Thanks for your interest in sponsoring the DeerBlaster! Hopefully this info will help you understand who we are, what we do and how we do it – which isn’t how a lot of folks do things, but it has served us well: DeerBlaster’s sister properties – Jay Kumar’s BassBlaster and Target Walleye – have 113,000 and 194,000 subscribers respectively, entertain hundreds of thousands of folks every week, and connect their audiences with sponsors in real, authentic, fun ways.

Who is behind this?

Jay Kumar cameup with the BassBlaster, and is one of the driving forces behind the DeerBlaster. If you are or have been in the fishing market, you probably know who he is. If not, here’s a quick rundown. But the only thing that matters is that his long and wide media experience (and God’s leading!) led to the BassBlaster, which led to Target Walleye, which led to the DeerBlaster.

DeerBlaster content is mostly curated and produced by Ted Gartner, a long-time deer hunter and outdoorsman in TX.

What’s the DeerBlaster?

The DeerBlaster is mobile-focused digital media that is PUSHED to diehard hunters (they don’t have to remember to visit!) 1x/week. It’s the ONLY mobile-focused media platform in the deer hunting market, and is:

> Funny/entertaining
> Has a distinct personality
> Insightful and educational (tips)
> Clean (unusual these days)

Hunters read/watch/skim the DeerBlaster to be entertained and informed. They look forward to it every week! Here’s what the reach looked like as of April 2021, along with demo and other info:

Our 2 most popular questions: Open rates and Clicks

Open rates

1. Jay’s company has been doing email media for 10 years and can say with complete certainty that there’s no way to reliably measure open rates. The short version is that there’s no way to reliably track an open through multiple internet gateways/firewalls, which might explain why ALL open rates (B2C, B2C, regardless of industry) average pretty much the same…which is impossible!
2. Our email sending service (Constant Contact) does list open rates by device type, but told us they CAN’T measure opens on virtually ALL mobile devices…which is where most emails are opened.
3. The DeerBlaster is highly vertical – if you aren’t a diehard deer hunter, you don’t want it 1x/week all year long and will unsubscribe. So if people do not unsubscribe, they want it!
4. For all these reasons we do not have a reliable open rate to give you, but can say it’s high. The only solid number we have is the number of subscribers.

Clicks

We don’t sell against click-throughs/CTRs because they don’t work and never have. Jay has been involved in digital media since 2001 – practically when the Internet started! – and has never sold against click-throughs because they have never worked. At best you get a small spike and short tail. Two more things:

1. When an ad comes on your TV, would you click on it to leave what you were watching? Obviously not!
2. Jay says: “If it worked, we’d be doing it because we want to serve you well. On the flip side, we can’t endorse something that won’t serve you or the audience.”

We realize marketers like stats and measurement, which is one reason we send quarterly updates out to all sponsors. We also remain open to any ideas and would love to help.

What We Do: Content

The DeerBlaster PUSHES fun, entertaining, fast-read digital content to diehard deer hunters. While we do produce a little original content, most of what we do is “riff on”/play with other people’s content, including your content. This means we find content that we as deer hunters like, and get hunters to notice it by making it fun and informative to read – with a distinct personality and POV. This is why our audience loves it:

• Love seeing the pictures of “luckier thann me” people and their trophies. I enjoy getting this every week and usually share the pictures around the break room.
• Love seeing the variety of content not only just deer pics, but gear and other hunting news.
• Love it. The gear reviews are fabulous, and articles entertaining.
• I like most everything about DeerBlaster!!! Darn good articles.
• Great articles, very recent stuff to keep up to date on things, great pictures, great topics, great everything…keep up the great work!!
• So cool seeing/reading stories from around the country. And most importantly, TALKS ABOUT GOD!!
• Deer pics and your good humor!

CONTENT – good content – is primary. We try to make this turnkey for you: We track your social content, videos, tips, etc, and excerpt/highlight stuff we find cool/interesting typically in fun or educational ways – to get hunters to pay attention to it = increase awareness and engagement. Different levels of sponsorship get different levels of “content love” in the emails. Folks at the same sponsorship level get roughly the same “love.”

Please note: If your company or sponsored hunters/shooters don’t produce much social content, or much good content, the DeerBlaster might not be a match for you unless you can still benefit from our reach.

So the DeerBlaster is all about content, NOT about ads!

Banner ads

1. Advertising is NOT the primary benefit of being a DeerBlaster partner! Because banners ads do not work! Every DeerBlaster email has ads from sponsors because most companies value them. Some also feel strongly about the branding and product awareness that ad space provides. But the value in the DeerBlaster – and any media – is NOT ads! This is the reason we avoid calling our partners “advertisers”! CONTENT is the primary benefit.

2. Please remember: We do NOT sell click-throughs/CTRs!

How We Do Business: Relationship

The core of what we do is relationship – with the audience and with you. It’s everything.

The relationship with the audience is paramount. Because of that, and because there’s been so much product-shilling for decades in outdoor media, we DO NOT do that. This means no “advertorial,” no guaranteed numbers of mentions, no “tests,” no “special sections,” no exclusivity – nothing that would cause us to break our audience’s trust or make us look and feel like legacy media. We just won’t do that, and the trust we build there ultimately is what is valuable to sponsors (you!).

Because of this we only accept sponsors whose products or services we can endorse and believe in. This is partly because the DB is just like a TV show: It’s a personal form of communication, so any sponsor brands and products that appear on it are viewed as endorsements.

We have to serve the audience and you. Making sure the sponsor relationship is right starts before you become a sponsor. Meaning: Is the person-to-person relationship right? Are the products right for the DB – our audience, what we do and how we do it? Is your media/content right? Do our expectations match up? Can we serve you well? We are not going to take your money if we can’t serve you well!

This is also why our rates are intentionally low. This is about relationship, not money.

Communication is important in a relationship. Usually, staying in touch happens organically throughout the year, but to make sure it happens every quarter or so we send out a DeerBlaster update to all sponsors.

That’s about it!

Thanks much for your interest in the DeerBlaster! Hope this information helps you understand what we do and how we do it, and helps you decide whether you want to be a part of it. If you’re interested in being a sponsor, just hit Dennis Presley at dennis -AT- carecotv.com who handles that for us, and we’ll see what the Lord has in store!