The New Age of Couponing

By Jenna Movsowitz

THE NEW AGE OF couponing (ft. aisle)

TLC’s reality show Extreme Couponing painted a very particular picture of the “couponer” persona. Most episodes opened with a seemingly middle class, Boomer woman hunched over her kitchen table with a pair of scissors, furiously snipping paper coupons. Her home looked more like a warehouse than a living space, shelves upon shelves of hoarded snacks bought on discount. Everywhere she went, a poor cashier was met with a busted envelope stuffed to the seams and the hawk eyes of a TSA agent pressed to their register screen. To the average viewer, Extreme Couponing was more similar to Animal Planet than a reality show. Yet despite the many stereotypes associated with couponing, the average consumer is still using them — just differently. In this article, we’ll cover the landscape of coupons and rebates today.

SHOULD ALL BRANDS CONSIDER COUPONS AND/OR RECEIPT REDEMPTION?

Short answer? Yes.

Even for premium products, couponing has become not only relevant, but a necessity in getting off shelf. Seventy-nine percent of affluent customers (household income over $100k) use coupons when planning their shopping. Ninety-three percent of millennial parents and 92% of parents are using digital coupons.

Consumer demand is there. But how do these non-retailer-run strategies improve retailer relationships?

Unlike TPRs, which run through the retailer, all couponing and rebate options are dealt with behind-the-scenes — so your retailers still see your product move at full price. This means that you don’t risk losing money in an off-invoice allowance, the retailer sees the full item price come through, and you have more data points to point to in future retail pitches. Basically, if you’re not using coupons, you’re missing out on some major velocity action. So let’s unpack (some of)* your options.

*: there are endless shopper marketing activations to try in retail. In fact, it is literally someone’s entire job to explore these options. This article will briefly touch upon the couponing/rebate landscape, but if you have any further questions, please reach out to our resident shopper marketing expert Erin Fasano (erin@ startupcpg.com).

PHYSICAL COUPONING OPTIONS

Catalina: A Catalina coupon (Cat) is a coupon printed with the shopper’s receipt. It can be used like cash on the shopper’s next trip. An example of a Cat may be: buy (3) boxes of cereal to receive a $1 coupon good on your next order (OYNO). Participating brands enjoy Catalina for its targeting capabilities; Catalina analyzes purchase card behavior to target highly specific demographics on their next shopping trip. Instant Redeemable Coupons (IRCs): Also known as on-pack coupons, IRCs allow you to run a temporary campaign without repackaging your product. They use an adhesive backed liner to affix your coupon or promotional message to your product’s packaging. Erin Fasano, Chief Marketing Officer of CORE Foods, explains that IRCs often drive impulse purchases, and are the format most associated with “slippage”, which is when a shopper makes a purchasing decision based on the discount, but then fails to redeem the discount at checkout. Do with this information what you will. Free-Standing Inserts (FSIs): FSIs are the bundles of coupons typically found as an insert in your Sunday paper, aka, the Extreme couponer’s go-to. Though most brands are moving away from this format, some still find that this makes sense for their target audience — if your demo is wearing slippers on the porch while sipping coffee from a “#1 Grandpa” mug, your brand may just be the perfect fit for FSIs. Point-of-Purchase Signage (POPs): POPs refer to a host of display ads, which include coupon options like tear pads. Tear pads are exactly what they sound like, and are a quick exe-

cution of conversion driving coupons. Often used in conjunction with TPRs, POPs are a great supplement to other campaigns and help ensure that items make it into the basket. Only a few POP vendors are approved for in-store activation across the board — usually Valassis, Insignia Solutions, and Neptune Retail Solutions — though you can also print your own POP and have your broker place it with buy approval in certain accounts.

DIGITAL COUPON/REBATE APPS.

