Something beautiful happens between a couple saying "I do" as they get hitched to saying "I due" as they grapple with everything from credit card debt to student loans to coping with rent or mortgage payments. The problem is that if you happen to be The Knot (NASDAQ:KNOT), which specializes in providing wedding day resources for brides and grooms, you get discarded like uncooked rice, bridal bouquets, and copies of Bride magazine once the wedding cake is sliced.
To help make the most of the audience at its namesake website, The Knot has been reaching deeper into the courtship cycle by acquiring a pair of online dating sites and launching its TheNest.com site for married couples.
The Nest got a branding boost this week when the company announced it had hooked up with publisher Clarkson Potter for a four-book deal. It's a great move. Clarkson Potter specializes in lifestyle reads and cookbooks, helping to further the careers of household celebrities like Rachael Ray and Martha Stewart of Martha Stewart Living (NYSE:MSO) fame.
This can only help the site. TheNest.com doesn't have the luxury of brand recognition or timely urgency that plays right into TheKnot.com's localized content and advertisers. If you were a newlywed looking to tackle some marital money matters like paying down debt or wondering what type of mortgage you need for your first home, you would most likely to turn to a site like Bankrate (NASDAQ:RATE) or us here at Fool.com before checking out TheNest.com.
Short of having its bizdev department call our bizdev department to broker some kind of content syndication deal, the clearest path for The Nest is to build out its brand as a place for young couples to gather, and that's why this book deal is brilliant. Even if the books don't sell briskly, the very name of the site on bookshelves should register a fair deal of curious clicks.
Though I recently joked that The Knot may soon adopt a "from diapers to caskets" catchall slogan, The Nest is the ideal place to press its weight because TheKnot.com attracts more than 2 million unique visitors every month and has the ability to reach registered users a few months later to sell them on The Nest.
It has always had the power to do just that. Now it will be able to reach the freshly married bookworms, too.
The Knot was recommended to Motley Fool Rule Breakers subscribers four months ago and has already appreciated by 44%. You can learn more about The Knot and the other newsletter market beaters, including Bankrate, with a free 30-day trial subscription.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz got married years before TheKnot.com was around and he regrets that. He could have had a punctual person working the video camera that day. The Fool has a disclosure policy. Rick is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.
