Coupons.com Expands Reach to Mobile
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Digital coupon company Coupons.com, Inc., based in Mountain View, California, has expanded its digital coupon offerings with three new major initiatives: Save to Card coupons that can be loaded directly onto supermarket loyalty cards; Show & Save coupons, including over 12,000 hyper-local offers that can be redeemed directly from a mobile phone; and new applications for mobile phones, including expanding the company’s digital coupon network to mobile phones and an upgrade to its Grocery iQ application.
“For over a decade, we have been transforming the multi-billion dollar coupon industry by ushering coupons into the digital world that were traditionally distributed via newspaper inserts,” says Steven Boal, CEO of Coupons.com. This expansion, he says, ”provides a road map for the future of the coupon industry, a future in which coupons are accessible to consumers 24/7/365 at home, at work or on the go and a future in which manufacturers and retailers have more tools at their disposal to reach those consumers in order to move their products off store shelves.”
In addition to offering the largest selection of online printable coupons available anywhere, Coupons.com now offers coupons that can be saved to store loyalty cards as well as coupons that can be displayed on mobile devices for redemption at checkout.
“Since the launch of mobile coupons, manufacturers and retailers have struggled to incorporate multiple digital coupon providers into their marketing plans,” says Boal. “Now Coupons.com offers a unified digital coupon solution to address this problem, backed by the Coupons.com brand and our industry-leading digital coupon network.”
‘Show & Save’ enables shoppers to save an electronic coupon on a mobile device and then show that coupon on the device at checkout at the local retailer or service provider. With the Coupons.com iPhone application, users simply browse a list of available coupons and click the ones they want. They can also browse coupons from nearby retailers and service providers based on their GPS location and even pull up a map leading them directly to the merchant offering the savings. Shoppers can browse offers ahead of time or browse at the point of service, and simply show the coupons right on their phones for savings.
Users can also access Show & Save coupons from their computers using the new ‘Local’ tab at Coupons.com. Shoppers simply print the offers and present the printed coupons to the issuer at checkout.
Over 12,000 offers are available today via Coupons.com’s partnership with Money Mailer and other providers including savings from local restaurants, retailers, and services — from pizzerias to plumbers and dry cleaners to dog walkers. Additional Show & Save offers will continue to be added from Coupons.com’s network partnerships, including newspaper and local television stations for which mobile coupons are a value-added tool for their ad sales efforts.
Coupons.com also announced new partnerships with several leading mobile application providers to integrate Show & Save coupons into local and location-based services to deliver savings directly to their users. Partnerships include a new relationship with Loopt, whereby the companies are collaborating to integrate coupons from Coupons.com into Loopt’s interoperable social-mapping service. Additional integration partnerships are with Sherpa, the location-triggered discovery application developed by Geodelic, and Aloqa’s award-winning app that automatically notifies users of popular places, great events, recommended bargains, and Facebook friends close by.
With ‘Save to Card’ shoppers can save coupon offers directly to their store loyalty cards. Shoppers simply register their loyalty cards at Coupons.com or across the Coupons.com digital network of over 2,000 sites, browse available coupons with the ‘Savings Card’ tab on their mobile device or computer and select the offers they want to save to their card. When the consumer’s loyalty card information is entered at checkout, coupons are automatically deducted from the total – all without the need for clipping or scanning printed coupons. Mobile users can even browse for offers and add coupons to their loyalty card while they shop.
The Save to Card capability currently works with loyalty cards from Safeway, VONS, Dominick’s, Genuaris, Randalls, Tom Thumb, Pavilions and CARRS, spanning over 1,700 stores across much of the U.S. and western Canada.
“Our on-going goal is to provide shoppers the coupons they want, when they want them, wherever they want them,” says Boal. “Our new mobile couponing offerings further extend our reach and also attract an even younger demographic to our platform.”
‘Coupons.com’ is a new application for the iPhone and iPod touch. The application includes Coupons, Savings Card and Local tabs that make it easy to browse and select printable, Save to Card and Show & Save coupons. Users can print coupons wirelessly on their HP printers or send a link to their email account, which will take them to Coupons.com where their coupons are already clipped and ready to be printed. The Coupons.com application is free to download and will be available soon at the Apple App Store.
Coupons.com Mobile is a completely new version of Coupons.com that optimizes content for viewing in mobile Web browsers and will soon be available to support Web-connected devices, including WAP-enabled mobile phones.
“Our mobile offerings will appeal to the fast-growing world of mobile phone users who are downloading and using a new breed of connected, location-aware applications,” said Steve Horowitz, Coupons.com chief technology officer. “We are building the Coupons.com mobile experience to ensure that all users can use Coupons.com on their devices – from sophisticated smart phones to web-enabled feature phones – to save on the brands they love, trust and buy every day.”
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