Saturday, September 20, 2014

Print at home offers--a thing of the past?

Catalina Marketing has performed a study that suggests that print at home offers, the original digital coupons, are now on the decline (10% annually for the past 2 years).  This is in part due to the fact that marketers have been shifting their focus to solely digital offers that are linked to loyalty programs.  Catalina’s study also suggested that within 5 years, digital coupons will completely overtake print coupons.  

Many retailers still use print coupons.  Personally, I receive a great deal of coupons in the mail and utilize them.  However, I often forget to use them before they expire unless I have a particular item that I am shopping for. 

Catalina president, Todd Morris, believes that soon stores like Target will have technology that allows consumers to redeem digital coupons at checkout by entering their phone number.  This would help remedy that problem that shoppers often do not remember to use their digital coupons before they expire. 

Companies like Starbucks send reminder emails to use digital coupons and rewards before they expire.  This is intelligent because it brings customers into the store and they will often spend more money than the reward or offer. 

Moreover, I think that Starbucks is a great example of how to progress into the mobile payment space and use digital coupons to their advantage.  The Starbucks mobile app is excellent.  It marries a loyalty program with mobile payment.  I find that I often default to Starbucks when I do not have my wallet since I have a Starbucks card on my phone and often have various incentives on the card that I need to use.  Just today, I received an email that I had a reward expiring so I felt an impulse to go to Starbucks and use it, when I normally would not have gone there.  This is a great tool to drive traffic. 





Source: Ad Age

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