The Future of Couponing: Digital vs. Paper
If there was one buzzword at the Association of Coupon Professionals conference this year, it was digital. Coupon sessions entitled "Emerging Technology" and "Digital Coupon Trends and Insights" showed what the industry is focused on -- digital coupon delivery. In the industry, "digital" refers not only to load-to-card or load-to-phone ecoupons but also to print-at-home coupons, both of which most coupon shoppers are quite familiar with.
What you may not be aware of is how much the industry is preparing to shift to digital. I say "shift," because in sitting through each of these sessions, I realized that the days of the traditional coupon newspaper insert may be numbered. Statistics about the decline in newspaper readership and subscription were tossed out over and over throughout the conference -- newspaper subscription rates are falling at an average of 9% each year. How long can something sustain itself if it continues to lose nearly ten percent of its audience each year? Certainly, newspapers will always be around, but more people are looking to the web for their news content each year. And if people are looking elsewhere for their news, manufacturers want to make sure that their advertisements and coupons follow the audience.
For today's coupon shopper though, opening the Sunday paper and flipping through the store flyers and coupon inserts is a weekly ritual. What will we flip through without physical coupon inserts?
Believe it or not, the technology to create a tangible, digital insert already exists. Henri Lellouche of the SmartSource iGroup (NewsAmerica's electronic marketing division) gave an incredible presentation on an iPad that left the room's collective jaw on the floor. If you're not already familiar with the iPad newspaper The Daily, watch this short video about how the popular tablet-only newspaper works:
Now that you've seen it, imagine using this interface to flip through not only The Daily, but your traditional inserts too. Touch and open up this week's Best Buy ad. Or the entire SmartSource coupon insert. Or the P&G Brandsaver. Because guess what... that's exactly what Mr. Lellouche showed at the conference.
Seeing the March P&G Brandsaver in digital form on a big screen was nothing short of extraordinary. Using the same finger-flip motion that anyone with a smartphone or tablet device is already familiar with, Mr. Lellouche flipped through the P&G insert, which looked identical to the paper one we received in March -- except that none of the coupons had barcodes on them. Instead, when he touched them, a popup invited him to load the ecoupons to his loyalty card via SmartSource's "direct2card" interface.
The "paper" part of the P&G insert's ad was interactive as well -- when he came to the page with a Swiffer coupon, Mr. Lellouche touched a box and a video about the Swiffer began to play.
Similar functionality existed for all of the digital inserts and flyers shown -- the Best Buy weekly flyer was another example shown in digital form for the iPad. He flipped through the pages and touched a television set in the ad. A popup showed a video about the television, inviting the user to touch & explore more features. Another digital coupon example showed an ad for pasta sauce. Touch the coupon hotspot, and a popup invited the user to click and send a link to a printable coupon for the product to an email address.
Of course, as someone who subscribes to multiple papers for the coupons, I sat wondering what was in store for the put-scissors-to-paper coupon crowd. The idea of everyone reading the news on a handheld tablet instead of holding a newspaper seems so futuristic at first... and yet, that reality is already here. Look at the rise in ebook readers -- even people who love the printed word on the page also like the freedom to carry hundreds of books around on a small device.
What does the future hold for coupon inserts?
Understand that the manufacturers love the control that digital coupons offer to them - two prints per computer, one ecoupon load to a shopper's loyalty card. As much as we love getting multiple inserts, the reality is that a manufacturer would much rather issue 1,000 cereal coupons and see 1,000 people each buy one box of cereal with those coupons... versus one person using all 1,000 coupons to buy 1,000 boxes of cereal. Transitioning to digital ensures that the "flow" of coupons is limited to a per-person ratio that the manufacturer deems reasonable.
