Quotient Partners With Mandlik & Rhodes to Provide Cost Savings and Transparency to CPGs and Retailers Through New Digital and Paper Clearing Solution

Quotient (NYSE: QUOT), the leading digital promotions, media and analytics company, announced today a partnership with Mandlik & Rhodes — a well-established and long-standing company that delivers strategic coupon processing solutions for manufacturers and retailers in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. Through this partnership, Quotient offers CPG brands significant cost savings over legacy coupon clearing firms for the clearing of digital coupons without transition or laborious integration costs through the use of Mandlik & Rhodes’ coupon clearing service. Retailers will continue to be paid as they traditionally have for clearing services.

As digital couponing has grown, the legacy coupon clearing industry has failed to transform and take advantage of the efficiencies that technology brings to other industries — ultimately lowering the cost to serve. With this partnership, CPGs can immediately benefit from a lower cost to process digital coupons — freeing up more working dollars and increasing the ROI of their overall marketing spend. Additionally, they benefit from a fully transparent model for delivering coupon clearing services so that every cost is clear. As a result of this partnership, CPGs will be able to spend less on clearing fees today while saving even more as the shift from legacy offline print to digital coupons accelerates. And, they will be able to do so with the confidence that they won’t be nickel and dimed on hidden processing charges or ancillary fees.

CPGs will also no longer need to be concerned about fraud fees for digital coupons, since the risk of fraud is significantly reduced in a well-structured digital coupon environment. Quotient’s Retailer iQ digital coupon platform is designed with this in mind, with multiple checks and balances that maintain the integrity of Quotient’s platform. Zero instances of fraud have been reported using Retailer iQ.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to accelerate the shift from paper to digital coupons. In fact, offline (paper) free-standing inserts, or FSIs, are expected to lose more than 20% of their coupon distribution from leading CPGs over the course of 2020 and 2021. But, coupon clearinghouses have done little to evolve. The traditional clearinghouses sit between CPGs, which pay for coupons, and retailers, where coupons are redeemed. They emerged for a good reason: to serve as the trusted middle party,” said Steven Boal, CEO of Quotient. “However, with the rise of digital coupons, the role of the clearing firm has drastically changed. Many tasks that are associated with paper coupons are now unnecessary, but clearinghouses often still charge the same fees. Costs are maintained for no additional value-added services, while the actual operating costs for digital coupon processing go down. While these clearing firms still have a role to play in the industry (and particularly with paper coupons), their role is shifting in the digital coupon ecosystem. Our partnership with Mandlik & Rhodes turns the old, unnecessary and notoriously ambiguous fees into working dollars — ushering in a disruption for this industry that was long overdue.”