Economist Direct is a fabulous idea
by Giles Turnbull
I love the global perspective you get from The Economist, and I love its style of reporting. But I’ve never subscribed, because I know I’d never get through the whole thing in a week. I’ve got too many other things to do.
Economist Direct is the new way to buy it, and I completely love it. Here’s how it works:
- you sign up at their web site, and hand over your mobile number and your credit card details
- then every Thursday, they text you with a brief teaser for this week’s mag
- if you want it, you just reply with “BUY”, and they send it to you in the post (at a much reduced price, too)
It’s not a subscription; it’s more casual than that. It’s an **impulscription**; they get the chance to dangle the week’s headlines under your nose, and you get the chance to buy if you like the look of that issue. No obligation, no hassle. It means I never have to miss an Economist Technology Quarterly, and nor do I have to take out a proper subscription and then suffer the guilt of seeing unread copies piling up in the living room.
I want all magazines to be available like this, please.
Thanks for pointing this out. Hope you get the credit when “impulscription” becomes the marketing guru buzzword du jour
This could be a great idea for newspapers with premium content. If you see an article you like on say. Nytimes.com, they give you the option of buying that day’s issue for a buck or however much it is…
I subscribe to the economist just because you get the audio edition (podcast) for free! http://www.talkingissues.com/magazine/1324/
I agree it’s a great system and I’d like to see more magazines etc offered this way. However whoever handles the Economist’s payments for them is so hopeless I don’t think I could recommend it. 5 weeks after my card expired and I put in a new one they still cannot process payment from it and have wasted hours of my time claiming the fault was with me/my bank – when I investigated I learned that they have failed to update their own data processing systems as they need to each month and even now are failing to correct the issue. Hopeless.