However, the death knell for inserts isn't sounding just yet. In a conference session presented by Dan Kitrell of Kantar Media (Kantar Media authors the "Free Standing Insert Distribution Trends" publication each year,) Mr. Kitrell stated that newspaper coupon inserts still retain the largest share of coupon distribution. In 2010, 87.7% of coupons for consumer packaged goods (CPG) were distributed via newspaper inserts. The remaining 12.3% of coupon distribution broke down as follows:
Handouts / In-Store: 5.2%
Direct Mail: 2.4%
Magazines: 2.2%
In and on-package: 1.1%
All other media (includes all digital formats): less than 2%.
Digital coupons, print-at-home and ecoupons, comprised less than 2% of all CPG coupons redeemed last year.
Based on those numbers, it's safe to say that coupon inserts will still be around for quite some time. And, call me old-fashioned, but I still like to hold and flip through my stores' flyers in my hands, not on a screen. I like to cut my coupons out, and I like having the option to purchase more newspapers to stock up. The technology to deliver coupons electronically is already here... but that doesn't mean everyone's ready to embrace it.
With newspaper subscriptions declining though, it will be interesting to see how the inserts continue to be distributed. RedPlum made waves back in 2009 when they pulled the inserts from the newspapers in selected markets, instead choosing to direct-mail them to households. Will we see similar changes in the years ahead?
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THE DAILY
mentioned in Jill's article states it's free for a few weeks then goes to 99 cents a week. I'm thinking the code finders get a whole week of the hardcopy Tribune for less than that with coupons all in one spot.
Facebook coupons
this is one I'm running into more and end up not participating. I use coupontom, will see a coupon offer at his site and click on the link that looks like it will take you to print it. Instead it shows as needing to like them or whatever on facebook to get a coupon sent to you.
Don't have facebook and guess I'm not interested enough in setting up an account just to get a coupon.
Digital is fine but have an alternate backup for some of us. I really feel for my grandmother who isn't online.
Well, and the other problem
Well, and the other problem with smart phone apps is - what if you don't have a Droid or iPhone. I've got a Nokia Symbian OS phone for the next year and a half. No one makes a coupon app for it. I'd be cut off from my coupons because my phone manufacturer didn't use the top 2 OSes?
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
E coupons
I agree that the electronic coupons need to be of a higher value before I'll print them. With the cost of paper and ink, I don't bother printing a lot of the coupons Jill provides links to unless they are high value. Most of those only print one per page, in color, and, in the end, with my additional costs, don't save me enough to make it worth my while. Also, because I am trying to save money in many ways, I don't have a SMART phone, but a tracfone, so coupons that are loaded onto a phone don't help me, nor will they help the older people that don't have that type of technology.
Saving on printing
We have an office-grade laser printer which uses toner instead of ink, as it's much less expensive. It's a much bigger investment than a simple printer, so I wouldn't recommend it for the average family; we have it for our business, which of course was a write-off on our taxes. To give you an idea, we go through one toner for ~$50 retail every 5-6 months, and we go through a ream of paper per month (having a home business). But...
If you sign up for Staples and Office Depot discount cards, they are constantly giving out deals for ink/toner and paper, to where we rarely pay for paper. If we do, we pay about $1 for ~$5 retail. To save on toner (ink), we have our printer defaults set to *Mono* (or black and white), as we don't believe in printing in color for most things. To be honest, I haven't replaced the color toners in at least two years, even though they're bone dry. Just having them in there is good enough for our printer to be happy. At the day job, they use a recycling service for their toner, which is also inexpensive.
As far as appearance, we've had a couple clerks scrutinize our very plain-looking black and white coupons, which look like photocopies I admit, but they go through fine, so there's no issue by check-out time. I figure, I'm not out to impress anyone, so why use the color toner? ;)
Another thing to do is do not hit the "print" button on the coupon page until you have selected all of your coupons to clip. That puts three coupons per page, sometimes with a straggler or two. I then cut them up with a paper slicer. We already had one, but you can get them for ~$20 retail many places. I *do not* put the newspaper coupons in there though, because the paper is much more delicate, and I don't want to ruin a good coupon. Those I use actual scissors! If I had the fancy rollerball cutter, maybe, but ours in the oldschool arm slicer.
