Arkansas Democrat Gazette uses pURLS to up subscriptions

The Arkansas Democrat Gazette is a daily newspaper reaching more than 600,000 people throughout the state. It is the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River.

The newspaper was losing approximately 3,500 subscriptions per month. They were looking for a strategy to encourage these former subscribers to come back to the paper and renew their subscriptions. Their previous efforts at static direct mail were returning less than a 1% success rate.

Utilizing CustomXM’s integrated cross-media campaign tools, postcards with PURLs (Personalized URLs) were sent to a database of dropped subscribers, encouraging them to go to a microsite where they could register for a grand prize and re-subscribe.

The campaign ran for three months. A response was considered someone who renewed their subscription.

  • July 2010 – 1.5% response rate
  • August 2010 – 2.0% response rate
  • September 2010 – 2.0% response rate

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was very happy with results, especially considering the difficult audience that was being targeted – people who had already said “no” to the paper