The city’s award-winning Bmail news service may be expanding in 2018 with BmailMonthly, a monthly newsletter and calendar of events that the U.S. Postal Service would deliver to all Biloxi residents and businesses the last week of each month.
The new service would be contingent on a Biloxi business that would see the benefits of getting its advertisement before the citywide and online audience throughout the month by U.S. mail and online.
The eight-page, full-color newsletter, with a four-page calendar of city events, would launch its January issue the last week in December, and the city today began accepting sealed bids for a sponsor for the first three issues. Sealed bids must be received at City Hall by 10 a.m. on Nov. 29.
The selected partner, for a suggested base bid of $4,500 a month or suggested minimum bid of $13,500 for the first three months, would receive a 5½ x 8½ full color advertisement that would be prominently displayed in the newsletter mailed to the city’s 25,000 homes and businesses and distributed at the city’s Visitors Center and other popular locations. The high bidder also would have a hyperlinked tile ad on the bottom left side of each of the city’s online Bmails, which are are delivered three to five times a week to an audience of 9,000 subscribers, including local, state and national media outlets.
“Right now, the city spends about $70,000 a year on state and federally mandated postcards and mailouts to our residents,” said Chief Administrative Officer Mike Leonard. “We also publish online and mail a community calendar to about 200 residents.
‘What we are looking to do is incorporate this timely and relevant information into a stylish, informative newsletter that would benefit a citywide and online audience, and at the same time we’d offer a unique opportunity for a business, one business, to get their message to this exclusive city audience. There is no other vehicle like this, a citywide audience, through the mail and online, through public private partnership.
“It would cost about $120,000 a year, but we’re looking to do it in a way that is at no additional cost to the city. We think it has good value to the citizens of Biloxi and is a unique opportunity for a Biloxi business.”
However, Leonard emphasized, BmailMonthly being revenue neutral is the key: “We won’t do this unless it can be done at no additional expense to the city. It’s not budgeted and must rely on outside supplemental funding. That’s where the advertiser comes in.”
See what the BmailMonthly newsletter will look like
See an actual Bmail with a sponsor’s branding
See the pitch
See the official legal notice and how you can bid
