Magazines Canada partners with Consumer Intelligence Group for annual DM sub campaign

Magazines Canada has struck a partnership with private sector firm Consumer Intelligence Group (CIG) to help run its annual Buy 2, Get 1 FREE subscription campaign. The direct mail campaign has been a prominent program in support of member magazines, but has been under some pressure  in terms of funding. The most recent year's campaign was half the size -- in terms of delivered DM pieces -- as previous years and as a consequence saw a 36% drop in sold subscriptions.

The 7th B2G1F campaign will run September through February 2012, with CIG handling specialized list and data services.

The Consumer Intelligence Group is a relatively new player (launched in 2010) in the list marketing, data management and analysis field. The two partners in the firm are Tim Leys, formerly with Generation 5 and Kevin Klein, previously with the Cornerstone Group of Companies, one of the biggest players in list management and fulfillment for magazines.

The DM campaign at one time distributed more than 1 million free-standing brochures via addressed admail and magazine polybag outserts; this was supported by print ads, search engine marketing, e-mail promotions and social networking. In 2009, 191 titles signed up. Sub sales were about 14,000.

In the 2010-11 campaign, only 500,000 pieces were distributed in two tranches though, for the first time, it allowed people to subscribe to either print or digital editions from among the "nearly 200" participating magazines. As of March 20, the campaign had sold about 9,300 subs or about 64% of the previous year's results.