Placecast Launches Self-Serve Version Of Location-Based Mobile Deals Platform ShopAlerts

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Thursday, July 21st, 2011

Placecast’s ShopAlerts service, which delivers retailer and merchant offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones, has been used by a number of high profile brands such as The North Face, and even AT&T. Today, the company is unveiling a self-serve version of ShopAlerts which allows merchants to create, deliver and track redemptions of mobile promotions.

ShopAlerts Self-Serve is a white-label geofencing platform for businesses that want to deliver geo-triggered offers to their customers on their mobile phones. Consumers can opt-in to receiving text messages in a variety of ways—at the store, online, via text-message, mobile websites or on Facebook. Geofences are virtual areas set around physical locations; when an opted-in consumer is inside a geofenced area, she receives a message from a business, including a discount, notice of a sale, directions to a store or other content.

The self-serve version of ShopAlerts allows merchants to upload and manage store locations and information, create geofences and promotions, track coupons and redemption codes and access analytics on participants, geofences and ROI. Users can also change messages in real-time.

ShopAlerts Self-Serve is actually not directly open to small businesses, but rather larger vertical companies like mobile operators, yellow-page providers, retailers, financial institutions or deal services who can then work with SMBs and can deploy this tool for merchants.

Placecast says that currently ShopAlerts can reach 268 million phones currently across the AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile networks.

Company: Placecast
Website: placecast.net
Launch Date: 2005
Funding: $8M

Placecast is a location-based digital advertising company that provides ShopAlerts, an opt-in marketing service via mobile devices designed to drive customers to specific physical spaces like retail stores. ShopAlerts is a white-label service that works automatically on any phone and does not require an app. Users opt-in to a given brand’s program and receive text messages on their phone with information, coupons and offers from places of interest around them. Placecast was founded in 2005 and is based in San...

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