Coupious for BlackBerry

Have you heard the news? After several months of development, Coupious is now available on BlackBerry! As of this week, BlackBerry owners will have the same access to sweet deals as their iPhone and Android-toting peers. Download the app today from the BlackBerry App World, or visit our BlackBerry page from your mobile browser.

Coupious works on most BlackBerry devices running OS 4.5 and above and have GPS functionality. We haven’t yet optimized for OS 6.0, but definitely keep your eyes on this blog and our Facebook and Twitter feeds for the latest.

To download the app or get more information, visit our BlackBerry for Coupious page. Hope you enjoy the app, and we’d love to get your feedback!

Starting in just a few weeks, smartphone owners in Minnesota’s Twin Cities will find dozens of Coupious mobile offers from Star Tribune, a leading source of news and consumer information in the Minneapolis-St. Paul community. This news comes just in time for last-minute holiday shopping and is a great way for Coupious to ring in the new year. If you are a Twin Cities area business, we’d love for you to join us – learn more about reaching customers with mobile coupons from Coupious.

Working with Star Tribune is a perfect fit for Coupious. Why? Because coupons and newspapers go together like… coupons and newspapers! The Sunday paper has long been the #1 source for households to receive coupons, and the same still holds true today. In fact, 51% of households receive coupons from the Sunday paper, and 17% from weekday editions, according to a 2008 Scarborough Research analysis.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI region, composed of eleven counties in Minnesota and two counties in Wisconsin, is the country’s 16th-largest metropolitan area. Star Tribune has a dedicated readership of millions and a tremendous online and mobile web following. Its newspaper ranks in the top 20 largest newspapers in the nation, and the company’s website, www.StarTribune.com, is the most frequently used news and information service in the Twin Cities market. Their track record integrating new technologies is also impressive, and we are excited to be working together.

Collaborating with traditional media outlets is a key strategy to bring mobile coupons to more regions as quickly as possible. Not only does it mean saving consumers money and a sustainable model for Coupious, but it also represents a new revenue opportunity for media companies nationwide. If you represent a local, regional, or national media company, get in touch with us to learn more about the Coupious opportunity, and stay tuned for updates at www.coupious.com on why Coupious is your ideal partner.

First, we’ve signed an exclusive agreement with CST Research in Minneapolis to help develop our global distribution network. CST Research will be responsible for bringing the Coupious mobile advertising platform to large markets starting with the Minneapolis/St. Paul area (one of my favorite cities!) One of the major hurdles of operating a mobile coupon service is accumulating the amount of coupon inventory necessary to be truly useful to consumers and thus, in turn, be a compelling medium for advertisers. With the help of CST Research, we will be able to tap into existing sales channels at a speed much faster than what we could do alone, and we’re excited to work together on this front.

Secondly, after much demand, we’ve decided to make our technology available for licensing and integration. Mobile coupons present interesting challenges for marketers, particularly with management, fraud, and tracking. Companies looking into mobile coupons, either as a service provider or as part of a larger mobile marketing campaign, can reuse our technology rather than building it from scratch to help mitigate some of these challenges. Visit the new Platform Licensing page to learn more.

Since our launch last March, we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from our users and potential users. On the technical front, we’re tackling all of these issues right now – you asked for improved app performance, so our next release is going to be about 75% faster. iPod Touch users asked for a “save to phone” feature for coupon use away from Wi-Fi, so that’s under development, also (for all platforms). You wanted alphabetical results sorting, and you’re getting it.

The other question we hear on a regular basis is non-technical, “when will Coupious be available in my area?” We’re busy working on that side of things, as well. To ensure you have the best experience using the app, we need to be sure businesses are on the same page. Here is exactly what we don’t want to see happen: “Bogus cell phone coupons baffle retailers“. We partner directly with merchants so you never get turned away at the cash register, and if it does happen, we want to know about it so we can remedy the problem.

Rest assured that we are working hard to bring you more and more valuable offers, and we’re thinking bigger than just a few merchants in a few cities across the country. In addition to local expansion, we’re busy establishing partnerships with companies that already distribute thousands of coupons every year. When Coupious does reach your area, it’s only going to feature 100% legitimate coupons, and lots of them. Stay tuned…

… and many more when you download the app!

We’re anxious to add more offers, improve the app, and add the features you want. So after you give Coupious a try, send us your feedback — we’d love to know what you think.

