Introduction to Targeted Marketing

One of Circulation’s chief functions is to produce the distribution documents (bundle tops, truck manifests, mail labels, etc.) that allow publications to be delivered. Circulation can also produce distribution documents for unpaid, non-publication products known as Targeted Marketing products (a product can be a publication or a Targeted Marketing product, such as a shopper). In this chapter, “product” refers to TM products, unless specifically stated. Because there are no subscribers, the addresses to which a TM product is delivered can be selected by the newspaper based on geographical area, address or occupant demographics, or whether or not they subscribe to a given publication.

Examples of Targeted Marketing selections include:

• Female occupants whose homes are valued at over 250,000.00 for a fine jewelry advertisement.

• Apartment dwellers who might be interested in buying a home.

• College students who might be interested in receiving a subscription to your newspaper at a special rate if they sign up with MasterCard.

How Targeted Marketing Works

There are two basic steps to Targeted Marketing: setup and processing.

• In setup, you define the product name and specify what addresses and/or occupants should be selected (and enter single copy TM draws, if the product will be distributed at single copy outlets). You also specify the publication whose delivery map will be used for distribution (this determines what routes will deliver the addresses) and set up the documents (such as bundle tops) that will be printed for this product.

• In processing, Circulation takes the addresses selected, along with the distribution information (routes, truck sequence, mail label group, etc.) and creates the distribution documents. These documents are displayed on the window and can be printed using the normal viewing and printing procedures.

The structure of Targeted Marketing is illustrated in the following diagram.

About “Dummy” Publications

Targeted Marketing products are delivered on routes used by publications. For example, a newspaper might have the carriers for its publication, the Tribune, deliver a shopper along with the newspaper on the last Saturday of every month.

A situation may arise, however, in which a TM product requires its own routes. For example, the newspaper might have a TM product called the Weekly, containing coupons and advertisements from local stores. The newspaper might have an entirely separate carrier force delivering this product, using different routes.

For products such as the Weekly, you need to set up a “dummy” publication (it could be named AltDeliv). This involves setting up a deliverable record, a delivery map, and routes for the product.

After the dummy publication is set up, you would set up Weekly as a product in Targeted Marketing, using the dummy publication AltDeliv as the “delivery product” for delivery information.

Typically, TM products with their own routes still select their audience based on a true publication—for example, the Weekly may go to non-subscribers of the Tribune. So the TM product Weekly would use Tribune in its selection criteria but AltDeliv as its delivery product. In order for this to work, the Tribune non-subscribers selected would need to be linked to an AltDeliv route—this is most easily done by defining the router for AltDeliv and performing rerouting.