From Colin Adair The main news this month is record responses to our WATS lines. Canadians have never been in a hurry to call the office, but in November we saw more of them using our hot lines even during record cold temperatures here in Vancouver. The weekend of November 16 and 17 we received 313 WATS calls, breaking the previous record of 294 calls set in February, 1984. The new record was shattered the following weekend and broken again for an all-time high of 411 calls on the weekend of November 30 and December 1. This makes November, 1985, the highest month ever for WATS responses in Canada with a total of 1,817 calls as compared to the previous record of 1,741 calls in February 1984.
The proposed budget for 1986 was finalized and taken to the Regional Directors Conference in Pasadena. Due to some savings and a planned reduction in reserves we have been able to allocate a much larger amount of money for international subsidy next year. 4 million Canadian dollars, an increase of 94% on 1985, is set aside. This represents 32.6% of first commission expenses and 20.6% of all expenses.
November, 1984, was a very strong month financially due to processed income left over from the 1984 Feast of Tabernacles. As a result, November this year was not able to match it. The income for the month was -13.2%. However, our year-to-date mail income is still running at 8% and all income stands at 10.4%.
The total outgoing mail for November was up 69.8%, thanks to the semi annual letter being sent out in November this year as opposed to December last year. Also this high figure was helped by the “Mystery of the Ages” mailings. This brings the year-to-date increase to 19.3%.
The direct mail campaign which began in September has brought in 51,577 responses, for a response rate of 5.3%. This is our highest response yet to a campaign of this nature and proves the value of an ongoing program to keep the “Plain Truth” circulation list in Canada at a steady level.
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