According to a study discussed in Small Business Trends, customers are still hesitant to take advantage of mobile coupons. A very small 4 percent of users said they had redeemed mobile coupons; only 10 percent said they felt comfortable storing coupons on their mobile phone as opposed to printing them out. Not surprisingly, younger consumers are more open-minded to using mobile coupons.

In the Small Business Trends article, eMarketer reports that 18 to 44 year olds prefer online ads for discounts by a 5% margin. The oldest respondents were the most likely to favor print, though they still thought Web ads were better for deals. The study showed that many customers are willing to ?fan?, ?follow?, and ?email subscribe? to your brand if you offer discounts for doing that.

Still, many consumers like to have a tangible representation of the discount before they travel to a store to redeem it- whether it is a printed coupon or email from the business. This can become very expensive once you add up the costs of designing a coupon and spending the time to make it worthwhile. Services such as FreshGuide work with small businesses to offer deals and offers to local customers- they provide the sign-up, payment processing, and distribution of the printed coupon/certificate. Could this be a more cost-effective way of offering large discounts to new customers outside your network?