- July 23, 2026
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For 58 years, a familiar blue envelope has landed in the mailboxes of millions of Americans month after month. Stuffed inside? A cache of coupons, advertising flyers and sweepstakes entries for local businesses and national brands like Legoland, the Hallmark Channel and Crayola crayons. If not a contest, maybe it is a coupon for a BOGO at the taco place around the corner or $50 off a pool cleaning.
The company behind the coupons, St. Petersburg-based Valpak, conquered the world of direct mail advertising decades ago. Yet somehow, the company built on paper coupons has managed to survive in a digital-first world dominated by smartphones, social media and online shopping.
A key to the survival, Valpak President Chris Cate says, is the company has adapted while others stood pat. And the proof, he adds, is in Valpak’s sustained growth, year after year, that has come from this constant reinvention.
“We’ve been evolving this company every year and growing the business as well,” says Cate, who first joined Valpak as an IT technician in 1988. “I came in as an IT guy and then grew into a business person, and I feel like I’ve had 20 different careers working for this one company. I always said I would leave when I got bored and I’ve never been bored.”
Valpak operates in the $49 billion direct marketing industry, and its sustained growth rate, it says on its website, is more than double the industry average of about 8% annually. Cate declines to disclose more specific numbers on the company’s growth.
The company got its start in 1968, when an unemployed autoworker named Terry Loebel took out a $500 loan to start mailing coupons from his home to other households in Clearwater. Loebel built his business by helping local merchants reach nearby households through shared direct-mail campaigns. Rather than sending individual advertisements at significant expense, dozens of businesses could pool their marketing dollars into a single envelope, reducing costs while reaching thousands of potential customers in their own communities.
The concept proved especially valuable for businesses that rely on local traffic, and that geographic focus became one of Valpak’s greatest strengths.
The company quickly expanded throughout the U.S. and today is one of the largest direct marketing companies in the nation, with roughly 500 sales associates and 1,300 employees.
Every year, Valpak mails about 500 million envelopes from its 470,000-square-foot print-and-mail facility and headquarters in the Gateway area of north St. Petersburg to homes across America — representing about 60,000 businesses, most of which are local companies, Cate says. The company’s St. Petersburg facility, which opened in 2008, represents a more than $200 million investment in trolleys, conveyors and automated guided vehicles and has been recognized as one of the most automated printing facilities in the world, capable of producing 54 billion coupons annually.
“I would say more people are migrating to us, not because other avenues are going away, but because our product works,” Cate says. “ That's been the most interesting thing — some of our consumer shift is just moving from digital back to what some would think is a traditional media channel.”
While digital platforms transformed advertising, a core challenged remained for local businesses: finding customers in the neighborhoods they serve. Whether the advertiser is a dentist, HVAC contractor, landscaping company or fitness center, success often depends on reaching households within a defined service area.
Rather than competing against digital marketing, Valpak expanded into it.
Over the past several years, the company has evolved from a direct-mail provider into an omnichannel marketing organization. In addition to its signature blue envelope, Valpak now offers digital coupons, targeted online advertising, search engine marketing, email campaigns, social media solutions, website services and data-driven audience targeting.
The strategy reflects a broader shift within the advertising industry, Cate says.
Marketing experts increasingly emphasize that consumers rarely respond to a single advertisement. Instead, purchasing decisions often result from repeated exposure across multiple channels. A homeowner might first notice a local roofing company in a Valpak mailing, later encounter its online advertisement, search for reviews and ultimately schedule an estimate.
For many businesses, combining print and digital marketing has proven more effective than relying exclusively on either one, Cate says. In November 2023, the private investment firm AmatoMartin acquired Valpak after acquiring fellow direct-mail and coupon company Clipper Magazine a year earlier. Since then, the two brands have integrated operations and offerings, using shared mail and print networks to reach more than 60 million households. (AmatoMartin bought Valpak from Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity; Platinum had bought the business in 2017 from Cox Target Media, which had owned it for 26 years.)
Clipper Magazine was rebranded to focus more heavily on the digital coupon model, with Valpak helping to route consumers to Clipp.com for online deals and vouchers for their digital wallets.
New digital tools make it much easier for Valpak to measure the results of its advertising campaigns, Cate says. From Google and digital ads to social media posts on sites like Facebook, analytics are tracked more carefully, and businesses are more adept at gauging the return on their investments, he says.
Costs for advertising online and on digital media platforms have also skyrocketed in the years since the pandemic, Cate says, leading many local businesses to come back to the relatively stable prices of a 10,000-home Valpak coupon campaign. That can range from $300 to $500, with several factors impacting the variation, Cate says, including target area, print format and digital advertising options.
“We’re seeing some advertisers come to us that used to advertise with Google or Meta who are now saying they just can’t because it’s so expensive now,” Cate says. “They’re not getting the return on investment, so they’re looking at different avenues to move from digital only into our products.”
Industry research has also challenged assumptions about the decline of direct mail, says Chris Bilotta, director of marketing partnerships and promotions at Valpak. While consumers are inundated with digital advertisements every day, physical mail remains comparatively uncluttered. A printed coupon may sit on a kitchen counter or refrigerator for days or weeks, providing repeated visibility long after a digital advertisement has disappeared from a social media feed.
That staying power has helped preserve the relevance of direct mail in an increasingly digital marketplace, Bilotta says.
“We call it the Valpak Shuffle — that experience of opening that envelope and flipping through the paper coupons,” Biolatta says. “It’s tactile. You can touch it. You experience it.”
Valpak is constantly searching for innovative new marketing campaigns and experiences for consumers, Biolatta says. Coloring contests and walk-on movies are just some the ways Valpak keeps it vibrant.
“As we think about ways to engage our consumers we’re going to keep pushing that limit and searching for ways we can give them something really special, something money can’t buy,” Biolatta says.
Today, Valpak’s business is no longer defined solely by coupons, Cate says. Instead, the company positions itself as a full-service marketing partner for local businesses, using consumer data and technology to determine the most effective combination of print and digital outreach.
The iconic blue envelope will always be its most recognizable product — it was even the inspiration for the facade of Valpak’s St. Petersburg headquarters — but now it represents just one component of a broader advertising strategy.
More than half a century after its founding, Valpak’s longevity offers a lesson in business adaptation.
The company survived, officials say, not because consumers never stopped using coupons, but because it recognized that its core business was never simply about printing discounts. Its mission has always been connecting local businesses with nearby customers. As marketing technology evolved, so did the methods used to make those connections.
“After 50 plus years we’ve got it down to a science,” Cate says. “How the consumer reads the ad, what’s most important to be on the ad. We know by category — dining, entertainment, retail — what offers most motivate consumers to respond and spend money with our advertisers and we’re getting better at tracking that data every year. But I think it really comes down to the fact that everybody likes to save money, and saving money makes people feel like they’re smarter. That never changes.”