Instead of the required 2-12 weeks to launch a paper-based coupon campaign, and then waiting an additional four to six weeks for results, brands using digital coupons can deploy value to consumers’ mobile phones instantly and have near real-time insights. Retailer Sites/Apps: Depending on your retailer, digital coupons may be a major piece of your promotional strategy. Retailers like Sprouts are powered through INMAR, which places digital coupons in-app. To supplement your in-app or retailer site coupons, you also may consider investing in PPC (pay-perclick) through a third-party like Criteo (used by Whole Foods) or CitrusAd (used by Albertson’s), which boost your product on the platform. Fasano recommends optimizing your PPC strategy by pairing it with promotional periods: “It’s way more efficient to buy clicks when you’re on discount than regular price, and helps you stretch your dollar,” she says. Buyers tend to like this strategy because it incentivizes customers to return to their app, and presents more offers to redeem than just the TPRs in-store. Rebate/Rewards Apps: Redemption programs have historically been presented to consumers in the form of an app. Ibotta and Shopkick are the two largest shopper rewards apps. Ibotta, which functions as a cash back app, has a large amount of users and is often seen as the optimal choice for a mass retailer like Walmart. Shopkick is a useful tool for CPGs with limited distribution; Shopkick allows you to build a unique program that incentivizes a variety of behaviors, from finding the product on-shelf to simply walking into a specific retail location. Fasano notes that Shopkick works best with stores that are highly trafficked, like CVS or Sprouts.

While these programs have a large initial reach, it can be challenging (and often costly) to re-engage with customers. And since both of these apps have seen less frequent use in the natural channel, many brands have been seeking out alternative options.

SMS RECEIPT REDEMPTION: INTRODUCING AISLE.

Aisle is the new kid on the block — and vendors are excited about the opportunity of this tool to reach the natural channel shopper. Where Shopkick and Ibotta require the consumer to download an app for coupons or rebates, aisle lives entirely within the consumer’s text messages. On the user end, this looks like purchasing a product in-store, texting a picture of their receipt post-purchase, and receiving a rebate through Venmo or PayPal within 24 hours of purchase. On the brand end, this looks like building a custom landing page with aisle, deploying that link wherever a link can be accessed (through social, email, website, QR code display on-shelf) – then waiting for the trials to start pouring in.

“Driving trial has often been considered a brand problem, but we believe it’s actually a consumer problem,” says Chris Tiffin, founder of aisle. “The consumer doesn’t want to go through all of the traditional steps required to get a good sale or money back through a rebate program. aisle is the easiest user experience. We don’t require the customer to clutter their home screen with yet another app. Everything happens right where the consumer already is — their text messages.”

Tiffin, an alum of CPG unicorn Super Coffee, founded aisle to address the disconnect between the in-store and online customer. “Brands that sell direct-to-consumer (DTC) often have a large budget behind their digital marketing efforts — but DTC sees only a small chunk of their revenue, and they have no idea if their efforts are moving units in store,” Tiffin notes. aisle allows for DTC brands to leverage existing marketing initiatives by transforming them into immediate product movers.

“Content has always been our superpower. But what we didn’t know how to do was meet our content at the shelf,” says Courtnie Beceiro, Director of Brand Marketing at Haven’s Kitchen. “People

We geo-target our aisle creatives in areas where we have a large concentration of stores. It’s both cheaper and much broader than an in-store demo

are still wandering grocery aisles, still discovering on-shelf. aisle allows us to leverage our existing content to reach that customer and drive trial,” Becerio says. Haven’s Kitchen just onboarded onto aisle a few weeks ago, and the team is already excited about the results.

WHAT MAKES AISLE DIFFERENT

CONSUMER DATA IS KING

As a former CPG growth marketer himself, Tiffin knows the value of consumer data — and is passionate about providing it to all aisle partners. While other redemption programs offer gender, age, and the location of purchase, aisle provides email, phone number, store and zip code of conversion, and even an image of the receipt (which allows brands to conduct basket analyses, a feature that aisle is also working to offer in the future). “Tiffin really understands the need not just for incentivizing trial, but also capturing key data that emerging brands historically could not afford,” says Beceiro. aisle’s brands are finding unique ways to leverage this data to not only inform their marketing strategy, but also to creatively re-engage with aisle users.

