Someone is going to come along soon and create software as a service (or SaaS) for group couponing or daily deals.
If I am able to figure this out, there must be some smart geeks somewhere already working it through on their own or as part of a larger company. It is surely the natural progression and the next generation of online discount crowdsourced promotion…
It will work like this….
Let’s call the new company SaaSpon
Let’s say Italian restaurant X in Suffern, NY is thin on reservations for the next month and wants to promote a YY% discount if more than Z customers respond.
They go to SaaSpon’s client dashboard and enter the details of the deal they want to create including the discount, how many customers need to respond, restrictions etc and it loads instantly both as a widget on their own website (also embeddable anywhere) as well as in SaaSpon’s directory.
SaaSpon also creates a searchable public front end on the internet where those seeking deals can search for them in their area. So, lets say I go to the site and search for Italian restaurants within 15 miles of my address and this deal among others pops up at me.
It can also do tailored emails for those looking for deals in their neighborhoods with certain specifications.
SaaSpon has no sales team and charges a small flat fee only for every deal they bring in.
Geez, if Google or Bing built this, they could embed geo + subject targeted deals in search results and that would be game over.
The restaurant is also empowered because they can promote the deal themselves, pay much less, do not have to wait to get reimbursed and retain greater autonomy regarding the promotion of the deal.
If they are not already, Groupon better be working on this like yesterday.
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