Candia Partners with Couponstar to engage new customers

Leading provider of long life milk, Candia, has partnered with Couponstar, the digital marketing and promotions agency, to integrate consumer-printed coupons into its previously more traditional marketing campaigns.

Leading provider of long life milk, Candia, has partnered with Couponstar, the digital marketing and promotions agency, to integrate consumer-printed coupons into its previously more traditional marketing campaigns. The programme, which was devised in conjunction with Toucan the innovative marketing consultancy, will see 40,000 coupons distributed via leading websites within Couponstar’s leading network CouponNET®, is part of a drive by Candia to reach new demographics and encourage stronger brand engagement.

Candia has significant stature in the long-life milk area and typically used more traditional methods of marketing to engage with its consumers and reward loyalty, such as door drops and on-pack promotions. However, with the increasing competitive advantage offered by the Internet, Candia turned to its marketing agency Toucan, to suggest innovative ways to harness the Internet. As Nina Rosi, Account Director on the Candia account at Toucan, explains, “We look after all of Candia’s above and below the line activity and invest significant time in investigating new opportunities as they arise. Candia asked us to suggest something new to progress their conventional form of marketing, which is where our discussions with Couponstar began.”

Rosi continues, “Following the recent spate of online coupon campaigns were brands have lost control of the circulation or the value of the coupon the ability to control online interaction without impacting on brand experience was crucial to our decision to work with Couponstar. Their secure technology and their advice on how to implement the campaign was unparalleled amongst the suppliers we knew of, and as such were our only real contender. Their innovative platform enabled us to bridge the gap between online marketing and consumers’ offline purchasing behaviour and successfully tied into our offline campaigns, making them the perfect choice.”

The campaign’s aims were two-fold; firstly Candia was looking to further increase the recent rise in positive perceptions of long-life milk in the younger demographics and encourage consumers to trial the brand, and secondly Candia wanted to reward its loyal customer base with a free product. As Rosi explains, “Over recent years perceptions surrounding long-life milk in the UK have shifted dramatically; times and tastes are changing and with consumers actively looking to move to long-life milk we wanted to ensure Candia was at the top of their minds, and a consumer-printable coupon offered us a unique opportunity to meet both these requirements.”

Rosi explains, “Candia is so confident about the quality of its product that they decided to give consumers a voucher worth the full price of a 1 Litre bottle of Candia Skimmed, Semi-Skimmed, or Whole UHT Milk – worth seventy five pence. This is of significant value to the consumer, but it also underlines the confidence that Candia has in its products to deliver delicious-tasting milk. The campaign has definitely surpassed expectations and we experienced a staggering redemption rate of 24.03%.

As the market leader in the consumer-printable coupon industry, Couponstar’s technology is unique in providing organisations with a proven solution to securely and efficiently issue personalised and trackable coupons via the internet.

Following the successful completion of the current campaign, Candia and Toucan plan to run more printable-coupon activity in 2009. As Rosi concludes, “We were pleasantly surprised by the number of consumers who chose to go online to receive their coupons and would not hesitate to do so again in future campaigns. The campaign was very effective in delivering a new demographic to the brand and we look forward to developing new campaigns with Couponstar in order to continue to do this.”