Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

How Does This Marketing Piece Work?

Posted by Anonymous on 7/21/2010 at 3:41 PM ET 125 Points
Today I received in the mail a direct mail piece from Discover card which is a back-to-school promotion that contains four coupons from different businesses: barnes & noble, kohls, office max and payless shoes. We have kids in school so I know the idea is for us to use the coupons and discover at the same time at these vendors.

My question is: how does this type of promotion work from these businesses point of view? Does Discover pay for the whole thing or do they approach the vendors and say "chip in for this and we'll mail it".. or what is the process for getting something like this together and out in the mail? And do they share info among one another?

Curious how these things work because it is well-timed and provides savings we can use.... then again they know that.
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  • Posted on 7/21/2010 at 5:44 PM Author
    Thank you for the reply.

    So Discover approaches these vendors and says they are going to mail this out to a certain portion of their member base within a certain demographic (kids in school), and for "X" (maybe 10 cents per mailer) they will put their coupon on the mailer with 3 other non-competing retailers.

    Discover essentially covers their cost and probably makes some money putting it all together and gets the business from the use of the discover card, and the businesses get promotion below their normal mailing costs if they would have to do it themselves.

    Just out of curiousity... if they mailed out 3 million of these things (which they probably did)... what do you think the cost would have been to each advertiser? is 10 cents a mailer about right... or would it be less or more?
  • Posted by CarolBlaha on 7/22/2010 at 9:16 PM Accepted
    Actually it can work both ways. You can contact Discover. And you pay -- like you were doing an insert anywhere else. Unless it's changed-- it's been awhile since I researched this.

    But think of it this way-- what benefit does this have over any piece you may do yourself and mail? It gets opened.

    And of course, any good marketing campaign is well timed. Of course they are mailing this now-- they know you are shopping for it now.
  • Posted on 7/22/2010 at 9:58 PM Author
    how would you determine what these vendors are paying? i wonder if i'm close on the 10 cents per piece price. with the cost of postage (bulk) and printing it's got to be about 45 cents or so to get it into my mailbox...
  • Posted by CarolBlaha on 7/22/2010 at 11:12 PM Member
    it really varies. How good are you at negotiating?

    10 cents x how many million statements? I don't think they dont' do regional mailings.

    In addtion, they will do a vendor eval. They want to make sure when they put their name to yours-- you will deliver.
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