January 15, 2007

Readers of NewBeauty magazine willingly pay $10 to read the glossy pub, which launched on newsstands two years ago via Sandow Media, Boca Raton, Fla. And CEO Adam Sandow was pretty confident if they would part with a ten-spot for the beauty book, they would pay an additional $25 four times a year to receive TestTube, a colorful plastic tube sent to their homes stuffed with beauty booty.
Subscribers, who are mostly women, sample products and submit feedback online via newbeauty.com. Sandow in turn passes their insights on to advertisers and uses the information to create future TestTube offerings.
The second TestTube mailing, which shipped prior to the holidays, boasted products including Jane Iredale PurePressed Base Palette, Lancôme Secret de Vie and Purpose Redness Reducing Moisturizer. So far, TestTube has garnered 11,000 samplers, who learned about the program via branding ads—created in-house—in the magazine.
"The ads allowed us to test the horsepower of our magazine and offer advertisers something they weren't getting anywhere else, the opportunity to sample and receive valuable feedback," Sandow said. Most importantly, 96% of subscribers said they would purchase one or more of the products from the first TestTube mailing at full cost. Now, that's a beautiful idea.
—S.O.