Product category:
Vouchers
News Release from: Couponstar | Subject: CouponNET
Edited by the Marketingservicestalk Editorial
Team on 03 June 2008
Ocean Spray builds loyalty with
Couponstar
Bottled juices and drinks provider Ocean Spray uses consumer-printable coupons to transform the effectiveness of brand expansion, customer loyalty and customer acquisition campaigns.
Over the years, Ocean Spray has built a loyal customer base for its cranberry juice and foods, primarily within the older female demographic The company is now looking to expand both the customer base and average customer value with the recent introduction of new product ranges that include cranberry conserves and dried cranberries and an expansion of the juice range
This article was originally published on Marketingservicestalk on 13 Dec 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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Ocean Spray has a small marketing team in the UK, when compared to its category competitors, so it is essential to maximise the value of all campaigns and, critically, to drive up product sales to ensure each Ocean Spray brand retains prominent shelf position within leading supermarkets.
As a result, the company is turning increasingly to online campaigns, looking to maximise the timeliness, flexibility and cost efficiency offered by internet-based marketing to reach new consumers and reinforce loyalty with its existing base.
Kathryn Bardak, Business Development Manager, Ocean Spray, explained: "In a highly competitive market place, Ocean Spray is always looking for new ways to meet the demands of our customers and exceed their expectations.
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"Increasingly this requires us to maximise our presence online and offer tangible rewards to our customers".
Ocean Spray has already built up a strong consumer community, using a monthly online newsletter, The Insider (formerly The Grower's Gazette), to expand product awareness and foster brand loyalty.
The company is keen to keep these consumers engaged and turned to Couponstar to include consumer printable coupons within the newsletter.
"To maintain email open rates and keep consumer interest, it is essential to deliver value within each newsletter", said Bardak..
"By combining excellent content with a relevant coupon offer, Ocean Spray has been able to maintain a high level of consumer engagement and achieve differentiation from competitive brands".
Having used traditional paper coupons before, Ocean Spray already had a third-party coupon house in place to handle payment to retailers for the redeemed coupons.
The introduction of online consumer-printable coupons from Couponstar, which are accepted across all leading supermarkets (including Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Waitrose and Sainsbury) and fully integrated with Valassis was, therefore, a straightforward step.
Couponstar has set up a branded microsite for Ocean Spray where the coupons are published each month.
Consumers click on a link in the newsletter and can then print the coupon(s).
Ocean Spray includes one coupon offer per newsletter, tied in either to the content or a seasonal offer, each of which is available for two months to maximise consumer uptake.
Couponstar's security and printing technology ensure the coupon can only be printed and redeemed by the consumer as many times as specified by the client.
The results have been excellent - with coupons achieving up to a 30 per cent print to redeem rate on seasonal items such as Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce, and an average 24 per cent rate, which is continually increasing.
"Couponstar has enabled Ocean Spray to convert upwards of 30 per cent of our traditional juice drinkers to another product with each coupon," said Bardak.
Having achieved the initial objective of boosting customer loyalty and increasing lifetime customer value by broadening brand awareness, Ocean Spray decided to use Couponstar's CouponNET platform - the UK's largest online network of coupon content websites for distributing printable coupons and vouchers via the internet.
"Now, every new coupon offer is also published to the CouponNET network to increase the scope of the offer to new customers," Bardak explained.
With a reach of 3 million consumers already, and aggressive expansion plans, CouponNET makes the Ocean Spray offer available to a vast online audience.
She continued: "The great benefit of this approach to customer acquisition is that, rather than relying on complex and expensive customer segmentation, consumer printable coupons are self-selecting: consumers will only opt to print and redeem the coupons if they are interested in the product".
In the first six months, consumers printed around 46,000 coupons, with a median 24 per cent redemption, extremely high for a customer acquisition programme.
"From a financial stand point, the return on investment associated with consumer printable coupons is compelling: the cost for a fixed target number of prints is set up front and Ocean Spray knows that will generate around 22 per cent redemptions.
"It is a low-risk approach that delivers significant customer acquisition and a quantifiable sales uplift," she said.
Critically, Ocean Spray has been able to attain this level of redemption with a relatively low coupon offer - typically 25 to 30 pence per coupon.
She continued: "Having proved the concept of online coupons, Ocean Spray is now looking to experiment, trialling higher-value coupon offers to ascertain the impact on overall redemption rates for both existing and new customer groups, across the different product lines".
Indeed, the use of coupons is now integrated across the marketing mix.
Recent examples include a viral marketing campaign, with existing customers encouraged to provide a friend's details to enable Ocean Spray to email a coupon offer.
In addition, readers of a forthcoming Ocean Spray paper newsletter being distributed to 3.5 million people as an insert in a variety of offline publications including the Daily Mail's You magazine and Sainsbury's magazine, are also being offered the opportunity to go online to a microsite and print coupons to encourage them to trial new products within the range.
Consumer-printable coupons have also been provided as a goodwill gesture to consumers who missed out on an online registration offer for a free sample of Ocean Spray Dilute.
Indeed, the use of consumer-printable coupons has now become embedded within the overall marketing mix, with new campaigns being continually tested and refined to meet corporate objectives.
"At every point in the process, Couponstar provides the ability to track and measure the success of a promotion, from click-through to the number of consumers opting to print a personalised coupon and, via the retail network, those then redeeming the coupon in store," Bardak said.
"The provision of real-time updates ensures the testing process is truly interactive.
"Campaigns can be rapidly assessed and analysed, with results immediately incorporated into on going activity".
Over the next year, Ocean Spray is also considering plans to use Couponstar's survey coupon in CouponNET, which will offer consumers a chance to print a coupon once they have registered for The Insider, to significantly increase the consumer community.
Furthermore, video coupons could be used in conjunction with new television advertisements running in 2008.
Consumers will be offered a 20-30 second video clip prior to printing a coupon.
She concluded: "Initially, Ocean Spray opted to use consumer-printable coupons simply as a method of boosting consumer engagement with the online newsletter.
"Since then, the use of coupons has extended across every element of offline and online marketing, with the combination of redemption rates and access to a vast consumer audience via CouponNET delivering an unprecedented return on marketing investment".
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