Basic HTML Version
PAGE 4
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 8, 1985
We received and processed a total of 28,346 letters in January--a 5.7% in
crease over January, 1984. Outgoing mail increased by 1.0%, with a total of
64,405 pieces of mail sent to interested readers.
From Mr. Colin Adair Except in the area of finances, January has started
the year off very well for God's work in Canada.
Response to Mr. Arm
strong's latest semiannual letter has been tabulated. The following fig
ures show the numbers and percentages of response.
ENGLISH
FRENCH
Mailed
233,002
67,042
Responses
23,979
13,078
Percentage
10.3%
19.5%
The French response is interesting in that it shows how much more effective
mailing the semiannual letter is over stitching it into the French language
PLAIN TRUTH. A year ago when we stitched the semiannual into La PURE
VERITE, we received a 1.9% response. By mailing the most recent letter sep
arately, the response jumped dramatically.
Newspaper inserts continue to trickle in. As of this writing we have re
ceived 43,498. This campaign culminates soon in Manitoba, being the last
province to have the newspaper inserts.
In January, we began a trial project of advertizing and offering The PLAIN
TRUTH through a transit shelter in the city of Winnipeg. This same experi
ment will be expanded to five other cities: Vancouver, Calgary, Regina,
Toronto and Halifax. In addition to the transit shelters, we have been of
fered access to a shopping mall in each of these cities. As we are provided
rental space free for one month, we have the opportunity to evaluate the ef
fectiveness of this type of distribution. During the first three weeks of
the project, 1,000 magazines were distributed from the transit shelter in
Winnipeg.
A new direct mail campaign is now underway. Approximately one million
pieces (eight hundred thousand of which are in English and the remainder in
French) will be mailed. We are estimating a 5 to 6% response.
We recently offered The GOOD NEWS to PLAIN TRUTH subscribers who have been
receiving the magazine for at least two years or have renewed twice. We re
ceived a 17% response for the English GOOD NEWS and a 20.7% response for the
French.
Incoming mail was up a healthy 38.7% over January, 1984. This translates
into 53,124 letters, cards and calls into the office. Of this figure 11,281
were first contacts. Outgoing mail decreased 28%, although we still sent
out 108,375 pieces. The number of WATS calls received was 1,537, a decrease
of 2.7% from last year. Canadians, it seems, do not use the telephone as
frequently as their cousins to the south.
--Joe Tkach, Ministerial Services