Quick Overview
Bigger and older sites could take a few lessons from new niche site BoomerTennis.net in bringing key influencers into active advisory board roles and partnering with big brand names to sponsor memberships. We spoke to BoomerTennis.net co-founder Robert Milligan for this Exclusive Case Study.
Company Profile
Founded: 2010 (February 2011 – began taking members)
No. of Employees: Five full-time plus part-time contributors
Business Model: 100% memberships
Subscribers: over 100 paid members and growing quickly
Location: Newport, RI
Websites:
www.boomertennis.net
Target Market
The site is aimed at English-speaking (in the U.S. and around the world) Baby Boomers, roughly age 50 and over, who belong to tennis clubs and are active tennis players. They hope to continue to play as they age and are seeking advice on how to do so. Milligan says this part of the tennis market is largely ignored in the U.S.
The tag line for BoomerTennis.net is “The Ultimate Online Tennis Club” and consists of three types of paywall content:
· Expert Articles and Videos: Milligan has recruited experts in tennis instruction, orthopedics, physical therapy, psychology, and nutrition, and each contributes one article per week. For example, Dr. Craig Foster, the chief of shoulder surgery at Yale University’s Department of Orthopedics, writes about everything from tennis elbow to the unique orthopedic challenges of aging athletes. Some content is also presented in video format. (As a side note, some of the contributors are paid and some have equity in the company.)
· User-Generated Profiles/Social Networking: Each member fills out a profile with their name, location and tennis ranking. Other members can then connect to set up games, for instance when they are traveling to a city on business. Members can sign up to be regional “ambassadors” to provide other members with assistance when they want to play in their area.
· Member Discounts: BoomerTennis.net has partnered with companies such as RockTape (body tape for sports injuries) and La Quinta Resort and Club in Palm Springs to provide exclusive member discounts.
In addition to the paywalled content, BoomerTennis.net offers a free daily tip via email. A full-time editor coordinates all of the content.
Revenue Streams
100% of BoomerTennis.net’s of current revenues come from memberships. There is only one membership option – one year for $97. At the time of press, almost all memberships came from individuals subscribing on the Internet, BoomerTennis.net’s new underwritten membership model (read more below) has just launched.
In addition to organic SEO and just starting with Facebook ads, BoomerTennis.net uses the following ways to market the site:
Advisory Boards
Milligan has put together some fairly big names in the world of tennis and tennis marketing to serve on two advisory boards, one for tennis and one for business:
1. The tennis advisory board coordinates weekly with editor Chris Wright and monthly with Milligan on providing the best tennis content. Serving on the board are Hall of Fame player Stan Smith, Hall of Fame player Tony Trabert and leading tennis analyst and champion Cliff Drysdale.
2. Milligan checks in weekly with members of the business advisory board including agent Donald Dell, Butch Buckholtz, founder of a noteworthy tournament in Key Biscayne and Charlie Passarell tennis commentator and director of the Indian Wells Tournament.
Milligan recruited these board members by good old-fashioned networking and even cold calling. Some board members led to other board members. When Stan Smith was interested in signing on, Milligan spoke to his agent Donald Dell and convinced him to take an advisory role as well. All of the board members are compensated with equity in the company.
These are some of the most active advisory boards we have seen in the publishing world and they serve four purposes:
1. Promotion: These advisory board members are spokespersons of sorts. Each board member has been given equity in the company and thus has an incentive to spread the word to bring in new members. Those advisory board members who run tournaments are making special arrangements to give BoomerTennis.net high visibility at these events.
2. Conversion: These names credibility to the site and help convince potential members to join. Stan Smith and Tony Trabert, both big tennis names, are featured prominently on the home page. Press releases are issued whenever a new board member joins.
3. Retention: Getting great advice on both tennis content and the business of tennis. Milligan consults with members of his business advisory board about weekly and his tennis advisors about monthly, but the site editor talks to the tennis advisors weekly in order to make the content fresh and authoritative.
4. Additional Board Growth: Help with networking and bringing new big names into the fold. According to Milligan, “The tennis world is very tight.” By bringing in key influencers, Milligan has been able to form relationships with even more influencers.
