Online coupons for its Weight Watchers and Nutritious Living lines of breakfast cereals are helping grow natural foods maker Organic Milling Corp.'s database.
The San Dimas, CA, marketer has added 50,000 names to its database since it began the coupon program in October with help from Coupons Inc. Printable at home or work, the cents-off coupons are delivered through various online media to health-conscious consumers.
“The ultimate purpose is to move more units of Weight Watchers and Nutritious Living, and it's also helping them with their retailer relationships,” said Jeff Weitzman, president and chief operating officer of Coupons Inc., a Mountain View, CA, provider of coupon technology and services.
“Having this database of interested consumers allows Organic Milling to introduce new products and additional products to their consumer base,” he said. “Using the online techniques and coupons, they're able to reach a broad cross section of consumers in a very cost-effective manner.”
Take Organic Milling's Weight Watchers line of five breakfast cereals, which it makes as a private-label product.
Consumers can download coupons from a special Weight Watchers site at www.goodchoicecereal.com. They also can get the coupons off Coupons Inc.'s site at www.coupons.com as well as partner sites like SmartSource, WebMD, Nubella and Consumer Networks.
The coupons are available via the CouponBar, a tool that is directly installed to the user's Web browser for a regularly updated list of offers running online. This is a Coupons Inc. product.
Ads in magazines like Women's Health, Fitness and Prevention direct consumers to goodchoicecereal.com. Once online, consumers register their name, e-mail and ZIP code. They then can download the 55-cent coupon, print it and take it to their local supermarket. Consumers who lack a printer at home can have the coupons delivered via mail.
Coupons Inc. is offering other services, too. Organic Milling is using its Tell-a-Friend service to let consumers e-mail friends and family about the Weight Watchers offer. Also, Coupons Inc. created a direct interface to Organic Milling's consumer affairs department to send exclusive, high-value coupons to solve customer service issues.
“They had a great database of people who were interested in Nutritious Living products, and when they launched Weight Watchers, they were able to send out an e-mail introducing the Weight Watchers' products,” Weitzman said.
“It's a classic case of database marketing where you get to know more and more of your customers and what they're buying and then find other products they may be interested in,” he said.
The Nutritious Living line of Hi-Lo products includes breakfast cereals, bars and cookies.
Organic Milling's coupon effort aims to catch the eye of consumers in a highly competitive cereal market dominated by Kellogg Co. and General Mills. The Internet has helped generate awareness and trial, particularly with consumer-printable coupons redeemable at retail.
Coupons Inc. technology lets Organic Milling track the number of coupons printed and the redemption rates daily for every element of the campaign. This way, the marketer can switch on and off components of the promotion as and when needed.
The Weight Watchers campaign is scheduled to run through December.
“They're using interactive marketing as a key element of their campaign,” Weitzman said. “They're a smaller, natural foods manufacturer getting the most out of their marketing dollar.”
Mickey Alam Khan covers Internet marketing campaigns and e-commerce, agency news as well as circulation for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
