Sweetspot.ca, a localized Toronto e-mail newsletter and Web site (see MIC, Dec. 2/04) has just expanded into Montreal this month and has plans to invade Vancouver in late May or early June. The publication focuses on shopping finds of interest to upscale urbanites and those who would like to be.
There are now 5,000 subscribers to the e-mail, double the 2,500 it had when MIC interviewed the co. in early December. Visits to the site are holding steady (at 10,000 per week). But ‘that’s considered secondary,’ says founder Joanna Track, an Ogilvy account-side alum. ‘We mainly sell the e-mail. The newsletter’s pass-along factor is up to 25% that Sweetspot can track (those passed along using an embedded forward function), but, says Track: ‘A lot of people just press their [regular] forward button so we can’t track that.’ She says most days they see 10% to 25% pass-along.
Marketers have been hitching their wagons to the star in growing numbers and one must admit the target demo is an advertiser’s dream: primary 25-40, secondary 18-24, with a strong female skew (88%.) Forty per cent claim a $75,000+ income. Track says the newsletter acts as a great filter, with one story a day, on one topic. ‘It’s a very easy read and very digestible,’ she says. ‘Because we keep it short (200 words max,) a person can be in and out and we’re not intrusive.’
The newsletter goes out early each morning, five times a week, with a sixth edition an advertorial from folks like Shoppers Drug Mart. The drug store chain ran a program from January to March sending out one or two Sweetspot advertorials a month on topics like a contest for people to be on the cover of its glow magazine. It has also used the newsletter as an avenue to promote other events. Interestingly, Shoppers uses the medium to target the market rather than gather personal info. It wants Sweetspot’s upscale readers.
And those readers are ‘fanatical,’ says Track. ‘We form intimate relationships with them. Every day they send me e-mails.’
Sweetspot has been promoting itself ‘mostly through viral,’ says Track. ‘We do a monthly promotion within the newsletter for people to send it to friends. We’ve formed a partnership with Zoom Media, doing posters in fitness clubs and restaurants, and co-promotions with people like Caban. We’ll promote their event and they put Sweetspot on their materials. She adds: ‘We’ve also linked with Rethink Breast Cancer because it’s a cause we believe in. We did a story promoting their ‘Fashion Targets Friday’ event in which offices sell their T-shirts. Last October, we ran a breast cancer awareness tip each day for breast cancer awareness month.’ In return Rethink helps raise Sweetspot’s exposure.
What’s the next frontier? Track is thinking subject matter rather than geography. She’s in the early stages of talking about doing a newsletter targeted at moms about cool kids’ stuff, and then maybe one targeted at men.
