Many mail-order specialty houses use only one inch advertisements. Others use profitably still smaller space. A canoe manufacturer selling by mail has for several years confined his copy in the Saturday Evening Post to half-inch advertisements, finding that whenever the space was increased there was no profit in the business.
6. Using records in choosing only can size of space and kind of copy be standardized; the mediums used can also be chosen, by tests, with absolute knowledge of their comparative usefulness to the advertiser. Those mediums that bring turns at a cost below the maximum set by the tiser are continued on the list; all others are dropped. The method of testing mediums is illustrated by the records of a magazine that conducted a tion campaign by means of advertisements in a long list of magazines and newspapers. The size of space varied somewhat in different mediums, but both the size of space and the copy were sufficiently uniform to permit a fair comparison among the different me diums on the basis of the actual results recorded from the advertising in each one. Some of the tabulated results were as follows. Names of publications are not used because it would not be fair to the mediums to show actual results unless all the many conditions surrounding the campaign were likewise stated. Some of the mediums were used more than once.
When records of this sort are continued over a long enough time and the results of various insertions in the same magazine are averaged and compared with other average returns from other mediums, the ad vertiser can definitely pick those publications that, for his particular purpose, bring the most results for the least money.
7. Difficulties of specialty selling.— Women are said to be better mail-order buyers than men. There is a variety of suggested reasons: Some people contend that women read advertise ments more carefully than men—that careful perusal of an advertisement is essential before an order will be sent by mail, and that men have less time to read carefully. Others say that men are less inclined than women to ask for their money back when they are dissatisfied with a purchase. When a guarantee of "satisfaction or your money back" is made, a woman will ordinarily act on it if she is not satisfied, but many men will pocket their loss and give the seller no opportunity to remedy the trouble. Many men, therefore, rather than risk loss, refrain from buying by mail even when the advertiser makes a plain offer of money back in case of dissatisfaction. Other rea
sons also are advanced, but, whatever the reason, the seller of goods to men by mail usually has a rather difficult task.
The many attempts to sell cigars by mail have proved the necessity of great attention to details in trying to get mail orders from men. One cigar man ufacturer offered "Genuine Havana Seconds" at $1.90 a box as a mail-order leader. With the goods was sent an attractive catalog illustrating forty other kinds of cigars. It was expected that the real profit would come from orders for higher-priced cigars from men who originally bought the "Havana Seconds." It was found, however, that there were only twenty five per cent of reorders, and that many of them were for the "Havana Seconds" rather than for higher-priced goods. Also, the manufacturer gradu ally was made to believe that many original pur chasers did not like the "Havana Seconds," and that, despite the absolute offer of "money back if not sat isfactory," they neither reordered nor gave the man ufacturer a chance to "make good." There seemed to be an inherent weakness somewhere in the selling plan. The problem was threefold: 1. To devise a plan which, without increasing the size of the advertisements, would increase the per centage of first orders.
2. To increase the proportion of reorders.
3. To increase the orders for higher-priced cigars than the "Havana Seconds." The first purpose was realized by a radical change in the copy; it was given much greater attention value and told the story almost at a glance. The sec ond and third purposes were achieved by a new offer: "To each purchaser of 100 Havana Seconds we will extend the privilege of ordering, for 60 cents addi tional, one of our Sample Cases containing one sam ple cigar each of our 12 Best Sellers—all Bargain Values—price up to $12 per 100. Include this in your order—it's the biggest sample value we ever offered." The sixty cents really paid the wholesale cost of the box of samples, so there was no actual loss on the transaction. The seeming attractiveness of the of fer induced a large increase in orders, each one of which paid for itself no matter whether there were reorders or not; and there was a considerable in crease in the percentage of reorders, most of them r being for the higher priced cigars which were sent in the sample box.