Digital Coupons Already Here
Hi, I'm Josh with SavingStar (http://savingstar.com). This topic is right up our alley since we just launched 2 weeks ago as the only national digital grocery coupon service working at over 100 retailers. Our service does in fact link the eCoupons you select to all of your registered loyalty cards. Jill is right about the decline in newspaper readership being a big reason why online coupons are becoming increasingly popular. 49 million people used an online coupon last year.
We believe that the bigger shift in coupon usage will be how many people are upgrading their "feature" phones to smartphones. We've already seen tens of thousands of downloads of our iPhone and Android apps, which shows that many people don't want to bother clipping or printing coupons, and they want to be able to select coupons without having to plan their shopping trip beforehand. With mobile coupons, you can select them while walking the aisles in the store. We've seen this with books, movie and music streaming, and newspaper delivery declines. The future is clearly digital, it's just a question of how fast.
I hope coupon value increases
If we have to print out copies of what ecoupons we loaded to the card for verification. Or if home printables are the way of the future I hope the values increase because it will cost us more money in paper and ink. As it is I hate printing out anything less then .50
I am with you
I am old fashion too and I am on my early 30's. I love to pick up hard cover books, feel the texture of the pages and be inmersed. I already spend over 6 hours at work looking at a computer and I do not want to spend extra time infront of an iPad. My phone, its old fashion too. I only needed to make and receive a phone call. I love enjoying the noises out there.
That being said, for me... thanks technology, but I can live with out you as long as I can. I still want to cut the coupons, scan thru the inserts 1,000 times.... So, I really hope the reseach has been properly done and it is not some sort of pushing technology thru our troats. I agree with limiting coupon usage (for those extreme couponers shown on TV), but we will be also suffering. Going back to Jill's first post on these series, I think that maybe they should tackle those coupons clippers site first if they really want to control coupon usage. Other alternative, limit transactions to 50-100 coupons. (On my big shopping spreeds, I had used no more than 30). Bottom line, I want my inserts delievered home.
Cringe :-(
I guess I am one of the few that actually likes the way things are.I like technology but it is taking over the world.I still like to read a book.An actual book.NOT on a screen.And I like to put a CD in and not have to down load it to my computer.I am a HUGE recycler.If buy CD's and books at resale shops.And when I am done I re-donate.But I like to actually have something in hand.I don't have an I-phone.But I feel like I am being pressured to eventually get one.I am going to enjoy getting my papers for now.
Printing Coupons from an iPad
I'd really appreciate hearing if anyone has any tips regarding how to print coupons from an iPad. I am currently unable to figure out how to print any coupons. I think maybe a coupon printing app is required, but am unable to locate any of those either. Although in all fairness, I haven't looked for any apps in the last month or so, so there could have been some added recently. I do have a cordless printer, and have been able to print other things from my iPad...just not coupons. Any ideas or tutorials that anyone can forward are welcome!
Issue printing with anything Mac/Browser related
I like to use the Chrome (internet browser), but have many probs printing from my MacBrook Pro and iPad. I browse in Chrome then CUT/PASTE url into Safari when I need to print - pretty frustrating (all my Bookmarks/favorites are established in Chrome), especially the sites that you can only print 1 Q per page (then feed page back through printer upside down) but Safari seems to work.
iPad Printing
Most online printable coupons require you to install software. Bricks and Smartsource as examples. An iPad runs iOS that is not supported by the coupon companies.
And what if I load a SS Q on
And what if I load a SS Q on say Dominicks card, but then there is a better sale at Jewel and I want to use it there, can I unload it and reload on a different card? I wonder how they would figure that out?
I'm glad you brought this up!
I forgot to include that in my article. They DID discuss that at the conference. Via the direct2card program, you would initially enter ALL of your loyalty cards to the system. Any ecoupons loaded would be available to ALL of your cards, but once a coupon was used at one store, it would be removed from this virtual "bank" of coupons, and if you used an ecoupon at Dominick's, it would not be usable then at Jewel -- it would just be gone.
