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WHO:
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WHAT:
Tennis Week Magazine, based in Rye, NY, was looking for ways to increase both its circulation and advertising revenue. Knowing that pleasing customers was the U.S. Postal Service’s “racquet”, they turned to the Postal Service’s New York Metro Area sales team to serve up a winning solution.
Meetings between Postal Service account manager Cheryl Faison and Tennis Week's circulation manager, Selina Patterson, to discuss the use of Postal Service direct mail offerings began in 2002.
“I invited Selina Patterson to a ‘Ride-Along’ seminar where Forbes magazine made a presentation on how much advertising revenue they had captured by offering the Ride-Along product to their print advertisers,” Faison said. A Ride-Along is a Standard Mail piece – often a multi-media CD, product samples such as cosmetics, fabric swatches, etc., booklets and catalogs – that accompanies and “rides-along” with periodical mail pieces (magazines, newspapers) at delivery. Ride-Along pieces may weigh up to 3.3 ounces, and can be included with a periodical for $.124 per piece.
Once Patterson understood the potential of the Postal Service’s Ride-Along offering, she eagerly sought out companies that could insert a Ride-Along in Tennis Week Magazine. Babolat, a manufacturer of tennis racquet string, made the decision to utilize the Ride-Along as a means of providing Tennis Week's subscribers with free samples of its product. Babolat designed its Ride-Along piece as a CD-sized box containing enough Babolat string to re-string a racquet — strings that have won more Grand Slam Championships than any other manufacturer’s tennis strings. The Ride-Along piece also included a mini-brochure that featured Babolat’s products on one side, and a photo of 2003 U.S. Open Grand Slam Champion Andy Roddick, a Babolat customer, on the other.
Faison helped guide the package plan for the unusual Ride-Along piece so that it would meet USPS mailing requirements. The Tennis Week issue containing the Babolat Ride-Along went out in April 2003 and consisted of over 30,000 pieces.
“This Ride-Along mailing was successful for Babolat because it boosted brand recognition of the Babolat Xcel Premium (our top end synthetic string) and created demand for this product within the U.S. market,” remarked Marc Pinsard, marketing director for Babolat North America. “After the mailing, many tennis dealers added this Babolat string to their offer in response to customer inquiries for the product.”
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WHEN:
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RESULTS:
So what were the end results? Tennis Week’s Selina Patterson is happy with the Postal Service’s assistance and flexibility in accommodating the unique needs of its advertiser. For Babolat, this winning combination stretched its marketing dollars by delivering a high quality product plus a brochure to potential customers – all in one single, compact package. For the Postal Service, this opportunity demonstrated how advertisers can use the mail to boost their business with this innovative new service.
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