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Traditional coupon offers still dominate, but volume of digital 'clips' continues to climb

More than 2 billion coupons were redeemed during the first nine months of 2014.

November 19, 2014

Digital marketing firm Inmar has announced that 2.14 billion coupons (including offers for both food and non-food items) were redeemed during the first nine months of 2014. Of all the offers redeemed so far this year, 40.8 percent came from Free-Standing Inserts, which represented the largest share of redemption among all "major" methods — those with more than 20 million redemptions.

Although FSIs remain the predominant method for redemption, shoppers' desires for convenient ways to save continue to fuel significant growth in digitally discovered coupons, the company said. "Clips" of paperless digital coupons, which consumers load directly to retailer loyalty cards, exceeded 650 million during the first three quarters of the year. Redemption of these coupons, referred to as Load-to-Card, or L2C, has more than doubled since 2013. At the same time, Inmar estimates that 600 million Print-at-Home coupons were printed during this same nine month period — with a measured average redemption rate of 11.23 percent.

"Shoppers want convenience when it comes to finding ways to save and their surging use of Load-to-Card coupons shows us that," says Inmar Chairman and CEO David Mounts. "The increasing capability of marketers to personalize and target these paperless offers is only going to grow their popularity among shoppers and enhance their effectiveness as tools for engagement and conversion."

While L2C offers enjoyed explosive growth, FSIs still accounted for the majority (91 percent) of the 251 billion coupons distributed during the nine-month period. The 251 billion total represents a small decline in overall distribution (-1.7 percent) compared with the same period last year. Overall redemption was also down slightly (-2.5 percent) at the end of Q3 2014 versus the end of Q3 2013.