Client:
Coupons, Inc. is the leading provider of printable promotional coupon technology. The company is redefining its market by shifting coupon distribution from newspapers and free-standing inserts (FSIs) to online delivery.

Situation:
Although Coupons holds a strong leadership position in its space, it still faces considerable competition for the promotional budgets of brand marketers, as other online advertising services and traditional paper coupon distributors vie for the same dollars.

Objectives:
Coupons has the opportunity to convince marketers to update their promotional strategies to reach a younger, more online-savvy generation of coupon clippers. Printable coupons, which have a typical redemption rate between 10% and 20%, possess the levels of reach and ROI that make them highly attractive to marketers. In fact, Coupons has been very successful at turning prospects into customers once they are able to actually meet with a prospect.

The challenge with this campaign, then, was to convince prospects -- some old, some new -- that contacting Coupons was in their best interests. Specifically, the goals of this campaign were to:

• Cut through the clutter
• Inform potential targets about the company's offerings and value
• Generate leads with senior level marketer contacts
• Set meetings and win clients
• Generate more conversions to warm and hot leads than the 2007 campaign

Strategies & Tactics:
To cut through the omnipresent clutter and get prospects to pay attention to Coupons' message, Farstar used the Lead Machine's one-two punch of a relevant, entertaining sitelet and an intriguing invitation to visit that sitelet. The invitation consisted of a handwritten envelope that invited prospects to visit a personalized version of PastHerPrime.com. Once there, prospects were treated to a fun, tongue-in-cheek message from Grandma, encouraging them to update their coupon marketing tactics to reach younger audiences.

At the end of the sitelet (our Lead Machines always reach a conclusion that requests viewer action), a limited-time offer for a discounted coupon campaign was presented to the prospect. In case the prospect did not have the authority to approve a printable coupon campaign, the sitelet allowed for forwarding the link to a colleague, which in turn gave Coupons more accurate data about appropriate targets.

Real-time reporting allowed sales representatives to contact leads immediately after they left the site.  Information gathered from visitors allowed the team to craft successful pitches based on participant interests, helping the team to turn warm leads into hot leads.

Results:
During the first four months of the campaign, more than 34% of the over 1342 invited marketers visited the site.  Out of the 131 companies who were invited, 80% visited the site. Of those visitors, 91% viewed the entire value proposition and 84% were considered warm or hot leads.  This was extremely valuable in helping the sales team pinpoint the most appropriate representative at each company.

Follow-up calls to warm and hot leads by the Coupons, Inc. sales team have garnered more than 25 newly engaged clients and many others are within reach.  As reference, one of these leads has resulted in incremental revenue that will exceed the expense of the entire campaign. Ultimately, the underlying value of the Coupons, Inc. proposition will lead to a campaign ROI exceeding 350% – a number beyond the client's already-high expectations.