About
A card for the '09, and the businesses in it.
The Alamo Heights Spotlight is a 9×12 card that goes to every home in Alamo Heights, Terrell Hills and Olmos Park — roughly 5,000+ mailboxes across 78209 and 78212 — with local businesses on it, one per category.
The reason it's shared rather than a single-business mailer is money. A postcard from one company costs that company the whole drop. Sixteen businesses splitting the same card each pay a fraction, which is how a card gets to five thousand houses for under a dime a door. The reason there's only one of each is that nobody wants to buy a slot next to their closest competitor.
The website exists because a card has a lifespan. It sits on a fridge for a few weeks and then it's gone. A listing doesn't — so every business we list, whether they pay for the card or not, gets a page here that stays up.
Where it goes next
Card 1 is Alamo Heights, Terrell Hills and Olmos Park. After that the plan follows the rooftops: Stone Oak, then Alamo Ranch, then Shavano Park and the Deerfield pocket. Each area gets its own card and its own set of businesses — a plumber in Alamo Heights isn't much use to somebody in 78253.
Who's behind it
It's a small local operation, not a franchise of a national mailer company. You get the person who designs your ad on the phone, and the number on the card is answered by the same person.
What it looks like
Both sides, sixteen slots
Eight ad slots a side, a dated masthead down the middle, and the postal markings where USPS wants them. Every ad is designed to be told apart from the one beside it — a shared card that looks like one template repeated sixteen times reads as junk, and gets treated like junk.
Coupons are printed with real expiry dates, and the ones on this site are the same ones on the paper.
Run a business in the '09?
A directory listing is free. The card is one business per category, and the next one has a date on it.