Pac Mags mulls sampling boxes for health titles

Sarah Homewood
By Sarah Homewood | 4 March 2015
 

Pacific Magazines is eyeing off other verticals it can extend its sampling box offering to, with health and wellness being at the top of the list.

The magazine publisher, which publishers Women's Health and Men's Health, currently has a Marie Claire Parcel in market as well as a Girlfriend parcel, with a Marie Claire Man offering to come this year.

The monthly subscription includes a selection of products from brands keen to tap into Pac Mags audience.

Zoe Sabados, marketing director for The Parcel told AdNews that the publisher is currently looking at other offerings for its sampling business.

“With so many magazines and television shows and Seven West Media having a huge audience we are looking at women over forty, we're looking at different pillars like health, and we're looking at other pillars in the home category,” Sabados said.

While she wouldn't be lead on a time frame for the launch of a new product, Sabados said: “We can probably expect to see something targeting health and well-being this year as well.”

Pacific Magazines launched its subscription sampling boxes for its Marie Claire brand in August last year, which was closely followed by Girlfriend box, and Sabados said that the Marie Claire box is continuing to sell out, and she wouldn't rule out upping its rotation.

“There's no plans to up the rotation immediately but it's a long-term goal. We're finding that one per quarter is really working and we want to encourage sampling and then for the customer to then go in store to buy.”

“But we are getting feedback from the brands involved around what quantities they can do and if we find we continue to sell out we'll definitely look at increasing the rotation.”

The Marie Claire Parcel currently sells 5000 boxes each quarter with most of the boxess purchased are done so on a subscription basis, rather than individually.

“Marie Claire is continuing to sell out again, so that's incredibly pleasing, and the best part about that is over 90% are subscribers, so we don't have that may one off, so people are committing to the whole four parcels,” she said.

As part of its sampling push, Pacific Magazine's also launched an e-commerce platform where people could buy the products from the boxes online. Pacific Magazines currently doesn't take a cut for purchases made through the portal.

“The e-commerce site is going well, you can buy all of the samples in the Parcel online, this is not an affiliate model so we're not making money on this. We've given the brands an opportunity to close the loop between the sampling trial and purchase loop, we're finding that 80% our survey respondents buy beauty products online, it's a great service,” she said.

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