AllYou.com Aggregates Grocery Circulars Online
AllYou.com, the Web site of Time Inc.’s All You magazine, has launched an interactive tool that lets consumers browse all the main grocery circulars in their neighborhood by ZIP code or build a printable shopping list based on what’s on sale or the coupon deals offered at their favorite supermarket chains.
The new Circular Roundup tool, available at AllYou.com/grocerycircular, also lets users search by product or brand for the stores offering sales promotions on an item in their location. They can then select those items with a click, add them to a shopping list, load relevant online coupon offers from AllYou.com into that list and print it out.
Initiating Circular Roundup is the latest step in a rolling upgrade of the AllYou.com site that has been going on since its launch in 2009, said magazine publisher Suzanne Quint. Research conducted among All You readers soon after that said site visitors were interested in a few things, including getting free samples and printable coupons. In the following year, the site added both those features.
“The third thing they told us they wanted was local grocery deals,” Quint said. “So we found a partner in [shopping search engine] Grocery Server that had the data and the technology to help us with that. It’s a white label solution they provide, customized at AllYou.com for our site and our users.”
Grocery Server, which indexes deals from some 275 U.S. grocery chains, also provides white-label shopping search for other publishing and retail sites, including Prevention.com, Meijer Mealbox, and Recipe.com. While many of those involve recipe-based search that let users find deals on ingredients for foods they’ve decided to make, the AllYou.com version is aimed at value-conscious shoppers who might not decide to buy ground beef, for example, until it went on a weekly sale at one of their local retailers.
Apart from offering a useful service to the 1.7 million monthly unique visitors to the AllYou.com site, the Circular Roundup feature also extends a unique, locally targeted opportunity to brands sponsoring the tool. For example, StarKist tuna is the launch sponsor for Circular Roundup and will remain in that position for a month. The brand is using the feature to run geo-located coupons for a new frozen product, SeaSensations entrees, that is currently available only in selected Eastern markets. Circular Roundup users who input a qualifying ZIP code will see a banner ad and clickthrough coupon for the new entrée item; those outside those markets will see promotions and offers for other StarKist products.
“This tool allows me to geo-target,” said StarKist marketing director Jennifer Albert. “If I’m only east of the Mississippi or in the Northeast with a product, I can get very specific about location and use the tool to talk to consumers about this new product that’s in their stores.”
In the bigger context, Albert said, there’s a large benefit to being right in front of a consumer’s eyes when she’s making her shopping list—something that two out of three shoppers do before they buy groceries, according to the latest quarterly research from SymphonyIRI.
“The dynamics aren’t just about TV advertising anymore, and the online/ social component is hot,” she said. “Consumers are already there, using the Internet and these tools. This tool actually helps them get rid of the old paper trail of the shopping list. It’s providing a service that they value. So as a brand, why wouldn’t I want to be part of that, to make sure that I’m top of mind when they’re that close to the register?
“I can still show the product on TV and do my usual mix of dropping FSIs and in-store tactics—but now I’m actually part of their list when they show up.”
Launched in 2004, monthly magazine All You has a circulation of 1 million, including subscriptions and newsstand sales at all Walmart stores.
