![]() ![]() In 1987, the company added a "Catalog Clearing House" sweepstakes that included inserts promoting 36 products from a selected group of catalogers. After American Family Publishers raised its biggest prize from $200,000 to $10 million in 1985, PCH had to follow suit. Annual revenues passed the $100 million mark in 1988. Publishers Clearing House's annual sales were about $50 million in 1981, when Robin Smith, a former Doubleday executive, became its president and chief executive officer. Occasionally, the mailing also contained product coupons. Also essential were the order vehicle (generally, a return card) and the sweepstakes offer, often a four-color brochure. ![]() One of these was a sheet of gummed stamps offering the various magazine subscriptions at discounted rates. A typical sweepstakes mailing contained up to eight separate printed pieces. Between 50 to 110 magazine subscriptions were being offered in any given mailing. PCH normally conducted two major mailings a year at this time: one around the Christmas/New Year's period and a second in early July, each closely timed to television commercials telling viewers to be looking for the mailing. PCH also had its own mailing list of recent customers. Its mailings were going to 40 to 60 million households a year, with the addresses obtained from other direct-mail sources to take in people who bought by mail, who had spent more than a specified amount in the last few months, and who paid their bills promptly. Still based in Port Washington, where it now had 100,000 square feet of office and warehouse space, PCH was representing nearly every major publisher in the United States and was promoting some 395 magazines. Publishers Clearing House had its chosen field to itself until 1980, when a consortium of Time Inc., McCall's Corp., and Meredith Corp. At first PCH did not feel obligated to award prizes if no winning entry was received, but later a second random drawing came to be held from entries submitted if no one turned in the winning number for the top prize. As a sweepstakes, rather than a lottery, the contest was open to all entrants whether or not they chose to be customers. ![]() Cash, automobiles, and vacation trips were said to be the most appealing and popular awards. Since the numbers were preselected, Publishers Clearing House could promote the sweepstakes truthfully with the words, "You may already be a winner!" According to a 1980 Advertising Age article, direct-mail marketers had discovered that they could increase sales 50 percent more through sweepstakes than by any other promotional technique. "It barely made a ripple, so we went up to $5,000." "We started giving out bunches of singles, fives and ten-dollar bills as prizes," a former PCH executive recalled in 1996. In 1967, however, the company borrowed an idea that Reader's Digest initiated in 1962 and began making sweepstakes promotions, offering prizes to entrants who filled out a numbered entry blank and mailed it to the company. Mertz's first mail package was a simple white envelope containing a folder depicting several magazines, an offer, and a reply form. His simple, but revolutionary, idea was to increase the chance of making a sale by offering a selection of 20 magazines, rather than just one, in a single mailing. In 1953, however, he founded Publishers Clearing House in the basement of his Port Washington, Long Island, home to sell magazine subscriptions through the cheaper method of mail promotion. Harold Mertz was manager of some of the crews of foot soldiers who trudged through residential neighborhoods to drum up business. The company operates as a limited partnership, and members of the founding Mertz family still retain a majority interest.ĭuring the 1950s, salespeople, usually college students going door to door, were the largest source of subscriptions for magazine publishers, other than their own direct-mail efforts. Items include videos, music, books, jewelry, health and beauty products, and collectibles. PCH also sells consumer goods through direct mail and through its Web site. While its major competitor ceased offering sweepstakes, PCH continues to run its sweepstakes, best known for the ostentatious Prize Patrol that disburses the winnings. However, the company's fortunes fell after a series of lawsuits for deceptive business practices targeted it and its competitors in the late 1990s and early 2000s. households with at least one mailing per year. In the mid-1990s, PCH claimed to be reaching 75 percent of U.S. Publishers Clearing House is best known for its dramatic sweepstakes, a marketing campaign that offers millions of dollars in prizes every year. The company is known as a "stampsheet" marketer for the perforated stamps consumers stick on their subscription forms. Publishers Clearing House (PCH) is one of the largest magazine subscription agencies in the United States.
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