Mr. John Tighe

So said John Tighe, vice president for Time Inc.

The voucher continues to be the biggest trend in circulation, according to John Tighe, vice president for Time Inc. consumer marketing ...

So said John Tighe, vice president for Time Inc. consumer marketing promotions and operations, during a session at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington's Bridge conference.

"The voucher is the workhorse of the circulation industry," Mr. Tighe said.

He gave tips on how to create the highest response from the timeless direct mail pieces, including a voucher containing a magazine's offer for subscription, with benefits and the order form.

Time Inc. has changed its voucher to a 6 by 11 inches format, which has allowed the publisher to create more space, produce a cleaner look and experiment with different colors.

Mr. Tighe said that keeping the respondent surprised also increases response rates and that adding personalization makes the package feel less like a bill.Time Inc. had a 64 percent increase in sales when offers included a free item.

"Free things still rule among people," Mr. Tighe said.
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"Finding the right partner for your brand is also key," Mr. Tighe said.
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Mr. Tighe said that brand retention helps in offers.

"If the offer feels like the magazine with familiar color pallets, people will feel more comfortable and happy to subscribe," he said.

Mr. Tighe doesn't see circulation marketers diverging from vouchers in the future.

"I don't know if we will ever beat the voucher," he said.

According to John Tighe, Vice President of Promotions and Operations for Time Consumer Marketing, "We do all of the creative for customer acquisition and retention for the various Time, Inc., magazines, including such well-known names as Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated and People.In the course of preparing these campaigns, we process some 7,000 different jobs in a year and we needed to put some automation in place to ensure that we could keep up the pace."

In 2004, Time installed Virtual Ticket primarily for its digital asset management capabilities.Tighe adds, "The 7,000 jobs we process in a year range from pulling up an existing job and changing a price, to developing all new creative.Associated assets include cover images that we use in promotions, photos, magazine logos, art files, copy and more."With the deployment of Virtual Ticket, not only did it become easier to locate and work with materials for each job, but Time discovered significant redundancy in assets, particularly in large art files, with multiple copies of the same materials being stored in different places on the network.

"Having real-time access to all of the assets has been a big benefit for us," says Tighe."Especially for quick modifications of an existing job, we are able to get the work done quickly and efficiently and move on to the next task.We also saw immediate savings in terms of storage space as we began to eliminate redundant assets."

Having real-time access to all of the assets has been a big benefit for us.John Tighe, Vice President of Promotions and Operations

Another reason Tighe selected Virtual Ticket was the ability to easily customize workflows, especially the routing of jobs to different departments for required approvals and the incorporation of familiar Time, Inc., forms that enabled a fast roll-out and minimized training needs."One department that has benefited significantly from the routing process through Virtual Ticket is our Legal Department," remarks Tighe."They are able to review each project to ensure compliance in a completely digital workflow.Another big win for the Legal Department is the ability to have the history of changes to any given project at their fingertips, which Virtual Ticket tracks as well."

Since installation, the Virtual Ticket user base at Time has expanded to about 50, and Tighe expects that number to continue to grow as he brings other critical departments into the loop, including the Audit Bureau of Circulation."They are able to quickly review the PDF for each job to see how the offer is presented and sign off on the final copy.We are getting ready to roll out the latest software version, and will close the approval loop with the marketing department.They are already using Virtual Ticket to initiate the job ticket, and now they will be able to do approvals within the workflow as well."

As long-time users of Virtual Ticket, Tighe's team has both contributed to and benefited from ongoing enhancements to the product.He says, "With this latest release, we got everything on our wish list and we are ready to take it to the next level at Time.

John Tighe, Vice President of Promotions and Operations

According to John Tighe, Vice President of Promotions and Operations for Time Consumer Marketing, "We do all of the creative for customer acquisition and retention for the various Time, Inc., magazines, including such well-known names as Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated and People.

Linden referred to remarks by John Tighe, vice president for Time Inc. consumer marketing promotions and operations, who told the Direct Marketing Association of Washington's Bridge Conference this July that Time Inc. had a 64% increase in sales when offers included a free item.
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"All you need is to drop something in the package such as a magnet or a greeting card and people will feel more loved," Mr. Tighe said.