Cyber Coupon Company Teams With Offline Giant

Online sales resource SalesMountain.com has forged a joint agreement with Val-Pak Direct Marketing Systems, Inc. to add 30,000 new coupon and sales listings to its online consumer discount guide.

Val-Pak, a division of Cox Enterprises’ Cox Target Media company, lays claim to the world’s largest database of local coupons, mailing out more than 13 billion per year. The company, based in Largo, Florida, has been in business for 30 years.

Cyber Coupons All The Rage

Coupon clipping is expected to boom on the Internet as consumers look for unique offers to differentiate the growing number of products for sale online. The paper coupon business is worth about $6 billion (US$) per year, with forecasters predicting that online coupon use will soon surpass that level. Earlier this year, Forrester Research estimated that nearly 25 percent of Web surfers use coupons.

The Val-Pak deal will help SalesMountain.com compete more directly with CouponSurfer.com and CoolSavings.com, two rising online coupon brands.

Building Both Brands

In addition to putting its 30,000 coupons online, Val-Pak will work with SalesMountain.com to advertise the Web site with co-branded inserts in its mailings to more than 50 million U.S. homes. Val-Pak will also get online marketing help from SalesMountain.com, which agreed to send its “SalesGenie” e-mail alerts to online visitors for Val-Pak coupons that match the visitors ‘ search criteria.

Both marketing moves are designed to help build awareness of the Val-Pak and SalesMountain.com services, the companies said. “Integration of our offline coupons in every SalesMountain search really makes SalesMountain unique among our coupon distributors,” Val-Pak Vice President of Internet Technologies Todd Leiser said.

Free Service

SalesMountain.com, which launched in July, calls itself “an impartial sales database” with thousands of sales and special offers for products and services. To find offline deals, visitors enter the zip code in which they want to shop, then browse by product, service, category, store, price or brand.

The site also lists local sales events, displaying individual sale items with the store location, the product brand and description, pricing information, any disclaimers the store has, and the date of the sale.

The service is free to both vendors and consumers, with SalesMountain.com generating revenue through ads on its site. SalesMountain.com says it lists more than 40,000 offers in 800 departments covering 15,000 brands available in 125,000 store locations nationwide.