A Toronto-based publisher of mom-focused online newsletters, SavvyMom Media, is growing its subscriber base by 20% with the acquisition of Western Canada’s Vibe Family Publications, a competitive online publisher positioned as the voice of the new mom community in B.C. and Alberta.
SavvyMom will be folding the BabyVibe.ca and KinderVibe.ca brands into its existing line-up of online offerings, including its weekly national and city e-newsletters (Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria), its website and additional properties (including monthly EatSavvy, ShopSavvy and PartySavvy e-newsletters, and its iShareSavy.ca, a user-driven review site).
With this Western site take-over, the five-year-old online publishing company is trying to positioning itself as a leader in permission-based e-mail marketing to Canadian moms.
“We’re gaining their readership and that’s the main objective of the acquisition,” Sarah Morgenstern, publisher and co-founder of SavvyMom Media, told Marketing.
“SavvyMom has been able to offer national reach for the Mom market for awhile, but like many publications (print and digital) the readership is still centred in Ontario, so this way it’s going to give us a much more representative population for the West.”
The newsletters provide marketers access to the valuable and highly active on-line mom demo, a group Morgenstern refers to as the 80% minority.
“Women, and particularly moms, are making the majority of the purchase decisions for households – and not just on traditional baby–related products, but cars, electronics, and obviously consumer packaged goods,” she said. “They’re controlling those dollars, but they’re harder to reach because of their busy lives. The nature of our publication is it’s very curated, relevant, quick bites of content that reach moms just when they need it.”
Prior to the acquisition, SavvyMom has been maintaining and growing its readership primarily organically through word-of-mouth among its loyal readers.
