Postal service -- United States -- Second-class matter
A half-inch magazine space is used each month by a certain
electric manufacturing company in the Middle West, but its
postage records show stamp purchases for a single month
(November, 1909), resulting from that half-inch advertisement of
$590.
Two quarter-column announcements of a dress fabric,
appealing to women, in a single magazine, brought 7,000
replies, involving postage stamps worth $230.00
Pretty good business getters for the department? These
“ads” cost the publishers to mail, at second-class rates 19.40
Even better, in proportion, was a one-fifth-column appeal
to mothers in one issue of the same magazine. It produced
postage to the amount of 240.00
To carry the little advertisement at second-class rates
the government charged 7.76
A single-column magazine “ad” of a Chicago clothing firm,
with a number of retail stores over the country, brought
4,000 inquiries which, with the following up, etc.,
caused postage of 380.00
That column cost the publisher to mail, at second-class
rates 38.67
The Woman’s Home Companion sent a letter to the advertisers
in its November issue, asking for a memorandum of the
letter postage on the inquiries from their November
advertising and the answers to these inquiries.
Seventy-five advertisers reported, with definite
figures, an aggregate letter-postage expenditure of $3,385.90
The Woman’s Home Companion paid the government just $583
for carrying that portion of the magazine on which these 75
advertisements were printed.
Any advertising man can point to hundreds of “mail-order firms”
like the above. These firms can trace directly to their magazine
advertising, every year, purchases of millions of dollars’ worth
of the stamps that make big profits for the postoffice.
It is even more surprising to learn the enormous postage
bills caused by an entirely different class of magazine
advertisers--the “general publicity,” or “national”
advertisers--who wish the reader to ask for their fine soaps, or
mattresses, or silks, or stationery at his local store. These
firms do not depend on direct replies, yet they receive so many
that thousands of dollars are spent for stamps per year in scores
of cases--even per month in many.
EVEN THE “GENERAL” OR “PUBLICITY” MAGAZINE ADVERTISING CREATES
ENORMOUS STAMP SALES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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