No-Frills B-to-B Co-op Debuts

A no-frills cut-rate co-op mail program for small businesses began last month with a minimum annual revenue target of $2 million.

Image Publishing LLC's BizPak is a monthly mailing which costs less than half that of its daily co-op counterpart Welcome Business USA, but has fewer side benefits (such as a Web site). The company has distributed the daily drop for the past six years.

“We're doing this to get new companies interested in co-op mail,” says company director Sunil Patel. “This is a medium they can test for six months, while with Welcome Business USA we require a yearlong commitment.”

The Los Angeles company has assigned three of its eight salespeople to work on BizPak.

The co-op will go to 1.6 million new businesses each week culled from county registrars' offices across the United States. The mailers generally will come in 5-1/2 by 8-1/2-inch packages.

BizPak is starting out with 16 advertisers in fields like computers, credit card merchant processing and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telecommunications. Patel hopes to have about 25 participants by year's end.

But he stresses, “We don't want to be a Valpak and have 40 or 50 advertisers.” Nor is the firm looking to have any category-exclusive advertisers.

Image has launched this program alongside Welcome Business USA, which it runs in conjunction with the Service Corps of Retired Executives (Score), the U.S. Small Business Administration and a sister co-op program targeting new homeowners (Direct, August 2004).

Patel says both organizations work with Image Publishing to promote development of small businesses in the United States.

“We're a major source of new names for them,” he notes.

Image has donated the graphic design of Score's annual report for three years and has supported the organization's volunteer training conferences for four. The two also partner on the daily nationwide release of small business resource kits to newly formed companies.

Welcome Business USA is aimed at new small firms in 32 major markets and mails daily to 3,000 to 5,000 businesses sourced from county registrars. Advertisers include Dell Computer, First Data, HP and Sprint. These organizations typically get response rates between 1.5% and 2% to their offerings.