coupon book salesman

[joe]

Yesterday I had a coupon book salesman stop by to sell me a space in an upcoming book to be distributed to the local college students. The price list he left me is incredible! One coupon is 659 dollars randomly placed. The size is 2.125" x 5.125".All b&w, two coupons are 849 dollars. I am blown away by these prices. The company is The Campus Special out of Duluth Ga. Are these books normally this expensive? Needles to say I won't take advantage of this offer.

 

[SusanG]

I would bet there there is room for some "adjustment." What would be the average sale from a college student?

 

[Dave]

How many coupons and how many colleges are included in your area?

Maybe you should diversify and open a pizza delivery service. Bet you'd get tremendous payback!

 

[Jerry Ervin]

What would be the average sale from a college student?

In the pizza and beer industry or ours?

 

[auntiesarahjayne]

coupon shmoopon

Joe-

I was hit up by Marquette U for their "Passport" book and a full page ad that is to reach 4,000 students is $75.00 I thought that was extremely reasonable but I will not be doing this. What student has the money to have framing done? What student WANTS framing at this stage in their life? Now pizza, late night food and drinks I can see. Haircuts, etc.

I'd rather have a coupon book or something for a huge corporate business that gives them out to their newly hired employees. (which I did pay for, for a corporate office that moved into the area. No replies.)

-Sarah

 

[Beveled]

We had one come around for a Traverse City coupon book. They wanted over $1000 for your coupon ad, and you had to sign up for at least 3 months.

These days people are paying more attention to coupons, but I don't know about students. Most don't have any money, period.

 

[Randy Jordan]

Hi Joe! Since you asked, it has been my expierence that coupon books are not the best bang for the buck! Seems to be more the opposite, least bang for the buck. They charge you a ton of cash, for an ad that usually does nothing for your business. My wife has a small restaurant and tried this "endevour" once, (actually twice, first & last time) we only got customers who wanted something free, plus those coupons kept coming in, occassionally, for 3 yrs., even with an expiration date on them. If you don't honor them, that new customer, probably won't ever come back, of course they may never have come anyway, except for the coupon. IMHO it is not a good way to spend your hard earned money. 2 coupons for $800, how many framing jobs would it take to break even? Anyway, that's my opinion for what it might be worth. Randy J.

 

[johnny]

That sounds horrible.

 

[JWB9999999]

I haven't tried a coupon book, but I did try the grocery store register tape coupon. Didn't work for me at all.

About 1/3 of the total register tape coupons that I got back came from 1 single customer... my #1 customer who's spent more money with me than anyone else in the last 9 years. As I was trying to attract new business, not give discounts to customers who've been with me for years, it didn't really work.

In the 6 month run that we did with the tape, we only saw about 20 coupons returned to us. I don't remember how many customers the grocery store averaged per day, but I'm sure that there were over 25,000 of our coupons printed and given to their customers. That's a horrible rate of return.

 

[happycamper]

We did a coupon book several years ago and got nothing. But then when we posted signage saying we take competators coupons from the same book, we had plenty of people coming in. So we did better without paying for the coupon.
None of them were students.
I offer a discount to students at the nearby university and college of art and design, seldom does anyone come in. I would not advertise framing to this demographic.