipping and handling exhorbitant
Click for full size


Fifteen cents on a daily delivery and forty cents for Sunday? That's 30% markup over the daily cover price of 50 cents and 27% over the Sunday cover price. But if you want to avoid that surcharge, you can subscribe so the paper gets its recurring revenue and circulation numbers and then you can drive every morning to a place where you can pick it up.

Or, I suppose, you can do like the subscriber noted above and cancel your subscription, picking up a paper once in a while at the grocery. Or not at all.

Well-played, circulation department. Your earnest pursuit of zero subscriber base is noteworthy and efficient.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:46 AM
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