INFRA empowers retailers with next-gen digital coupon technology

Seventy-six percent of American consumers use digital coupons to buy groceries; 75% use coupons to shape their shopping list, according to Capital One Shopping Research.

To help its retailer members leverage coupon power to grow sales and loyalty, the Independent Natural Food Retailers Association (INFRA) has partnered with CoupDog, a next-generation digital coupon platform that streamlines digital coupons for retailers, brands and consumers.

Since the pandemic boosted online grocery shopping and inflation pushed up prices, digital coupon use has soared.

“I think consumers these days are hungry for deals, hungrier than ever,” says INFRA Director of Purchasing Nick Auzenne. But retailers have struggled to find user-friendly, affordable, reliable tools. “It’s been a big ask from the vendor community for years,” he says.

Powered by patented Blockchain technology, CoupDog offers a cloud-based promotion engine and system of record that makes it easy to create, validate and redeem coupons. “Their platform is really slick, the process for redemption and, ultimately, reimbursement is very clear, transparent and very fair for all stakeholders,” Auzenne says. “It’s a really good fit.”

“We make it easy for retailers to interconnect their POS System with CoupDog’s digital coupon cloud so they can easily accept, validate and redeem coupons electronically and in real time,” says Rob Balfour, the Toronto-based company’s CEO and co-founder. “We give retailers a suite of tools to make digital coupons available wherever they engage with their customers—on their website, mobile apps and in-store.”

Chobani, Coca-Cola, Danone, Frito Lay, Kellogg, Kraft Heinz and Nestle are among the more than 100 companies using CoupDog, which INFRA is testing in certain independent natural retailers.

Retailers and brands can create coupons in less time than it took Granny to pull out her scissors and clip the weekly deals from the paper circular. “It literally takes three minutes manually, and if you use a template, it takes less than a minute,” Auzenne says. The plug-and-play platform includes extensive analytics to help retailers determine which programs are working.

Seamless in-store integration with the point-of-sale (POS) system was one of the features that led INFRA member Rob Jones, CFO of Marczyk Fine Foods in Denver, Colorado, to sign on as a beta site to test the INFRA/CoupDog partnership. Coupons, especially paper ones, have been more problematic than POS-handy.

“When we send paper coupons off to the manufacturers for redemption, we sometimes get refunded and sometimes we don’t,” he says. “The paper coupons are kind of going away and this is all electronic, which we love.”

“One of our sayings here is ‘Marzyk makes it easy,’” he says. “We want an easy, friendly, stress-free checkout and be able to honor and offer customer promotion redemption for coupons and other things that may come about. This will really help us reduce customer friction and enhance the customer experience and hopefully, customers will realize they always want to come back because it’s so easy to shop.”

More than 100 CPG companies already use the platform, including Chobani, Coca-Cola, Danone, Frito Lay, Kellogg, Kraft Heinz and Nestle. Distributor United Natural Foods (UNFI) is also partnering with CoupDog. INFRA and CoupDog are working together to grow the number of natural and organic brands involved.

INFRA and beta-site members will try out CoupDog’s various strategies and tools in a discovery phase for the first year to determine which works best for its 350 retailers and their customers. “Then, we’ll fold all of it into our 2026 vendor opportunities package,” says Auzenne, where he hopes the platform will drive velocities and increase basket size. “The goal is really to help grow retailer bottom line and give our brands a new channel to partner with.”