Gazette Media Company boost circulation case study

Gazette Media finds new readers and gains advertisers with Prospex

Gazette Media Company (GMC), part of the Trinity Mirror group, has been using Prospex for the past eight years to help boost circulation, gain advertising and speed up deliveries.

Increasing accurate circulation

The circulation department plan deliveries to every address and new data allows GMC to map the outline of each individual house enabling them to work out the best routes possible for leaflet, paid for and free newspaper distribution, thus saving time and reducing their costs.

Reducing distribution costs

Combining the street data with the P² People & Places classification enables GMC to look at people who responded to an offer and then canvass those streets where the kind of people who responded most live.

Detailed maps with each house outlined are combined to provide canvassers with lists of streets to visit. Houses to avoid, current subscribers and bad debtors for example, are filtered out using customer information systems. Prospex highlights areas for teams of canvassers, avoiding lengthy meetings with photocopied A-Z maps and highlighters.

"Prospex has helped us boost circulation and reduce distribution costs. It’s easy to use and the support is excellent."

Lee Payne, Newspaper Sales Manager, Gazette Media Company

Saving time and getting transport costs down

GMC’s transport department know the precise location of newsagents so van routes are optimised. Getting to a newsagent half an hour earlier can make a big difference to potential sales.

Enticing advertisers on board

For advertising, the postcode sector, which contains an average of 2,500 households, is a sufficiently detailed geography. Postcode sectors are combined together to build circulation areas and compared with the catchment areas of advertisers, showing which titles are the optimum place to advertise.

A one-stop-shop to increasing revenue

All this means that the one Prospex system is used and shared between three departments, a cost-effective solution for all the geographical analysis needed within a regional press publishing centre.