The print flyer has been a major part of Quebec hardware retailer Rona’s marketing strategy for 75 years.
Vice-president of marketing Claire Bara won’t disclose how many print flyers the company distributes for competitive reasons – “it’s sensitive information,” she said – but acknowledged it is “millions and millions” across the country each week.
For one week in February, however, the hardware retailer eliminated its print flyer entirely – replacing it with an online-only version in French and English, created in partnership with the digital flyer platform Flipp.
“It was like jumping out of a plane with a parachute that a stranger gave you,” said Bara of the test.
The flyer is a decidedly old-fashioned tool in a marketing environment always looking to what’s next, but it remains a powerful – and effective – marketing tool for retailers.
A recent consumer engagement study by the Flyer Distribution Standards Association (FDSA) found more than three-quarters of Canadian adults (77%) have visited a store or dealer within a week of reading a flyer, and 76% have purchased a product either in-store or online.
The study also found nearly three-quarters (74%) of Canadian adults read, looked into or accessed a print flyer in 2015 (down from 77% in 2013), compared with just 53% for online flyers (up from 49% in 2013).
In addition, 69% of Canadian adults used print flyers about the same as the previous year, while 19% said they used them less often and 12% more often. While 57% of respondents said their use of online flyers remained the same last year, 27% said they used them more.
While flyers are a mainstay of the grocery industry, the FDSA study found 10% of people shopping for hardware products use a flyer before all/almost all trips, and 20% use a flyer before most trips (31% of people never use a flyer prior to a trip).
Rona’s test came amid ongoing efforts by the chain to incorporate more digital in its marketing mix. “My job as a marketer is to be where the consumer is, and what we’ve seen over the last couple of years is that this is a trend that will accelerate,” said Bara. “People are shifting gradually, so [we] have to keep on shifting. We’ll follow the customer on this.”
Established in 2007, Flipp now boasts a reported 2 million weekly users and 50 million weekly views of digital flyers for 800 retailers including Rona, The Home Depot, Walmart and Canadian Tire.
“The expectation of consumers in digital is that they want a more relevant experience,” said Flipp’s managing director Seth Stover. “It’s important to look at that balance of visually representing what’s going on in my store, providing that newsworthy content [ie: new products] to the consumer, and making elements of that content more relevant. It’s those two worlds coming together.”
For its February test with Flipp, Rona distributed copies of its digital flyer using the Flipp network and its own email database.
The test, said Bara, was a “milestone” for the company, helping dispel much of the internal skepticism around its ongoing shift towards digital. Rona’s sales during that week were double those of the corresponding period in 2015 – all achieved for roughly half the cost of a traditional print flyer (Flipp utilizes a pay-per-read model).
“It’s another clear benefit of shifting [to digital], because when we’re printing those millions of copies we know that [some] are not even read,” said Bara. “When you go on a digital platform like Flipp, you pay per read. I’m sure that people are spending [time] with my flyer, otherwise I wouldn’t be charged.
“It used to be that I want millions and millions of copies [of my flyer] out there, but that’s not the case anymore: I want copies to be seen,” she added. “This is exactly what the digital world is enabling.”
The performance-based model also enabled Rona to expand the flyer’s size from its typical 6-8 pages to 14. “When you’re producing a traditional flyer, everybody’s fighting for more pages to show more products, but you’re limited because of the cost,” said Bara. “Whether the [digital] flyer was four, 10 or 14 pages, it was the same cost.”
The digital flyer also enabled Rona to collect a significant amount of customer data, including exactly who opened the flyers and how they interacted with certain features such as embedded how-to videos.
While Rona’s print flyers do vary slightly by region, working with Flipp also provided the company with additional leeway to create more “personalized” flyers. While not exactly one-to-one marketing, the company can use data to identify customer sub-sets, such as Air Miles members, and push exclusive offers to them.
Digital also required Rona to re-learn some aspects of its flyer creation. With a standard print flyer, for example, the most aggressive offers tend to be on the front and back pages; however, the back page in a digital environment now becomes page two.
Bara said Rona had no current plans to completely eliminate print flyers, but the test suggested that it’s digital strategy is the right one. “It’s proven to us that we’re doing the right thing in shifting more to digital marketing,” she said. “This has given us a boost to keep accelerating that shift.”
Earlier this year, Flipp received $61 million in funding from General Atlantic, which boasts an investment portfolio that includes several tech-based startups including Uber, Airbnb and Buzzfeed.
Founder and CEO Wehuns Tan told Marketing in April the company planned to put the funds towards engineering and product development, as well as new consumer marketing expected later this year.
