Redemption of Digital Load-to-Card Coupons Doubles: Study

Digital paperless load-to-card (L2C) coupons doubled their share of overall redemption last year to 1.8 percent, according to a new report on 2014 trends from Inmar.

L2C offers posted their fifth consecutive year of growth in redemption. Inmar officials say growth has been accelerating significantly for the last several years as shoppers continue to reward those retailers that have made L2C offers a central feature of their loyalty programs.

“The one hundred percent, year-over-year, growth we’re continuing to see in redemption for load-to-card coupons is affirmation of their rapidly expanding popularity among consumers and the tremendous utility they provide marketers,” said David Mounts, chairman and CEO of Inmar, which operates intelligent commerce networks. “The ability marketers now have to personalize these offers, deliver them adjacent to equity-building content and target them to individual shoppers – at scale – makes them particularly effective in building share for brands and maintaining loyalty for retailers.”

Other major methods capturing a significant share of redemption volume in 2014 included:

• Instant redeemable and Instant redeemable cross-ruff (together 21.6 percent of all coupons redeemed)
• Electronic checkout (7.3 percent)
• Shelf pad (5.4 percent)
• Print-at-home (3.5 percent).

Free-standing inserts (FSIs) garnered the largest share of redemption (39.4 percent) of the 2.84 billion coupons redeemed in 2014. They accounted for the majority (89.6 percent) of the 319 billion coupons distributed last year.

Overall coupon distribution declined slightly (down 2.9 percent) compared to 2013, while redemption was also down slightly (3 percent) during the same period.