Catalogers Deliver to Chicago Area via the Tribune

With the recent hike in postal rates, delivering direct mail via newspapers has become a popular way of getting catalogs into the hands of consumers.

With that in mind, the Tribune Company launched Direct Delivery +, a low-cost alternative available via the Chicago Tribune that allows catalogs to be delivered with the newspapers, writes DM News.

For 9 cents per catalog, a marketer provides the Chicago Tribune with their mail files, which are then matched against a list of paid newspaper subscribers at the sub-zip code level, looking for areas where there is a high percentage of matches between the brand marketer’s list and Tribune subscribers. Mailing via the USPS can cost as much as 20 cents per catalog.
The Tribune also offers lifestyle segmentation analyses of areas that are not necessarily on the cataloger’s mailing list to see if those areas are worth targeting.

The program is available only in Chicago, where the Chicago Tribune has more than 660,000 home-delivery subscribers on Sundays. The Tribune Company expects to roll out the program in other markets in 2008.