lished a sixteen-page booklet about the size of a magazine, containing the full page, half page, and quarter page ads. as were used in the regular magazines, of the nationally advertised articles that he carried in stock. He wrote to the different manufacturers, who sent him duplicate electros of their magazine ads., so the pages of this pharmacist's booklet looked like the advertising section of a magazine. The title of the booklet was "Magazinisms" and on the outside cover was this notice: "The goods advertised inside are all popular articles. We have stocked these articles because we believe they are good. You will recognize the ads. Nothing is easier than to get the goods. Send us a telephone call or a postal card and the goods will be at your door." About forty-three articles were advertised. Several manufacturers aided the pharmacist by sending him extra goods and others by cash donations. Each manufacturer received a copy of Magazinisms, copies were distributed about the city, and given out to the customers with each purchase. The pharmacist was well satisfied and said the scheme was a good one.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

MAIL ORDER ADVERTISING.

A NICE mail-order business comes in pretty handy when regular business is quiet. Steady sales made through the mail count up even though each separate sale is but ten cents or twenty-five cents. Then, too, it can be handled by your regular sales force. The orders come in so they do not require much time to fill them and your clerks can put up the orders when otherwise they might be idle. The advantages of mail-order advertising are many. 1. It increases your territory. Any article that can be mailed can be sent to any part of the country at practically no expense for transportation. 2. The sales are made on the cash-with-order plan. 3. No extra stock is required. 4. You can get many repeat

orders from the same customer. 5. Your competitor cannot find out the amount of your mail-order business, as it is conducted secretly. 6. It enables you to build up a good business on your own specialties and goods of your own make, with people living outside your own city. There is a lot of good trade in the towns and villages surrounding your city. Go after it. You can get it. The mail-order houses have no trouble in getting it. They are pegging away for it all the time. The rural free delivery covers all the country routes, you can deliver orders quickly either by mail or express.

Mail orders require some care. A record should be made of every order, however small, and this record should include the kind of goods ordered, from whom, when shipped, whether paid for or not, what clerk put up the order, whether shipped by mail or express, time and date of shipment. With such a record, you can write your mail-order customer the whole story of the order from the time it was received until it left your hands. In case of any complaints, your customer will then be convinced that mail orders are carefully attended to. It is better for you to prepay express always or agree to prepay it on all purchases amounting to a certain sum. This latter is the plan in use by the large department stores, only that in some departments, like the furniture department, they require a larger amount to be purchased to obtain the free transportation.

There are two objections to be overcome in the mail-order trade. 1. Impossibility of personal contact with your customers. This you can overcome by making all your letters personal talks; write to them as you would talk to them personally. A personal tone in all the advertising you send to them also helps. Free trials, money refunded if purchase is not satisfactory, guaranties, are all good points to mention in your advertising, also a good description and an illustration of the goods. Remember that your customer must order the goods without having a chance to see them or talk with you. Make him see them through your advertising and make

him talk with you by conversing with him through personal letters.

2. The bother of ordering goods by mail. This can be overcome by sending addressed envelopes, coin cards, accepting stamps for small sales, instructing them to pin a dollar bill to the order, printing a coupon in your advertising matter or in your newspaper ad. to simplify writing the order. Many people hesitate about writing letters to order goods, but will take some action if the action is made easy for them. With this action made easy and the goods delivered at their door, in most cases without cost to them, you ought to get some of their business.

Go after them every month with some offer. Send them circulars, samples, advertising matter. Write them a personal letter when you ship the first order. Put picture cards, counter slips, samples of pills, perfumes, powders in the packages that you ship to them. Send them a souvenir. They like attention, then they feel as if you really appreciate their trade and they feel friendly toward you and your store. If inquiries come in without orders, follow up the inquiry with a strong personal letter even though the inquiry was sent in out of idle curiosity or to get something for nothing. Your local paper has quite a number of subscribers in the suburban towns. You as an advertiser in that paper can procure the names of these out of town subscribers.

From name brokers you can procure a list of names of people who have actually bought goods by mail. As each order comes in by mail that customer's name is an asset for you if you can hold him. The fact that he has already bought proves that he is a mail-order buyer, but one purchase won't pay you; he must make other purchases, and it is up to you to make him do it. Mail orders come in slow at first. You are a new comer in the field and your mailorder audience isn't acquainted with you yet. Sending out a few circulars and a catalogue doesn't make a mail-order campaign.

Get the Post Office rulings on all second-class matter. There is a new ruling on the size of the coupon. This rule

states that the coupon should not occupy more than twentyfive per cent. of the total area of the advertisement. Thus if you send out a circular with an ad. occupying the last page and have a line at the bottom of the page for the name and address together with the instructions "Cut out this advertisement," those words make a coupon out of the whole back page and your circular becomes unmailable. Such a coupon in a page ad. in a magazine would exclude the magazine from the mails. Poisons are unmailable; also, liquids exceeding four ounces.

Keep plugging away at your mail order customers every month. Make them feel that they are just as privileged and even more so than the customers that trade over the counter. Emphasize in your ads. your prompt attention to all mail orders. Make a systematic effort to get some mail-order business. The people living in small towns, villages, and on farms are just as desirous of buying the latest goods and specialties as their cousins in the city. Every once in a while you can run solid mail-order ads. with a cut showing a mail carrier or a rural carrier delivering mail.

The best things to advertise are articles easily mailable. Cameras and camera supplies are used by nearly everybody and these are good articles to work up, because the customers "come back" for more. Also safety razors, razor blades, fishing tackle, stationery supplies, ointments, headache remedies, corn cures, toilet powders, perfumes, sachets, rubber goods.

HOW TO COMPILE A MAILING LIST.-An accurate mailing list is a big asset to any pharmacy. It is a hard thing to get one in which there will be no waste circulation of advertising matter sent out. Selecting names at random from a directory is a long, tedious job; when you have secured a list in this way a large part of them will not be prospective customers. You can make a house to house canvass of the people living in the district served by your store. Such a census is often made by the different churches and you probably could copy from their lists by telling the pastors and clergymen why you wanted them. Hardware dealers usually have a list of farmers. They use this list quite often

for sending out samples of seeds and literature pertaining to fertilizers. The writer once needed a good list of people that kept horses, to circularize them with veterinary remedies, advertising booklets. A neighboring hardware dealer loaned his farmer's list, this was added to by getting names of livery stable keepers, truckmen, grocers, provision dealers, etc., then that list contained prospective buyers, as every person whose name was on it kept one or more horses.

Another method is to have each clerk in your store make out a list of all their friends and their friends' chums, also ask them if they know the names of the different customers trading in the store that are known to you only by sight. It is an easy matter to get the names of the clerks in the stores and offices in your immediate vicinity, also the names of the teachers in the nearest school, the permanent firemen at the nearest fire station. If you are near a Normal School or other educational institution you can get the roster of the students or by giving a box of candy to one of the students he or she will supply you with a hundred select names of good buyers.

Getting your customers to register their names when you give them a calendar is a good method for those who get out calendars every year. The assessors' books, the registrars of voters lists, the telephone directory, the poison register, the business directory, the list of corporations, the list of public school teachers, all afford material for some good

names.

The names on your mailing list should be kept on cards alphabetically filed. Upon these cards you can enter any extra bit of information about the customer, his special needs, his peculiarities, his preferences, hobbies, etc. It is easy to revise these lists. If a customer leaves the city, his card is simply taken out of the file. The lists should be classified. One list to contain the names of those to whom advertising and samples of perfumery, toilet articles is to be sent; another, the names of confectionery buyers; another, the names of your cigar patrons; another the names of farmers who buy