Small Business Coupon Program Debuts
This month, Capitol Color Mail Inc. will launch Business Values, a shared mail and coupon-book program. The campaign will target small to midsized businesses located near office product retailers such as Staples and Sam’s Club.
Business Values is a 16-page magazine customized for six- to eight-mile-wide areas the company refers to as retailer-driven mail zones, or RDMZs.
“Business Values is a program for [small and midsized businesses] surrounding those stores which are heavily dependent on them to survive,” says Shaun Boylan, president of the Bonita Springs, FL consumer coupon-book mailer.
The 8-1/2 by 11-inch coupon magazines generally will be sent to lists of businesses of 30 or fewer people compiled by QuadData Services. This division of printing giant Quad Graphics gets its information from Dun & Bradstreet, InfoUSA and other sources. Quad also developed the insertion technology that the Business Values coupon books use, he notes.
Depending on the individual market, the coupon magazines will go out to 10,000 to 100,000 addresses in an RDMZ, says Boylan.
The Business Values books accept full-page, half-page, front and back cover ads. They also feature separate inserts called Business Card Marketplace, with eight detachable local business cards on a page.
Capitol Color Mail, which began testing Business Values in South Florida a few months ago, has moved the program into Atlanta and plans to expand to the top 50 U.S. markets later this year, says Boylan.
Already, Business Values has lined up Pitney Bowes, Dell Computer, Time Warner Cable and the UPS Store as national advertisers. Business Values salespeople are currently working to gauge local advertisers’ interest.
Although the program is aimed at business-to-business recipients, in at least one market it offers coupons for restaurants, a health club, a cruise line and even a local chiropractor’s office.
Boylan touts how Business Values is cheaper than solo mail: For example, an eight-page insert mailed separately to 100,000 small businesses would cost $35,200 when factoring in printing and labeling costs, but only $9,700 with Business Values ($4,700 for printing and $5,000 for inserting and mailing).
He declines to project revenue or additional advertisers for the program.
