Mail Today to launch campaign to celebrate circulation

The compact daily claims to have clocked a circulation of two lakh in the capital and will launch a campaign to reinforce this

Mail Today, the compact daily from the stable of the India Today Group (in collaboration with Daily Mail), is rolling out a campaign to emphasise its circulation figures.

The group claims that in the last six months, it has added a large number of copies, taking its circulation figure up to 2 lakh copies. The campaign, which will start on September 16, aims to stress on the growth of Mail Today, which has its presence in Delhi and NCR. The campaign has been designed by TBWA. It will be seen across the city with about 25-30 sites taken on rotation basis.

Right now, the newspaper plans to run this campaign with the single minded message of its reaching the 2 lakh circulation mark. The campaign is targeted at trade as well as readers.

Devesh Rai, head, marketing and circulation, Mail Today, adds, "For trade, we will be present across trade media and have some ground level activities planned for September 16 and 17. These will be followed by ground level activities in October and November." This campaign will run for about three-four weeks.

The publication will cover the trade fraternity through media trade magazines, trade sites and on ground activity. As far as on ground activities are concerned, in September, the daily will place Mail Today newspaper in an envelope carrying the message of '2 lakh circulation' as well as an SMS based contest centred around the circulation number in various agencies located in Delhi and Mumbai. During October, the publication will hold its annual inter-agency day and night cricket tournament, titled APL (Agency Premier League) in the two cities (Delhi and Mumbai).

For the readers, the daily will extend this campaign to radio and outdoor media. After Diwali, it plans to launch a brand campaign similar to the ones that it has done in the past.

While this campaign will talk about the circulation and readership achievements of the daily, the brand campaign, which will be released after Diwali, will be based on the core brand and product values of Mail Today.

According to the latest quarter of IRS (Q2, 2010), the daily has reported a total readership of 2.57 lakh and an AIR (average issue readership) of 2.03 lakh.

Talking about the growth trajectory of the daily, Suresh Balakrishnan, chief operating officer, Mail Today, says, "I feel what has clicked for us is the approach of reaching out to a focused TG. The focused approach, when combined with a differentiated product, was bound for success."

Rai adds, "The best part is that the right TG is picking us and we are reaching the homes with the relevant audience for our advertisers. Reaching out to this set of readers who belong to the consuming class and have a very busy life schedule was a challenge but despite that, we have shown rapid growth and acceptance. It's only going to get better with our plans of further increase in circulation, which will be supported by extensive marketing promotion."

Mail Today was launched in 2007 in Delhi and is about to complete three years of its existence. The target audience of the daily comprises males and females belonging to SEC A, aged 25-40 years.

According to Rai, the three key factors of the subscription drive include the scheme, the channel and the marketing cover provided to the channel. "We tie in our readers for periods as long as two years through lucrative subscription schemes. At the same time, we understand that a 'one size fit all approach' cannot work in our schemes. So, currently, we have three parallel schemes running. These schemes are various permutations and combinations of the subscription period (24 months, 15 months and 8 months) at various price points and with different gifts. This helps us to appeal to all segments within our TG."

Another thing that has worked for the daily is its approach to reach out to the readers. Over the last five months, the newspaper has run various schemes through two main channels - door to door sales executives and the newspaper vendor. "At any point, we have more than 100 door to door executives and thousands of vendors selling our scheme. Since vendors play a key role in reaching out to the larger set of our prospective readers, we also introduced multiple incentive schemes to make it lucrative for them. We have had excellent support from the vendors in our subscription, with as much as 70 per cent subscriptions coming through them," adds Rai.