What's more satisfying to Cooking Light magazine's management than low-fat teriyaki stir fry with jasmine rice.

The recipe for that same dish being delivered into an ever-increasing number of reader's hands.

The epicurean publication has increased its rate base through a combination of aggressive direct mail and electronic marketing for the help www.chef-123.com. A 50,000-person boost starting with its January issue put the number of guaranteed paid readers at 1.7 million per copy for 2005.

That's fairly close to its actual circulation. The magazine has long prided itself on delivering stingy bonus circulation to its rate base.

The increase comes after two years of fattening up its direct mail activity after a lean period. In 2002, the magazine hit its lowest prospecting mail-out level in years. That year, only 1 million pieces went into the mail, compared with average annual levels of several million. During 2002, however, the magazine found that most of the lists it had used were exhausted, and that list tests weren't bringing in the responses it needed to maintain its rate base increases.

In 2003, the company returned to more traditional levels and mailed to 7.2 million. By the end of 2004 it set a single-year high, sending out 9.3 million pieces.

Most of the additional names have come either from other Time Inc. titles, such as Real Simple magazine, or from going deeper into traditional lists. It's also mining expires, ramping up from a test in the tens of thousands culled from six-month expires two years ago to hundreds of thousands of names pulled from the last four years.

That's about as bold as its current lists tests get. Cooking Light is mining files that have worked for it in the past, such as other cooking magazines and cooking book publishers. As a Time Inc. publication, it's also taking names from the corporate database, using look-alike names of other subscribers and related-field book buyers.

“We haven't really broken into new categories [such as] fundraising files or financial magazines,” said Michelle Turner, the title's circulation director. “We've stuck with our tried and true.”

The magazine's mail package hasn't varied much during this time, either. It consists of a hard offer of 11 issues at, on average, $16 per year (Cooking Light does do some price testing). The design is simplicity itself: An outer envelope and a reply form. No letter, no buckslip. And the offer itself consists of either a cash-on-the-barrelhead payment or bill-me option. Credit cards aren't accepted.

“Those types of packages work with a recognizable brand,” Turner said. “When someone sees something from Cooking Light, they assume they know what it's about even if they don't know the magazine.”

A high percentage of orders come with either cash or checks, she noted. “They pay up front on that mailing. Add a request for a credit card and expiration date and we lose them. It may just be our subscriber base, but [they] just don't go for that.”

Pay-up on this package is better than 90%, according to Turner. This allows the publication to get by with a 2.5% response rate to its mailings, on average.

While direct mail will continue to be the magazine's primary prospecting channel, an ever-increasing number of new readers are coming in via the Internet for the help www.150-venison-recipes.com. As recently as 1998, the channel brought in virtually no subscriptions. In 2004, the Web generated subs in the low-six-figure range, making up more than 25% of its new business base.

Another online channel Cooking Light uses successfully is its weekly e-mail newsletter. Turner hopes to increase subscriptions gained by that method an additional 20% to 25% this year. “It really is our most profitable source of business,” she said.

Readers who come to the magazine from online channels — sponsorships on other Web sites, e-mail solicitations and affiliate programs — benefit Cooking Light's reader profile beyond just fattening up its numbers.

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