Canadian Retailer - The Marketing Issue - 21

THIS is just a guess, but the pile of flyers looks about as heavy as the average Canadian man.
The pile grows throughout the day. Residents return home and dump the
day's flyers into the recycling bin without reading them. Tomorrow morning, the custodian will have to cart the flyers to the dumpster behind the
condominium. He does this every day. Every day dumping a man-sized pile
of paper into the trash. It's the same in every condominium on the block.
Naturally, retailers wonder if they're wasting their time, money, and
paper on flyers. Why bother? The flyer's dead.
But, as it turns out, the flyer isn't dead. For retailers wanting to reach
their customers in a more personal, more direct way, the flyer and its
digital offspring might be exactly the tool they've been waiting for.
Connections

Despite the volumes of flyers landing in recycling
bins, the concept of the flyer still flies.
"Nothing feels as good as found money," says Michelle
Digulla, Vice President of Marketing at Metroland Media, and
few places give customers more opportunities to discover savings
than the weekly flyer.
According to research gathered by Metroland and its coupon emporium,
Save.ca, 85 per cent of Canadians actively look for deals and feel proud
when they find a deal. Coupons sway customers more than any other enticement, and by 2019, an estimated 31 billion digital coupons will be redeemed worldwide (compared
"YOU CAN LEARN A LOT FROM A
to 16 billion in 2014).
Flyers aren't dead according FLYER. DATA FUELS THE ENTIRE
to Metroland's research, either. OPERATION. YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY
Not when 71 per cent of cus- SEE A RESULT [WITH DIGITAL FLYERS].
tomers are more likely to visit YOU CAN SEE WHAT ENGAGES AND
retailers who send them flyers. MODIFY THE PLAN FOR NEXT YEAR."
But how customers consume
- FREDERICK LECOQ
Golf Town
flyers is changing. Today, more than 25 per cent
prefer to look at flyers online. And the number is growing.
The more flyers change...

Digital flyers have the same purpose as printed flyers-to trumpet
products, advertise sales, and build brand presence. They look a lot like
printed flyers, with the same jam-packed design and the same exuberant
copy. It's very retail. The only difference is the digital flyer exists on a
screen and is far more flexible than print.
Tobias Dankiewicz, Co-founder of reebee, a purveyor of digital flyers,
says the advent of digital flyers means that the flyer is "no longer a shortlived publication." The digital flyer is "always on" and lives for an entire
week or month-unlike those paper flyers tossed in the recycling.
The new digital life of flyers gives retailers an advantage over print flyers-they offer a huge new pool of customer data. Retailers can track how
customers read digital flyers, learn what catches the attention of customers, and compare customer intent (how they read flyers) to sales numbers
(how they shop).
"You can learn a lot from a flyer," says Frederick Lecoq, Vice President
of Marketing and e-Commerce at Golf Town.

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THE MARKETING ISSUE

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Canadian Retailer - The Marketing Issue