TechCrunch finally answered something I have been wondering about for a long time, that being how many floppies and CDs did AOL send out? How much did it cost? And what kind of marketing response did they get?

Here are some of the cool points from the article:

- At one point, 50% of the CD’s produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it

- The profitability of each and every disk and promotion effort was tracked and analyzed. We conducted approximately 2000 different tests each year and used these results to develop future programs.

- The average response to that mailing was a staggering 10%– unheard of in direct marketing– or any marketing circle.

- At the time of the initial tests there were no machines that could assemble these packages automatically. We worked with vendors to develop automated equipment and could not have scaled the marketing programs without first developing this equipment…

Read the entire story at TC and followups at Quora!