Saving Money – and Trees

Coupons remain a popular way to introduce product, increase sales and boost traffic. Consumers snip, pocket — and sometimes even remember to redeem — paper coupons, a universal promotional tool.

But these little pieces of paper can slow checkout lines and require processing by hand. The Zavers digital incentive platform for retailers means no paper, higher redemption rates and the opportunity to promote corporate brands.

From coupon creation and consumer presentation to retailer redemption and back-end settlement and analytics, “we’ve built an end-to-end system,” says Bruce Pryor, vice president of marketing for Kansas City-based Zavers.

The 100 percent paperless solution begins with product marketers or manufacturers entering offers into Zavers’ system. “It’s self-service,” Pryor says. Retailers “create the offer and specify where they want it distributed,” down to ZIP code level.

Consumers visit the retailers’ websites or Zavers’ site to review offers they can save to an online account tied to their loyalty cards; customers also specify the store locations they shop. Offers also can be distributed via a mobile site customers can search with their cell phones while they are in the store.

When a customer uses her loyalty card at checkout, Zavers’ system is automatically checked to see if the customer has coupons saved; the savings are credited at POS and the sales receipt shows the coupon savings.

No additional hardware
Retailers can install the Zavers’ online solution without development work or additional hardware. “We leverage existing processes at POS,” Pryor says. Checkout is not slowed — and may even be faster than when cashiers must process a handful of paper coupons. Manufacturers or retailers set the number of times a coupon can be redeemed.

A&P was the first retailer in the greater New York City area to use paperless coupons loaded onto loyalty cards. “We wanted to add more value to our shopper card and save our customers more money,” says Don Yee, the supermarket company’s vice president of CRM and e-commerce.

Since digital coupon redemption is easier for consumers, redemption rates rise. A&P’s redemption rate “is climbing every week to over 11 percent on average, with some items up 40 percent,” Yee says.

The data Zavers provides to the retailer and manufacturer “is a huge enhancement from the paper process,” Pryor says. “We give the retailer an electronic file that shows the number of coupons redeemed and how much each manufacturer owes. Real-time data supports settlement of the coupon between the manufacturer and retailer, with reduced fraud and disputes.”

Yee concurs, noting the back-end process is quick, there is no need to bag paper coupons and the solution is “great for the environment.”