Print for the digital age

Great content only gets you so far if an audience can't access it.

In an earlier era, free newspapers would distribute copies willy-nilly and hope for the best. But that's not how we do things at Hippo. It's wasteful and doesn't serve readers or advertisers. 

Recognizing the crucial role of distribution, from the start we emphasized having a strong delivery network. Over the years, we've built it out to the point where Hippo is now available in 950 locations across New Hampshire's southern tier—more than any other publication in the state.

We monitor each location and that info gets compiled each week: how many copies delivered, how many picked up, how many left. This gives us a detail net return data. 

Because unread papers are no good to anyone, we continually adjust each drop until we get it just right. This means our return rate (the number of copies not picked up at the end of each week's cycle) averages less than 2 percent. Most daily newspapers run at a return rate of 10 percent. 

Over the years we found that other factors, including seasonality, weather and school vacations, can effect pick-up rates. We adjust for those factors. For example, a large snow storm reduced box pick-ups and we move those copies to grocery stores or other inside locations.  

Another way distribution makes a difference is flexibility. Because Hippo is free, we can position it in a wide range of places where a paid circulation paper wouldn't work. These non-traditional locations include condo associations, break rooms of large employers, college campuses, and all over the various downtowns in New Hampshire's southern tier.

And it's not just number of drops. It's also about quality. We found that people's grocery shopping habits coincided with our weekly print cycle. People tended to shop for groceries on Thursday. So early on Hippo emphasized availability and visibility in our region's major supermarkets. This has helped drive our readership and build our audience.

A single supermarket—the Hannaford store on Hanover Street in Manchester, N.H.—regularly moves 2,000 copies of Hippo each week. Because we can't physically place that many copies in the store all at once, we have to return every day to replenish the supply.

Bottom line is that although we do not charge for the print edition, we do not skimp on distribution. Without our network, Hippo's formula for print in the digital age wouldn't work at all.