GORTON'S FISHES FOR MORE CONSUMERS

GLOUCESTER, Mass. -- The Gorton's Fisherman has reeled in a big catch.

By offering print-at-home coupons on its company Web site, Gorton's hopes to encourage trial of its frozen fish products, which include Skillet Fillets, Tenders and Fish Sticks.

The effort is part of a new partnership with CoolSavings, Chicago, an incentive marketing company. Gorton's is licensing CoolSavings' technology that enables it to offer printable coupons on gortons.com. The technology lets Gorton's track how many people are viewing the offer, printing it and redeeming it, said Zach Soolman, assistant marketing manager, Gorton's.

"We want to get consumers thinking about frozen seafood, and Gorton's in particular," said Soolman.

Coupons rotate every few weeks. Last month, visitors were offered a coupon for 75 cents off any two packages of Gorton's Tenders. Gorton's is also offering coupons directly on the CoolSavings.com e-coupon site.

As an added value, when the coupon is printed, a recipe accompanies it.

"[The recipes] give consumers a good reason to eat Gorton's products more often," said Soolman.

Gorton's relaunched its Web site about a year ago with the goal of giving consumers reasons to visit the site, stay on it longer and come back again. The e-coupons are a perfect fit with that plan, said Soolman.

"We try to give consumers relevant and valuable online content," said Soolman.

Much of the traffic on gortons.com comes from consumers in search of recipes. Gorton's generates additional traffic by promoting the site on packaging, and in freestanding inserts, point-of-sale materials and television commercials.

Soolman described the program as Gorton's first major online couponing effort.

"This is an opportunity to do something new in the couponing world," he said. "We want to see what the [return on investment] is on something like this, compared to another couponing method."

When asked if Gorton's is concerned about misredemption and fraud, Soolman said the company doesn't feel the e-coupon it's using is any riskier than a standard, freestanding insert.

Gorton's hasn't decided how long the program will run, saying it's too early to evaluate how the coupons are being received.