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Tag: discounts

  • Target Corporation Offers Discounts During Investigation

    Target Corporation Offers Discounts During Investigation

    Earlier this week, the well-known superstore Target announced that it has encountered a security breach with their credit card system from Black Friday. This incident caused a panic and stir with many of the store’s loyal customers, and now, the store plans to relieve any tensions customers may have with the store by providing them with a discount.

    According to NBC News, the Target Corporation is extending its 10 percent employee discount to customers this weekend while investigators look deeper into this hacking incident.

    A statement from Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel was tweeted early Saturday morning, expressing to customers that their trust is the most important aspect of the company at this time.

    “We recognize this has been confusing and disruptive during an already busy holiday season. Our guests’ trust is our top priority at Target and we are committed to making this right.”

    Later on in the statement posted on Target’s blog, A Bullseye View, Steinhafel provided the following statement.

    “We take this crime seriously. It was a crime against Target, our team members, and most importantly, our guests. We’re in this together, and in that spirit, we are extending a 10% discount – the same amount our team members receive – to guests who shop in U.S. stores on Dec. 21 and 22. Again, we recognize this issue has been confusing and disruptive during an already busy holiday season. We want to emphasize that the issue has been addressed and let guests know they can shop with confidence at their local Target stores.”

    This offer from Target is limited to one in-store transaction for each guest. Target has also committed to free credit monitoring for customers affected by this incident. Steinhafel concludes his statement on Target’s blog with a video, stating that Target values its customers’ business and appreciates the trust they place within the company as a friend and community partner.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU6JYX1zMQI

    Image via YouTube

  • Google Play Comes With Big Discounts On Some Music, Movies, Books And Apps

    Google announced Google Play today. This is Google’s new app/music/video/book store, which is replacing Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore.

    Google kicked off a big sale to celebrate the launch, called 7 Days to Play, in which Googl eis offering a different album, book, video rental and Android app at a special price each day for the next week. Google Director of Digital Content Jamie Rosenberg writes on the Google Blog:

    In the U.S., today’s titles include the collection of top 40 hits Now That’s What I Call Music 41, the popular game Where’s My Water, the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the movie Puncture for just 25 cents each. In addition, you’ll find great collections of hip-hop, rock and country albums for $3.99 all week, detective novels from $2.99, some of our editorial team’s favorite movies from 99 cents, and our favorite apps from 49 cents.

    Google’s already sending around an email campaign for the sale:

    (image)

    More on Google Play:

    Updating Android Market To Google Play

    Google Play On iOS Devices … Kind Of

    Google Play Badges Available For Android Developers

    Google Play Incites Mixed Twitter Reaction

  • Facebook Offers: Facebook’s Advice For Successful Ones

    At a marketing event this past week, Facebook talked about a new “Offers” offering for brands.

    Offers let businesses and organizations share discounts with customers by posting offers to their Facebook Pages. Facebook describes them as coupons you don’t have to pay anything to create. When a customer claims an offer, they’ll get an email to show at the physical location for the brand to get a discount.

    Facebook Offer

    Facebook has a help center with guidelines for using Facebook Offers (hat tip to AllFacebook).

    Under the “best practices” section, Facebook says it encourages businesses to experiment with offers to find out what customers respond to best, but suggests the following to have a better chance of success:

    • Make discounts substantial. Discounts should be at least 20% off regular prices. Additionally, offering things for free performs better than discounts even if the percentage off is the same implied value of the free item.
    • Keep it simple. Describe your terms and conditions as simply as possible, and don’t require customers to perform unusual activities.
    • Use an engaging image. Photos of people using your product typically perform better than photos of your product by itself. Photos of your product perform better than your business’s logo.
    • Keep language natural and direct. Make sure your headline leads with the value of the offer instead of marketing slogans. Avoid using unconventional capitalization or punctuation.
    • Set a reasonable expiry date. Give people at least a few days to see and claim an offer. Take advantage of word-of-mouth promotion by allowing time for your offer to spread by word of mouth in people’s News Feeds.
    • Promote your offer. Run sponsored stories and pin your offer to the top of your Page so new visitors notice it. We recommend sharing an existing offer instead of creating the same offer twice so it’s easier to track how many people are claiming it.
    • Train your staff. Make sure your employees know the terms of your offer and how to help people redeem it. Some people will print out the offer while others might show the offer on their phones.

    For now, Offers are only available to Facebook’s managed advertising clients. If this applies to you, you can go to your Page, and click “Offer” from the sharing tool at the top of you timeline.

  • Google Offers Launches In Charlotte, Kansas City, Milwaukee, San Antonio & Tampa

    On the Google Commerce blog, Google announced today the launch of Google Offers in 5 new markets: Charlotte, Kansas City, Milwaukee, San Antonio and Tampa.

    Additionally, on Twitter, they announced launch in Columbus.

    @googleoffers
    Google Offers    #GoogleOffers is now live in #Columbus. RT & sign up: http://t.co/iIqXeqE4 10 hours ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto

    It’s now available in over 40 markets.

    Google Offers Markets

    “2011 was quite a year for Google Offers. In only six months (since we first launched in Portland) we introduced amazing deals from beloved local business in 33 cities in the U.S., launched national deals and released our first mobile app.”