BUILT IN RE-ENGAGEMENT

Existing redemption apps focus on the initial purchase-rebate interaction, and often charge more to re-engage. aisle aims to continue to engage with the customer beyond their first purchase — and seamlessly encourage word-of-mouth marketing to drive continued momentum. After converting on their one unit free, aisle provides shoppers with a post-purchase link to share with their friends, and tracks whether the user shared the link. “It’s a flywheel of conversion. The shopper converts, they refer to a friend, and we send another offer — like BOGO* — to promote a second conversion,” Tiffin explains.

A few weeks after a conversion, aisle also allows brands to send custom texts that ask users about repeat purchases since their first trial. Across aisle’s brands, these surveys have received an average of a 40% response rate, and indicated that 51% of respondents repurchased on their own at least once since their initial trial.

FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE

One coupon certainly doesn’t fit all. Brands work hard to establish their voice and identity, but typical coupon and rebate options render all brands the same. aisle allows brand partners to customize the design and copy used in everything, from their landing page to the text exchanges to the Venmo caption of the rebate, helping brands maintain their voice. This could be a consumer’s first ever

Foto: Aisle

interaction with your brand, and aisle aims to help you make the most brand-authentic first impression possible.

HOW BRANDS ARE CONVERTING WITH AISLE

Actual Veggies, the chef-crafted veggie burger brand made with just veggies, has been using aisle’s services since May 2022 — and has converted almost 1000 people so far. As a frozen or refrigerated product, DTC was never their focus. Instead, they’ve been looking for ways to drive customers to stores. After exploring the many options, they found that paper coupons lacked the conversion data they desired, and aisle was the perfect solution to reach a new audience.

To supplement their efforts with aisle, the Actual Veggies team has used aisle’s consumer data to build out lookalike audiences in Facebook ads manager, and have seen great engagement since targeting these lookalikes. As they launch in Costco, they will be experimenting with different aisle activations. They’re working on an influencer program in conjunction with aisle, where influencers will receive a special code to provide their audience with the aisle offer, like an affiliate code.

Actual Veggies has also been using aisle to supplement their sampling efforts. In stores that still aren’t permitting demos, aisle is an opportunity to drive trial. “We geo-target our aisle creatives in areas where we have a large concentration of stores. It’s both cheaper and much broader than an in-store demo,” notes Cassi Lubarsky, Head of Marketing at Actual Veggies.

Becerio of Haven’s Kitchen is also finding creative ways to loop aisle into their existing marketing strategy to drive further trial. The brand has been known to get crafty with QR codes on-pack to drive consumers to their engaging recipe content. But now, these QR codes have another function: trial. “Being able to put a QR code right on the shelf with the CTA (call to action) ‘get a free pouch today’ allows shoppers to instantly act upon their discovery and try the product, without having to locate a coupon,” she says. Haven’s Kitchen has never used paid ads to grow, and they are maintaining this strategy with aisle. Instead of deploying through paid social, “we’ve integrated aisle into the email automation for new subscribers,” Becerio says. “Once they’re in the system, we have an automated flow that welcomes people to Haven’s Kitchen. This flow now offers a free pouch for them to redeem in store, leading to the aisle landing page.”

The team has also paired aisle with organic social to humanize the trial process. In a series on their Instagram that introduced team members of Haven’s Kitchen, they used the caption: “DM us to get a free pack on Courtnie” and replied to all DMs with their custom aisle link.

Overall, brands who work with aisle feel that Tiffin has unlocked the new age of couponing – one that seamlessly integrates with existing marketing materials, meets the consumer where they are, and gives emerging brands the tools they need to scale like their BigCo competitor.

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