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In an effort to reach potential female subscribers, Stamford-based American Homeowners Association has entered into a wide-reaching marketing partnership with iVillage network, the Internet's largest publisher of news and information targeted to women's interest.
The agreement will promote several of AHA's membership subscription services on the iVillage network, said Richard J. Roll, AHA's founder and president.
The homeowners association's programs give members online information and savings on home-related and health-related costs.
The member-based organization offers homeowners and first-time home buyers savings and convenience through services such as prescreened contractors and free legal consulting. AHA also provides members free access to more than 100 copyrighted courses that help homeowners with such issues as financing, selling and maintaining a home.
The organization also has a health-care subscription service, American Health Association which gives members discounts on health-related costs such as prescriptions and doctors visits. The health association will also be marketed on iVillage's network.
Roll said iVillage, which includes iVillage.com, Women.com, Business Women's Network, Lamaze Publishing, is an ideal partner for AHA.
"Our focus on filling needs and providing solutions for the same target audience makes this a smart partnership for both companies," Roll said.
"More and more women are aspiring to be first-time homeowners," Roll said. And last year 25 percent of the American women did not have healthcare coverage, so the savings offered through the healthcare association can fill that gap.
"From the outside it looks like a win-win deal" said Angelo Rossetti, managing partner of Hartford-based NetMarketing, a strategic Internet marketing and consulting company.
"In my estimation (iVillage) speaks to the house-buying decision makers, it's a more established online brand and it speaks to a large volume of eyeballs," Rosetti said iVillage has one of the largest female audiences of any online property, so it is a good target audiences for AHA, Rosetti added.
The agreement, Roll said, provides AHA with a minimum of 8 million monthly advertising banners, online messages and pop-under messages, and guarantees iVillage minimum monthly payments from AHA. In addition, iVillage gets an equal share of net revenue from AHA memberships sold to iVillage visitors. Roll said the homeowners association has numerous marketing partnerships, but this is the first of its kind for the company. The partnership has been so successful in its initial rollout that it will use the marketing model with other Internet sites. Currently AHA is in discussion with eight other potential online partners, Roll said.
"These kind of partnerships make a lot of sense in this space, said Sharon Katz, vice president of media for Norwalk-based Modem Media, Inc., an Internet-advertising developer and consultant.
Such a marketing deal allows one company to leverage the strength of another, she said. In this case, by partnering with iVillage, AHA can reach a large audience of women without having to create content of its own, Katz said.
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