Top October Coupons: Apparel & Sporting Goods Show Popularity

An online coupon for 15% off a purchase at pacsun.com and a printable coupon for $10 off a $25 purchase at Dick’s Sporting Goods were the most popular coupons in October 2009, according to coupon aggregator RetailMeNot, which recently released its coupon-use data report (pdf) for the month.

RetailMeNot’s report on top monthly coupons separately reports its online and printable-coupon savings numbers. Overall, consumers potentially saved $4.8 million in October by using online coupons. Printable coupon users downloaded 316,890 offers and theoretically saved $1.6 million, based upon an average of $5 savings per coupon downloaded.

In October, the site featured 267,063 online coupons for 40,030 retailers, down slightly from 267,743 online coupons for 40,062 retailers in September 2009. There also were 109,844 printable coupons for 52,000 stores, brands and restaurants, up from 100,447 printable coupons in September for the same number of establishments.

Sales generated through RetailMeNot.com for the month were approximately $18.7 million, roughly the same as in September 2009, but a year-over-year increase of 108% from $8.9 million in October 2008.

Since RetailMeNot began tracking its coupon use in mid-April 2009, consumers have downloaded nearly 1.5 million printable coupons and have theoretically saved $7.7 million. The RetailMeNot site saw 11.9 million visitors in October 2009, a month-over-month increase from 10.2 million in September, and a year-over-year change of 108% over the 5.7 million in October 2008.

Additional findings from the October report:

• Victoria’s Secret, Amazon and Kohls were the most searched stores for online coupons:

• Dick’s Sporting Goods, Stanley Steemer and Fantastic Sam’s were the most searched brands for printable coupons:

The 17601 zip code in Lancaster, PA ranked #1 in the top-10 list of zip-codes searched for printable coupons:

• New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey were the top-three states using online coupons (same as in August and September, 2009), while New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut downloaded the most printable coupons.

• The top-three printable categories searched were for apparel, haircuts and sit-down restaurants:

• 37,213 coupons on the site were shared by users in October, down slightly from 37,947 in September.
•  526,137 votes on coupons were submitted by users, up from 460,655 in September.
• Members of the RetailMeNot.com site community generated 19,597 comments about coupons and related topics, up from 20,203 in September.

About the data: RetailMeNot Printable aggregates printable coupons from Valpak.com, redplum.com, moneymailer.com, Restaurant.com and Clipper Magazine and makes them searchable by category, brand and location. The site also offers online coupons from numerous retailers. Coupon and shopping trends in the report are based on a compilation of visitor data from RetailMeNot.com and RetailMeNot Printable for October. The approximate savings for printable coupons are calculated based on an average of $5 savings per coupon downloaded. The approximate savings for online coupons are based on the number of online page views multiplied by an average user savings of $29 per coupon used.