A mobile couponing system for grocery store chains and CPG manufacturers two years in the making went live on August 7. The A&P, The Food Emporium, Super Fresh and Waldbaum’s supermarket chains have adopted the program, which provided through digital promotions and information management company Zavers. The digital platform, which presents mobile coupons and tracks their redemption rate sharing data with retail outlets and brand managers in real time, is available in New York; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Maryland; Washington, DC; Connecticut and Delaware locations.
“Consumers’ biggest pain point was the tyranny of clipping coupons, storing, filing and then finding the right one at the right time — that’s a lot of work for 50 cents off of mayo,” said Anita Bajaj Newton, CMO at Zavers.
The new system makes offers from nearly 30 well-known brands available through banner ads, video ads and other online and mobile media. Consumers click on the coupon from the Web site and save it to a free digital account. Once at the register of a participating retail store, they simply swipe their loyalty card to automatically receive the discount and the discount is verified on the receipt.
Brand managers receive data on where and when offers were used and only pay per offer redeemed. Retailers also get access to the data around customers making purchases in their store.
Newton said she expected the program to gain more traction in time. “It’s too early to have clear results, but so far we’ve met all of our metrics and are getting great feedback from consumers,” she said.
Unilever was an early partner of the program. Zavers did two beta trial first in a small grocery chain in Kansas City last year and more recently at five A&P stores. “Redemption rate was five to 10 times greater than what you would see in newspaper coupon redemption,” Newton said.
Zavers expects to offer the program to more grocery store chains as well as electronic outlets, pet stores, toy stores and other retailers in the years to come.
