Senior Mail USA, a cooperative mailer targeting people age 60 and older, is planning to launch a consumer Web site next month that will offer links the advertisers that bought into the company’s spring mailing, the company’s president, Robert Moses, told DM News yesterday.
Although Senior Mail already has a corporate Web site geared toward recruiting advertisers, the new site would provide content to consumers, Moses said. The company has not yet decided on a name for the site, although Moses said he is considering using the URL www.greatdays.net.
In addition to providing links to advertisers and to other senior-friendly Web sites, the Senior Mail site also will feature essays, poetry and other writings by people age 60 and older. The site also will include a page that carries links to sites for youngsters, as a service to seniors seeking to go online with their grandchildren.
Catalog companies that purchased one of the six spots on Senior Mail’s catalog card program when it debuted in the spring also will have a page on the Web site. Viewers can either ask to receive the catalog by mail – Senior Mail will forward such requests once per week to the catalog companies – or they will be able to shop from the catalogs using the Senior Mail Web site.
The site is being developed internally under the direction of Moses, who launched Senior Mail about 15 years ago.
“We’re really trying to make the mailing more effective for our advertisers,” he said. “It’s really more of an incentive for them.”
The new web site will be promoted in the company’s fall mailing, which is scheduled to reach 3.3 million older consumers in September and October. About 400 advertisers participated in the spring mailing, which went to 2.9 million households in 50 markets in March. The fall mailing is adding several markets on the East Coast, including Queens County and Nassau County in New York and Indian River, Martin and St. Lucie counties in Florida. The Texas markets of Houston and Austin also have been added for the fall mailing.
In addition, the company is expanding its advertising program for catalogers, which was launched in the spring. The catalog card program offers catalog companies the opportunity to purchase one of 12 spaces on a four-color, double-sided folded post card, which is included in the co-op envelope along with the coupons from the advertisers. In the first mailing, only six catalog companies were featured. The company also is lowering the cost of the catalog card program, to $3 per thousand, from $4 per thousand in the spring.
