From Better to Best

The Challenge

“How do you improve upon perfection?” That was essentially one national brand’s initial response to Inmar VSI Promotion Consulting’s proposal for coupon optimization. The brand had struggled to hone in on the best distribution for its FSIs, particularly with the recent addition of brand extensions to the promotional mix. Over time, the brand had finely tuned its FSI market list while maintaining broad national coverage. But unwilling to leave any stone unturned in the search for the best list and wanting validation for its choices, the brand engaged Inmar VSI to compare its choices with those of the Inmar VSI Opti-List service.

The Solution

Inmar VSI started with a consultation to understand the brand’s objectives for the drops, to assess market and retailer coverage needs, to understand the role of field sales in establishing the promotional plan and to get a clear picture of the coupon goals for brand extensions. Armed with that information, Inmar VSI went to work:
• Comparing market-by-market brand strength with newspaper
coverage choices.
• Reviewing past promotions for key success attributes.
• Ensuring that market and retailer coverage needs were met.
• Identifying opportunities to eliminate duplicate distribution while
expanding geographic coverage.
• Analyzing and optimizing form breaks for maximum coverage
and minimum cost.

The Results

The resulting recommendations were presented to the brand in a detailed dialogue about the analysis. The core recommendation was to cut some circulation from the brand’s monthly FSI, creating over $360,000 in annual savings without hurting sales. More amazing was the fact that this savings required no sacrifice of coverage or other brand objectives. In fact, the proposed list actually identified areas for expanded promotional coverage. Also, the Opti-List service provided data-rich rationale to help the brand team justify each recommended change to the field sales team.

Opti-List offers improvement to the most perfect of market lists. Your goal is to get your coupons into the hands of the best consumers to meet your brand’s objectives. But not all markets, nor all newspapers within each market, are necessarily optimal for the task. Opti-List offers you a way to target your drop market-by-market, paper-by-paper, using a detailed data analysis of brand history, distribution and redemption trends, and newspaper quality.

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