Talking with….David Mounts CEOInmar, Inc.

Inmar, headquartered in Winston-Salem, NC, provides a comprehensive network of solutions and services to help partners in many industries, including retailers, improve profitability by making connections that improve quality, efficiency and collaboration. Among those connections are a suite of digital promotions solutions and, specifically, Inmar’s Offer Management app. This tool represents a single source for the creation, distribution management and analysis of both paperless and print-at-home coupons. Inmar’s solutions support multiple offers across all active channels and aggregate performance data for all offers. Enhanced analysis allows for even more detailed perfor-mance metrics.

Retail Leader: Why is the timing right in the market-place for digital promotions?

David Mounts: Consumers have become very used to interacting with technology to get information about prod-ucts, and they have also become very accustomed to being informed through technology about products that are rel-evant to them. They have decided they like that, and they want to have that same relationship with brick and mortar retailers. The ability to engage with consumers around digi-tal offers that are meaningful to them is frankly a neces-sity for the future of brick and mortar retailers. There are also deep benefits to retailers, because they can develop a better understanding of what their customers are buying and why they are doing what they are doing, and then use

powerful analytics engines to interact with their consum-ers in real time to provide value to them. Several forces, including cloud computing, big data analytics, mobility and social media are causing changes at a rapid pace for nearly all industries.

RL: How does Inmar provide optimized promotion management, and what is the difference between digital promotions without such management and ones with effective program control?

DM: We have created a platform through which brands and retailers can deliver virtual offers that can be re-deemed in real time and we are able to give them key in-sights in real time about shopper activity: Where did they find your offer? Did they engage? If they didn’t purchase, why not? Then we are able to put that data through ana-lytics and scoring engines for feedback, so you can start the cycle again with the next meaningful interaction with your customer, learning more and doing better each time. When you get that kind of insight, you get to the point where you understand how to move product in the short term and understand what ideas are good ones and how to accomplish your objectives that drive value.

RL: What are some benchmarks for the success of digital promotions and what does 2013 look like for Inmar and its retail partners?

DM: We are seeing strong returns. We have brands report-ing that their digital promotions are generating four to five times greater incremental value. Brands and retailers are also able to drive significant improvement in their effective-ness around geographic reach and with their budgets, if they are trying to make their budgets go further. Currently, there are more than 14,000 stores that are connected to these digital promotion solutions and we believe that number will be 25,000 next year. To enhance the value, we are also putting new apps on the platform that will complement our promotion offers apps and our analytics apps and enable the absolutely best-in-class promotions and performance.

Retail LeaderELECTRONICALLY REPRINTED FROM NOvEMbER/DECEMbER 2012

Posted with permission from November/December 2012. Retail Leader, Stagnito Media. Copyright 2013. All rights reserved.For more information on the use of this content, contact Wright’s Media at 877-652-5295

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