Sponsored Memberships
BoomerTennis.net arranged for Poland Spring to underwrite the cost of some new memberships, here’s how the deal worked:
BoomerTennis.net ran an offer -via an event booth at the July 2011 Campbell’s Hall of Fame Championships in Newport, RI and via email to the list of the International Hall of Fame (33,000) – that Poland Spring would pay for a year-long membership to BoomerTennis.net as long as the consumer agreed to try Poland Spring’s in-home water service for free for two months. The consumers had to call Poland Spring’s number. Poland Spring is using BoomerTennis.net as a freemium to get people to take their water offer and hopefully become monthly users of the water service. (The only downside is that since the Poland Spring was paying for the membership, there is no credit card on file to renew the member in a year.)
Milligan got the idea of having a large-company sponsored memberships given away at an event from an article in Advertising Age (http://adage.com/article/digital/marketers-underwriting-access-paid-content/153081/) which detailed how Ford’s Lincoln brand of cars was giving away 200,000 subscriptions to the paid version The New York Times as a goodwill, brand-building gesture. Milligan approached the CEO of Nestle Waters (parent of Poland Spring) about the idea and found out the company was eager to really tie Poland Spring into the tennis market.
This offer just took place as of press time so results numbers aren’t in yet. Milligan and Nestle Waters plan to work together at upcoming tennis events to give away free water trials (of other Nestle regional water brands) and free memberships.
Free Subscriptions to Pros/Affiliate Marketing
“There’s not an adult player that doesn’t run into a pro somewhere,” says Milligan. So Milligan is working through the two largest professional tennis certifying bodies, Professional Tennis Registry (PTR) and U.S. Professional Tennis Association (USPTA) to give free memberships to tennis pros. Each organization has 14,000 professional members and Milligan is reaching out to them via email. He’s giving a $50 affiliate fee for each member the tennis pro recruits to join BoomerTennis.net. Right now, Milligan is only running an affiliate program for tennis professionals.
Public Relations
BoomerTennis.net works with a public relations agency that writes and distributes press releases for the company and also built a media site www.boomertennismedia.net
About Robert Milligan
Milligan has been a lifelong businessman, involved in energy, insurance and biotech companies. As he was in the process of selling one business and looking at what to do next, he had both of his knees replaced, which meant he could return to playing his beloved game of tennis. When he looked online for information about going back to tennis as an older player, he was disappointed with the lack of information that he found and the idea for BoomerTennis.net was born as a chance to cater to an underserved market. Milligan runs BoomerTennis.net with his brother Richard and wife Lace.
Vendors and Technology
Site Development – Software Developers India (SDI)
www.softwaredevelopersindia.com
Developing the site took three to four months and a budget of roughly $30,000. All the work took place in India.
Content Management System – Joomla
www.joomla.org
Hosting – TrafficIQ
www.Traffiq.com
Credit Card Processing – PayPal
www.paypal.com
Email Provider – BlueSky Factory
www.blueskyfactory.com
Logo and Offline Graphic Design – Milligan Designs
[email protected]
Public Relations – Carson Stoga
www.carsonstoga.com
Press release distribution – PRNewswire
www.prnewswire.com
Event Banners – Fedex Office
http://fedex.com/us/office/
Subscription Site Insider Analysis
We think BoomerTennis.net is going to go far and that’s because co-founder Robert Milligan has chutzpah, great networking skills and isn’t afraid to truly utilize his advisory boards to their fullest extent. Most advisory boards are some names on a masthead. Milligan’s boards are at the core of his business and he’s doing a good job monetizing them by given each member a financial interest.
Milligan’s experimentation with memberships underwritten by major brands is also worth noting and watching, though the numbers aren’t in yet. Larger subscription sites have tried this but Milligan is staking out new territory in the niche area.
Speaking of niche, Milligan was smart to focus his product. Baby boomer tennis players still make up a substantial large market but targeted enough that consumers can easily identify with the brand and offerings.
Moving ahead, Milligan would be smart to do some site design optimization such as moving the free daily email tip to a more prominent spot to collect more email addresses and re-stating the benefits on the membership order form. Milligan should offer a monthly membership, if only to show the yearly membership as a great deal at $97. If he offers monthly memberships at $37 or $47, $97 for a year sounds affordable.
