Placecast’s ShopAlerts service, which delivers retailer and merchant offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones, is announcing new functionality today—integration with mobile smartphone apps.
As we’ve written in the past, ShopAlerts 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.
With the new feature, retailers deploying mobile apps can allow consumers to receive a location-based message from the retailer’s nearest store or other relevant location, without the app being open Just as ShopAlerts programs work on any phone, this new feature works on any smartphone platform.
After a retailer integrates with ShopAlerts, customers (who are opted into receiving alerts) will receive location-based push notifications when they are in a geofenced area. Retailers can also leverage preferences expressed by the consumer, such as loyalty or past purchase data to increase the relevance of the message or deal. Time of day and weather can also be taken into account to create added relevance, and brands could also enable a location-based notification when a specific product is available at a nearby store.
Placecast says that it will work directly with retailers to integrate ShopAlerts into their apps, helping them to design a program and create a messaging strategy, select the number and size of geofences and activate locations.
The integration with retailer smartphone apps makes a lot of sense for Placecast. With the growth in online to offline commerce, Placecast is giving retailers another way to target consumers and offer relevant deals and information. The goal is to bring the consumer into the store, and messages sent via a smartphone app can help accomplish this.
Placecast is already being used by a number of high profile brands such as The North Face, and even AT&T.