St. Pete's Valpak pushing coupons through cell phones

The king of mailing coupons to your house has a new target - your cell phone.

St. Petersburg-based Valpak is revamping much of its online operations in a broad drive to reach people where they are - on social media Web sites and on their cell phones.

That drive includes putting more coupons online and reformatting them so mobile customers can plug in their Zip code, see coupons for local companies and simply show their cell phone screen to a retailer to receive a discount.

Last month, Valpak quietly launched the new software so its coupons displayed better on iPhones, BlackBerry devices and other smart phones. Within 30 days, mobile phone users dialed up 140,000 coupons, a sharp increase, the company said.

Soon, the company plans to launch an iPhone application that presents mobile customers with discounts at any nearby companies that bought coupon deals through Valpak.

That puts Valpak squarely in a busy market for mobile discounts. Cellular phone providers, GPS companies and Web properties like Google and Yahoo are all angling to provide advertisers with marketing space on mobile phones.

To be sure, Valpak's bread and butter operation remains its signature blue envelopes. Each month, Valpak sends 45 million coupon envelopes from Valpak factories in St. Petersburg, stuffed with coupons for goods and services such as dog grooming and dental work.

At the same time, awareness of digital coupons is jumping. Scarborough Research estimates 11 percent of U.S. households now obtain coupons through the Internet, up 83 percent since 2005. About 35 percent use coupons that come through the mail.

In Tampa Bay, just over 30 percent of households are active grocery coupon clippers, Scarborough estimates.

Beyond cell phones, Valpak is pushing a nascent project into social media, expanding its presence on places like Facebook.com and the text messaging service Twitter.com.

There's no formal rule book yet at Valpak for how to use Twitter or other social media. Rather, the company's communications staff puts itself out there to learn more in hopes of sparking awareness.

Last year, Valpak's Atlanta-based parent Cox Enterprises Inc. put Valpak up for sale. It didn't go well.

"Given the current conditions of the advertising and credit markets, we are not actively marketing this asset," said Bobby Amirshahi, a spokesman for Cox.

While the advertising market may be lackluster, the demand for coupons is anything but. Valpak saw a nearly 10 percent boost in usage for its coupons during 2008.