It is no surprise to us to hear this news, but MediaPost reports that the results of a Coupons.com survey, and a separate Newspaper Association of America survey, show that digital coupon use is on the rise. This could be bad news for the traditional printed newspaper inserts as it seems that the more people gravitate to digital the more they stray from the newspaper inserts. Coupons.com reported that its digital business increased 170% in 2009 from 2008. Not only does it seem that the number of digital coupon users is growing, but it seems that the number of people who use digital coupons exclusively is increasing just as rapidly. Of the 45 million consumers that used digital coupons in 2009, 13.1 million are exclusive digital coupon users. Check out the good news (no pun intended) here.

We have some good news (well for us at least) and some bad news (for retailers). Good news is a recent study by Motorola on the 2009 holiday shopping season (as reported by Markteing Vox) shows that consumers were highly interested in coupons. Of those surveyed, 39% of consumers said they were willing to abandon their potential purchases this holiday season when they could not obtain coupons or discounts. The obvious down side of this, for the retailers at least, is that they lost money and customers by not offering coupons and discounts this past holiday season. Although this might seem like bad news for retailers we like to think of it as a wake up call. Coupons, especially mobile coupons, are big right now and they are only going to get bigger in the coming months. If the results of this study are any indication of the behavior of consumers in the future, than retailers better get on the mobile coupon bandwagon soon before they begin to lose out.

Check out the full article by Marketing Vox here.

No longer influenced by overly chipper, sing-song, holiday commercials infused with fake snow and fake people dancing to a re-mixed version of  "Deck the Halls"? Well, you are not alone. According to a recent survey by Big Research (as reported by AdAge) these types of holiday commercials do not drive consumers to retailers as successfully as they once did.

Check out the full article here.

So if cheesy commercials don't drive hoards of people to the mall, than what does? Coupons! Yeah-grandma doesn't seem so senile after all, huh? Sitting there for hours with the Sunday paper clip, clip, clipping away.

Forty-five percent of the people surveyed said that coupons were the #1 influencer in where they chose to shop this year.

And if grandma's hands are tired from cutting through the funny pages all Sunday afternoon, why not get her a cell phone and send her on over to Greenbean.com. All she has to do is select the coupon she wants and click submit, and it will be sent to her cell phone as a simple text message. Grandma could be so cool.

Take advantage of all of the great coupons, deals and discounts over at Greenbean.com this holiday season.

As reported in Marketing Daily on Media Post News, Scarborough Research reports that 8.6 million - or 8% -- of U.S. households currently get at least some coupons via text message and/or email.

There are some other interesting facts in the report as well.

• comScore reported that online coupons were the top-gaining category on the Internet
• Shoppers most likely to get coupons via text, email or the Internet tend to be young, affluent, educated and female
• They are 51% more likely to be college graduates or have an advanced degree

Those are promising numbers for the mobile marketing / eCoupon / text marketing categories. We're pointed in the right direction as far as growth and there's still plenty of room for first mover advantage for aggressive marketers.

You can read the summary by Media Post here.

Online coupons are gaining popularity fast. Almost 60% of shoppers are using coupons more often to cut expenses, according to a recent survey from market-research firm comScore Inc. About one of every three respondents said they use the Web to find printable coupons and promotional codes; visits to these sites grew 46% year-over-year as of December 2008, comScore reported.

"The recession has definitely accelerated the demand" for online coupons, said Greg Sterling, an Internet analyst and a principal at San Francisco-based Sterling Market Intelligence.

"People don't have the same resistance or inhibition to coupons online," he added. Or, for that matter, with coupons sent directly to a mobile phone -- which Sterling sees as the up-and-coming trend in coupon-clipping.

Click here to read the whole article at MarketWatch.

There's a great article in Financial Times where Laura Keely, director of marketing promotions at Kimberly-Clark, whose brands include Huggies and Kleenex, says changes in the age of the audience that is reading newspapers – and clipping coupons – is a significant factor in her interest in online couponing.

“What we’re seeing is that younger consumers aren’t buying a Sunday newspaper and clipping those coupons,” she says. “The numbers drop off significantly when you are looking at an 18-24 consumer. If she’s not reading the paper and cutting that coupon, where is she? She’s online.”

You can read the whole story here.

“Text is more timely and has a stronger call-to-action with immediate offers [than other channels],” says Karen Fluharty, SVP of marketing at Prime Retail. “As a consumer, I know that I get something like 15 e-mails a day and that's great, but it doesn't have the same demand for attention as a text offer does.”

More great stats and a campaign overview can be read here.

Apparently September is National Coupon Month, and the Retail Advertising, Marketing and Promotions (AMP) Blog took the opportunity to look at a few findings that clarify exactly how people are using coupons and where they're getting them.

• Usage is it a 15 year high
• 72% of consumers are using more coupons than they did six months ago, 75% of them due to the economy
• While just 9% of consumers reported online coupons were most convenient, 80% of those consumers would be very likely or likely to increase their use of coupons if they could be tailored to their interests and delivered online

Read the full blog posting here.

Great article packed with stats on online coupon usage. Some highlights:

• Online coupon usage rose by 39% to 36 million between 2005 and 2008
• Online users account for nearly one-quarter (24%) of the total 148 million consumers who use coupons
• Nearly half of online coupon users are between the ages of 22 and 44
• More online users than newspaper users have household incomes over $60,000
  

Read the full article here.