Outsourcing its e-mail delivery to Exactis.com, The Economist's two newsletters grow by 15%.

Because of The Economist's high volume program of e-mail newsletter delivery and marketing, bringing it in-house was not an option. It was taking up to three days to deliver all its newsletters and messages, and some were dropped or not delivered at all. So it turned to Exactis.com to send out its two weekly, free online newsletters, Politics This Week and Business This Week, to 760,000 subscribers.

In addition to solving its delivery problem, The Economist also looked to Exactis.com to build the online subscriber base and gain additional ad revenue.

Exactis.com set up a custom program to deliver the newsletters every Thursday to all the subscribers. Additionally, Exactis com is now delivering the newsletters in a graphically rich HTML format, which can also support more advertising. Subscribers may choose either straight text format or HTML, with 150,000 opting for HTML.

In addition to carrying advertising which is clearly differentiated from the text, the newsletters boast and maintain customer loyalty to The Economist newspaper.

The Results--Exactis.com began delivering The Economist's e-mail letters Feb. 18, 1999, and since then the subscriber base has increased 15 percent from 760,000 to 879,000. Subscribers receive their newsletters on Thursday of every week.

"Exactis.com provides us with the technology to offer more visually appealing and reliable online newsletters to our subscribers, which is an incredibly diverse and dynamic group. Exactis.com is able to reach all of them quickly, and accurately track who they are, making a difference in our overall business," says Andrew McGregor, web director for The Economist.

In addition to the delivery technology, with the help of Exactis.com's list management capability, The Economist has been able to maintain and manage its subscriber list as it grows, solving such common list management challenges as returned mail, delivery failure notifications and duplicate addresses.

The service costs $.004 per newsletter.

The Economist also has a major international presence on the web with the 1995-launched www.economist.com--the first European-based publication to offer tiered access and online subscriptions.

Exactis.com's services do not presently include billing and renewal notices--total fulfillment management--but a representative says that this is the next natural step. Tom Detmer, CEO of Exactis.com, concludes: "The publishing industry has come to depend on e-mail for delivering newsletters and more efficient and targeted communications to their subscriber base. As more and more companies come online, e-mail is by far the most effective, immediate and inexpensive way to achieve the widest level of communication possible."