Direct2card Program
Wow, so every store who accepts coupons would have to have a loyalty program. Walmart and Target are the first two that come to mind that would have to jump on the loyaly card band-wagon. Maybe it'd be easier to have a "Coupon Card" of sorts that you'd load the coupons to, and would scan at all stores? I'd almost trust that more than a loyalty program. Especially after the Dominick's JfU fiascos (plural). This is just an FYI, but my daughter is graduating in a couple weeks with a Business Degree majoring in Graphic Design and Interactive Media, which is a fairy new major. So, yes the technology is out there, along with a whole new generation of college grads with the knowledge base to make the sorts of things Jill wrote about, such as interactive ads, happen. The interactive technology they can create is truly stunning!
And How do I remember?
Honestly, I'd end up loading every coupon in every ad, but then there would need to be a way to check what coupons were loaded on my card. Did I load them that week? What if the manufacturer suddenly just decided to delete them (This happened with some kindle books when the publisher decided to take a book out of circulation, and it was deleted out of everyone's kindle library. Sorry, but if I purchased the paperpack, it would still be on my shelf as I doubt you would come to my house to collect it).
I actually don't see this direct2card thing as a benefit.
Here's my problem with this
If the offers don't come off at the register then what? We have all experienced the mess that is Dominick's Just for U. Try standing in the lane and conivincing them that you have this that or the other loaded to your card and they shout back you need to bring a printout to prove it. Can I print these things off the iPad for stores like Dominicks who insist they wont fix it if something doesn't come off? Do I have to carry the iPad to the store with me to prove it? What if like DOminicks, in the time from when I load it to the time I get to the store, the coupons mysteriously disappear. *But I loaded it at home.* Well we have no record of that, too bad.
Also I don't think the world is ready for this. I have seen on several Dominick's trips senior citizens going to customer service wanting the Just For U prices shown on a shelf sign. The exchang goes like this:
************************
* How do I get this Just for U $1.99 price?
You have to load that ecoupon to your Fresh Values card at home on a computer.
* I don't have a computer.
We have computers right here in the store, sit down.
* Old person sits down and is blank bcause they never use a computer. Employee sighs and 15 minutes later loads the ecoupons for the person.
Now don't forget these offers take one hour to activate sir, so enjoy wandering around the store for 60 minutes before you can use them!
**********************
Here's what else I don't like about it, the control. If a company decides an offer's too hot, they pull it down. We have all seen Jewel do this with Avenu, during great sales. *Oh you had $2 off Bounty loaded to your card and Bounty is on sale, but now your ecoupon is gone? Whoops, too bad!*
Give me paper coupons any day!
All great points...
Stores already can't figure out how to handle missing ecoupons and shoppers insisting that their ecoupons have disappeared. Your post reminded me of that Betty Crocker giveaway that the Safeway stores participated in back in December. Safeway sent out PR pieces and giveaways to many popular blogs (including this one) to help promote. Play the online game, win a prize, and its loaded to your Fresh Values card. Free cake mixes, cookie mixes, brownie mixes! I won two prizes on the first day and thought it was a great idea.
And it was a great IDEA. Except that ONE DAY into the promotion, on December 9th, the prizes stopped loading, and they never worked correctly at Dominick's stores for the duration of the contest. Based on the number of complaints I received, I spent several weeks trying to get through the proper channels at Safeway and MyBlogSpark, finally speaking to someone fairly high-up in the chain who basically said that because of something related to Dominick's Just For U, "we don't know why the prizes aren't loading to the card" and that there was no recourse or way for someone to get their prize if they loaded it but it didn't come off at the register.
And for the rest of the contest, which ran through January 15, 2011, Dominick's shoppers could play the game, win prizes, load them to their cards - and the ecoupons did not come off. No one at the store level at any stores here knew about it - I got dozens of emails about this promotion from shoppers who won prizes but couldn't make the ecoupons work at the store. (Again... Safeway ASKED blogs to help promote this game through 1/15!)
