Carmen's Cupones y Consejos, a cooperative mailing enterprise, is betting its latest wave of expansion on growing Hispanic populations in Denver and Atlanta.

In so doing, the small firm will expand its reach to 11 million Latino households nationwide, says Shayne Walters, CEO of parent company Walters Media Group, Aliso Viejo, CA.

For about the past year, Walters has been mailing Carmen's Cupones y Consejos — which contains as many as 26 different advertisers — to Hispanic households in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, NJ, New York, Phoenix and San Antonio.

Among those advertisers are Kraft Foods, Walgreens, America Online, Gerber Life, DirecTV and Columbia House. The ads come in 6-inch-by-9-inch packages with copy written in both Spanish and English.

The co-op is aimed at Hispanic-American households with an average annual income of $25,000. Particular targets are 25- to 40-year-old women and children up to age 18. Unlike other companies that tailor their messages to specific Hispanic groups, Carmen's sends the same copy to all.

Walters offers no estimate of how many new advertisers he'll bring on board this year but says he'll get as many as he possibly can.

The co-op mailers are sent to households found on proprietary lists compiled from public sources, magazine subscriber files “and some credit card lists when we can get them,” says Walters, who adds that his database now has about 3 million names.

At present, Carmen's goes out to some 2.5 million households each quarter, but over the last year or so the program has grown impressively: By comparison, 1.3 million pieces were mailed in November 2002.

Carmen's is among a growing number of insert media marketers trying to capitalize on the growing Latino population in the United States and the perception that Latinos represent a somewhat neglected market.

The U.S. Census Bureau has reported that 35 million Hispanics — 13% of the population — live in the United States. That number is expected to increase to 65 million by 2010. Hispanics' purchasing power is estimated at $452 billion per year, yet only 2% of the average U.S. marketing budget goes toward serving them, Walters says.

Just the same, the typical Hispanic household reportedly receives less than one-tenth the advertising mail as most households even though nearly two-thirds of Hispanics say they always open and read this mail.