With national magazines keenly eager to keep readers subscribing these days, confusion grows not only in prices, but in all sorts of wild “deals” and marketing tactics, finds Grumpy Editor.
A good example this week is with Good Housekeeping.
The Hearst magazine (a unit of Hearst Corp.) sends two subscription pitches, with variations, arriving at the same household on the same day.
Pitch No. 1, labeled “rate adjustment” and “this is a non-transferable discount offer,” indicates the magazine with an annual cover price of $41.88 can be had for $7.97 --- and a Good Housekeeping tote bag will be tossed in with the offer that expires Feb. 15.
Pitch No. 2, labeled “preferred subscriber claim form” for Good Housekeeping, also includes a one-year subscription to Redbook, another Hearst publication, at a combined price of $8.
That form notes “combined annual cover price” of $77.76. The $8 comes after a “credit adjustment” of $69.76. The offer, good until Feb. 13, also cautions, “This credit is not transferable.”
But wait.
While the two-magazines-for-one-small-price in pitch No. 2 shows the other magazine as Redbook on the mail-in slip, the bottom part indicates the other Hearst publication in the deal is Woman’s Day, complete with reproduction of a cover photo and one paragraph description of that magazine’s highlights.
A plus, however: Unlike some other publishers’ pitches these days, a prepaid envelope accompanies each.
Among Hearst’s other magazines are Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Popular Mechanics and Harper’s Bazaar.
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