From Mr. Bob Morton: We in the Australian and Asian regional office continue to be most encouraged by the number of WATS line calls being received in response to Mr. Armstrong's telecast. Throughout January we averaged over 90 calls each week.
With the introduction of our four WATS lines, we thought there might be a significant drop in the number of letters received in response to the telecast. However, we are pleased to note that there was only a small drop in January. When we add together the WATS line and letter responses to the telecast for January, the number of requests increased by 126.5% over the same month last year. Of those responding to the telecast, either by phone or letter, 82% requested a PLAIN TRUTH subscription for the first time.
We are also delighted by the continuing interest being shown by Sri Lankan viewers to Mr. Armstrong's telecast currently being aired each Sunday evening at 7:30 p.m. over Colombo station ITNll. In January, 728 viewers wrote in requesting The PLAIN TRUTH magazine and the other literature offered by Mr. Armstrong on the programme. If this trend continues, the PLAIN TRUTH mailing list in Sri Lanka will more than double by the end of 1985.
By the end of January, Mr. Armstrong's November, 1984 semiannual letter, offering THE PLAIN TRUTH ABOUT CHRISTMAS and THE SEVEN LAWS OF SUCCESS, had resulted in 10,890 responses from Australian PLAIN TRUTH subscribers. These responses represent 12.4% of the mailing list. Over three-quarters of the people who responded asked for both booklets.
The response from Asian subscribers to Mr. Armstrong's semiannual letter totaled 5,778 requests by the end of January — 10.8% of the Asian mailing list. Because of the distances involved, responses from the Asian area will continue to come in for many months yet.
We received and processed a total of 28,346 letters in January — a 5.7% increase 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. Armstrong's latest semiannual letter has been tabulated. The following figures show the numbers and percentages of response.
Mailed - Responses - Percentage
ENGLISH - 233,002 - 23,979 -10.3% FRENCH - 67,042 - 13,078 - 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 separately, the response jumped dramatically.
Newspaper inserts continue to trickle in. As of this writing we have received 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 experiment will be expanded to five other cities: Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Toronto and Halifax. In addition to the transit shelters, we have been offered 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 effectiveness 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 received 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.
International News
Worldwide Church of God