An Advanced Delivery System
by Bill Burks
For most of this century, The Roanoke (Va.) Times was delivered in standard fashion. Youngsters between the ages of 12 and 16 delivered the paper by foot or bike and served about 50 homes. A profound change has since occurred.
Today our carrier force consists of adults whose average age is in the mid-30's and who each deliver a variety of products to approximately 400 homes per day. Today's carrier handles many new responsibilities while performing at a higher level of quality and customer satisfaction.
I'd like to share some of the ideas that led to one of the first successful attempts in the country to combine a traditional carrier force with an alternate-delivery force.
Late in 1991, we stopped producing an afternoon edition of The Roanoke Times. Virtually all the evening subscribers were added to the morning routes. Youth carriers didn't have the cars needed to handle these larger routes, nor was it as appealing to work in the pre-dawn hours.
We also began to wonder if there was a way we could deliver Express Line, a product that enables advertisers to reach nonsubscribing households, ourselves in a more timely and cost-efficient way than the postal service could. These thoughts became the genesis of Pinpoint Target Marketing, our alternate-delivery service.
One of the things I'll never forget about this was how uneasy I was at the first meeting when we explained to some veteran newspaper carriers that we wanted them to start delivering magazines. All of them, however, thought it was a good idea.
We were up front with both the alternate-delivery and newspaper-carrier forces, and wherever possible, we included their suggestions in our plans.
Now a single carrier delivers The Roanoke Times, The Wall Street Journal, magazines, Express Line, phone books, product samples and advertising to virtually any metro household.
Unifying our carrier force worked toward two ends. While we increased revenue opportunities for our company, we also made the routes more financially rewarding for carriers.
An adult force able to juggle more responsibilities opened up a new array of possibilities. In March of 1991, our metro carrier force delivered about 1.4 million papers. In March of 1995, they delivered the same number of newspapers, plus 110,000 Express Lines, 85,000 telephone directories, 80,000 Pinpoint Plus coupon books, 54,000 magazines, 32,000 Brendle's department-store flyers, 20,000 Wall Street Journals and 113,000 market-saturation advertising pieces.
This past October, we began testing a plan to increase revenues and save newsprint by taking our stock listings out of the main newspaper. Our plan is to provide stock and mutual-fund listings, in a separate 20-page tabloid, to only those subscribers who want them and are willing to pay 49 cents extra per week. We would not be able to accomplish this type of tailoring without our advanced delivery capabilities.
The ability to deliver any printed material, ad message or sample to any household in our market is a core competency that will allow us to maintain a unique competitive advantage.
Burks is metro circulation manager for The Roanoke Times. E-mail, bburks@ roanoke. infi.net; phone, (540) 981-3361; fax, (540) 981-3432.