    Expect Google Offers to continue to gain momentum as it expands into new markets. MerchantCircle put out survey results last month indicating that more businesses intend to use Google Offers than even Groupon in the future. Considering Google’s strategy of integrating its products with one another, this is hardly surprising.

    local marketing

    Google says it plans to launch Offers in Oklahoma City and Omaha soon.

  • Foursquare Partners with American Express

    Foursquare Partners with American Express

    Foursquare and American Express have entered into a partnership that will see card users getting discounts at stores, restaurants, etc. via Foursquare.

    WebProNews recently exchanged a few tweets with Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, following an article we posted questioning how Foursquare will continue to compete with Facebook and its Places service. You can see that exchange here. In a nutshell, he explained that Foursquare has different use cases, and that we should talk after SXSW, implying that multiple announcements were coming.

    Now, news of the American Express deal has come out via the Wall Street Journal. This may be the main thing Crowley was referring to as it should be a pretty big deal for Foursquare. The publication reports:

    Under the arrangement, AmEx customers can register their cards in the Foursquare system to get access to special offers from merchants who are also Foursquare participants. Customers who shop at those merchants with an AmEx card will receive credits and electronic notification that they have redeemed the offer. Merchants who participate in the program would potentially see more sales.

    The partners will pilot the service next week in Austin, Texas, at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, a weeklong conference for technology start-ups. Sixty local merchants will honor the “spend $5, save $5” promotion.

    The two companies will reportedly expand the program into various cities.

    In addition, Foursquare mentions that Foursquare 3.0 is coming soon on the company’s SXSW page (as well as some parties, panels, and new badges). It will be interesting to see what comes with version 3.0 in terms of features that Facebook will have a hard time matching. I’m sure credit card partnerships aren’t out of the realm of possibility for the company whose valuation continues to increase.

  • DealOn Launches OfferEx, Calls it “Groupon’s Biggest Threat”

    DealOn, which has declared itself "Groupon’s biggest threat", has announced the launch of what it calls the web’s first ever daily deal offer exchange called OfferEx. "Think DoubleClick for daily deals. This is revolutionary and reduces the risk and increases profits for both sides of the table," a representative for the company tells WebProNews. She calls it "a technology that will level the daily deal playing field."

    OfferEx lets daily deal suppliers upload offers for distribution to third-party resellers, like daily deal sites and newspapers. Resellers can tap into OfferEx to choose the deals they think their audience will best respond to.

    "This powerful online exchange technology connects deeply discounted voucher offers with qualified resellers in the billion-dollar daily deal and group buying marketplace," the rep says. "OfferEx is disruptive technology that’s going to shake up the daily deal market by leveling the playing field."

    OfferEx - Groupon's Greatest Threat?

    "It’s the deal supplier whose doing the bidding because they are trying to encourage distribution," she explains. "The bid is essentially the commission a deal supplier is willing to pay for each voucher sold on their behalf.  Obviously the higher the bid, the more resellers are going to feature the deal and push the offer to their consumer audience."

    "Since we also own Adblade, the largest premium only ad network on the Web, we are very familiar with providing a platform for advertisers and publishers to connect," she continues. "Right now Adblade ads are on 1100 premium sites reaching just over 144 million users monthly. OfferEx Is no different in that it seamlessly connects advertisers (suppliers) and publishers (resellers). You can be a supplier and a reseller at the same time too."

    "Publishers and Deal sites can take deals from the exchange to supplement their own deals in existing markets they serve or even open new markets that they had never served before because they didn¹t have a sales staff in those markets," she adds. "Some resellers may even just use deals from the exchange and not even try to get their own deals."

    While DealOn may consider this a threat to Groupon, Groupon itself hasn’t expressed much anxiety about competitors. CEO  Andrew Mason talks a bit about it in this recent interview with TechCrunch.

    DealOn says its getting ready to announce some "major" strategic alliances in the coming weeks. We’ll keep an eye out on what that entails.

  • Groupon Personalized Deals Will Be Huge for Customers, Businesses

    Groupon, the service that provides daily deals that save customers money, is getting a lot of attention these days. Now, they’ll be getting much more. Late yesterday, the company announced a big feature in Personalized Deals. Today, they have released an FAQ for those.

    "Personalized Deals is the biggest thing we’ve done since we launched Groupon," the company says. "While Groupon won’t look much different, sending different deals to different users transforms Groupon in four big ways."

    If you thought Groupon was getting big, this feature might be the ticket to making it a household name. Along with the launch of an Android app last week, Personalized Deals is likely going to put Groupon on a lot more people’s mobile devices.

    Learn How Groupon Works! from The Point on Vimeo.

    As a result of the Personalized Deals feature, users will start getting offers from a growing number of businesses, which are tailored to their location, preferences, and buying patterns.

    "Groupon has become so popular with merchants that we can’t keep up with demand," Groupon says. "Over 35,000 merchants are queued to be featured on Groupon, and with 97% of our merchants wanting to be featured again, that list is only going to get longer. As a response to unmet demand, Groupon has become one of the most prolifically copied websites in the history of the Internet, with over 500 worldwide Groupon knockoffs appearing in the last 12 months."

    There’s no question that the Personalized Deals feature is going to continue to attract businesses to Groupon. Customers have more of a reason than ever to use the service.