Of the 38 days in the promo, the ecoupon prizes only worked correctly for one day. Not good.
technology
I just saw a commercial for the iPad2. I wonder - Jill, did they talk any about the market saturation for these devices? Looking around, I don't think it's anywhere near the 10% it usually hits before the 10-90% upswing that usually takes place with a new consumer product. Not denying this is the future, but it seems to me it might still have time.
I'd love to have one of these devices, but right now in our family we are being more practical with our spending, and I don't think we're alone in this economy.
I don't think so either
They did not say. In Googling it just now, the numbers I'm seeing are around 3 million iPads sold. With the last census putting the US population at over 307 million, that's about 1% of the population.
They did talk about smartphone saturation nearing 30% this year (another session was devoted to smartphone couponing.) Many people have asked me why I don't cover smartphone coupon apps in my workshops, and my answer has always been that as long as saturation statistics hang at about 25%, that tells me that 3 out of 4 people in the class would be bored silly during a discussion of smartphone coupon applications.
Good bye, extreme couponers
Limiting people to one coupon load will certainly stop the extreme couponer crowd. Can't dumpster dive or use Ebay to buy digital coupons!
I totally agree!
However, it is unfair to the rest of us couponers who don't hoard. :) Not that I am worried we will stop doing so or indeed reasonably stockpiling. People always find a way. Also remember, extreme couponers notwithstanding, the industry still issues tons of coupons, the overwhelming majority of which do not get redeemed.
What I think will happen, however, is that stores that don't have loyalty cards (in my case most of the grocery stores in my area), will start issuing them because of the electronic coupons. What I would dearly like to see is whether the register will make any mistakes, and if so, how long check-out lines will be as a result...
yes and no
Yes, it will be good to limit the truely rude "hoarders" out there these days due to the Extreme Couponing fad created from THAT TV series, but there is another side to this. I think big families might get the better end of this deal. Think about it, if EVERY family member gets their own shopper's card to load eCoupons onto, a large family can still stock up on the good deals they need to keep their budget down. By the same token, those of us who really are okay with only getting 2 - 4 of something when it's a good deal, we will be just fine when this eCoupon system really starts rolling.
I also like being able to stock up and clip the physical coupons (especially when my son was still in diapers!). I don't haev the SPACE in my home that Nathan and J'aimie seem to have, so there is no danger of me becoming that extreme anytime soon. I think most of us here on this blog feel that way - we stock up, just not to THAT kind of extreme, and with WAYY more ethical practices. That is definitely why I continue to follow this blog - because of the positive people and the ethical practices shown here.
I also think making the coupons automatically apply with a saver's card would make the cashier's lives *much* easier, making our checkout experiences *much* easier!
buuuuuut
what if the ecoupons don't come off which has happened to all of us before? Who helps you? Plus some stores are going to 1 loyalty card per household not per person. Even with what you are saying, they would have to make 5 transactions to use 5 different cards loaded with ecoupons.
they do need to work out the bugs
I guess I was assuming they can work out the bugs and find a way to track those coupons that were loaded/used... AND once they have a way to fix any mistakes at the register... THEN the scenario I presented would work well. I can think of quite a few wives/husbands who were using each other's Fresh Values cards during the YourBucks madness last year, which was a good example of how each of them having a store card can help them to use the sales and stacks to their fullest extent. After that, you can bet my hubby was finally convinced to get his own store card!
I agree that there are folks (like my gradmother) who are not technically savvy enough to utilize internet printables, let alone try the mobile phone coupons. THAT will be the hardest coupon using audience to convert, should that day come to pass.
As it is, I think a lot of us end up with multiple transactions when we are stocking up on a good deal, so I don't see much difference in that department. I was just trying to illustrate how the proposed system could benefit even larger families...
sounds bad to me
Being 75 don't want to learn new modern technology or buy a expensive phone ! I have a pre pay cell for quick calls or if emergency !I am a land only phone talker .Plus with all the expense and coupon limits why even bother ):
The fun is being slowly taken away day by day lately! Just getting over missing our BB now another take away .