Coupious for your phone:

We realize a lot of you don’t have iPhone or Android phones and we’re working hard to bring Coupious to other platforms. Our next slated release is a BlackBerry app for the Pearl, Curve, Bold, and Storm BlackBerry phones. Unfortunately at this time we don’t have a release date to announce. Also in the pipeline are Windows Mobile and Palm versions.

Expansion:

A lot of you have asked when Coupious will be available for businesses in your town. Don’t worry, our plans are to expand the service nationwide, bringing together a blend of national chains and local favorites. The purpose of the Purdue pilot is really to work out any kinks in the system. We’ll have more details about our national rollout in the near future. I wish I could say more, but just know that we’re as anxious as you are…

]]> http://coupious.com/blog/2009/03/coupious-is-now-live-purdue/feed/ http://coupious.com/blog/2009/03/smartphone-competition-heats-up-this-summer/ http://coupious.com/blog/2009/03/smartphone-competition-heats-up-this-summer/#comments Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:49:19 +0000 Michael http://coupious.com/blog/?p=29

Apple iPhone

June 29, 2009 marks an important date in smartphone history. Yes, I know that’s 3 ½ months in the future, but we know what’s going to happen on that day because of what happened two years prior — the release of the first iPhone. 146,000 people lined up outside to buy one that first weekend; 3.7 million people bought one in the first six months; and over 13 million have been sold since launch. And all of them came bundled with the same accessory — 2-year contracts with AT&T. That means on June 29, we’ll have hundreds of thousands of iPhone owners contract-free and millions more on a rolling basis thereafter.

I suspect that most of those nice folks aren’t going to return to their flip phones and re-learn T9 to text their friends and do business. They’re not going to give up rich Internet browsing, mobile Facebook, their favorite Twitter client, or any of the amazing apps they’ve grown accustomed to using. The result is going to be millions of people open to a new phone, and they’ll want something at least as powerful and intuitive as their iPhone. Certainly, Apple and AT&T will have a ton of loyal customers re-upping, but it also presents an unprecedented opportunity for their competitors to surpass the most envied device on the market.

T-Mobile G1

Android, Google’s open-source mobile platform, is still only available on the T-Mobile G1. By pre-iPhone standards, the G1 is an outstanding device — but it still comes in a notch below the standard-bearer. HTC, maker of the G1, has an improved G2 in the works, but when will a new manufacturer get a phone in our hands? Sony Ericsson is planning its Android debut in 2009. Long-beleaguered Motorola is also betting big on Android; let’s hope they come through with their first notable phone since the RAZR hit in 2004. The Open Handset Alliance has a great opportunity to put their full weight behind the platform, but it might be a narrow window.

Palm Pre

Palm made huge waves recently with the announcement of the Pre , running their new webOS platform. This bad boy looks like a winner and is initially a Sprint exclusive. BlackBerry made its foray into the touch-screen smartphone market with the Storm in November 2008. It was released to much fanfare and has since received mixed reviews. Microsoft delayed Windows Mobile 7 until 2010, and I’m not quite sure what to make of a company whose CEO laughed off the iPhone in 2007. Nokia is huge in the worldwide smartphone market, but not in the United States.

Where does this leave Apple? They definitely haven’t reached their full potential, and momentum is on their side – 245% growth in 2008. Still, they are limited by an exclusive partnership with AT&T in the U.S into 2010. Apple gets a huge subsidy from AT&T for the deal, about $200 per phone sold. Rumors abound that they might break that contract to partner in 2009 with Verizon, the largest U.S. mobile phone provider after merging with Alltel earlier this year. Apple has a choice to make between going after greater market share and milking the AT&T cash cow. Let’s also not assume that Apple is done innovating; iPhone 3.0 hits next week with an updated operating system and software development kit.

Clearly, these are exciting times to be in the market for a new phone! There are going to be some amazing devices coming out in 2009, and Apple has set the bar at new heights. With millions of iPhone users hitting the market again as their contracts expire, we’re anxious to see how the next generation of smartphones competes for two more years of monthly payments and app downloads.

Unfortunately, marketers delude themselves in thinking that the Coupon (with a capital C) is such treasured commodity among consumers that “surely if we push more coupons to the consumer, they will come banging down our doors with thanks and awe!” Hardly, and one need not look past the 1% coupon redemption rates for evidence of the contrary.

So how can we improve our thinking regarding mobile coupons? Well, to start out with, we can look at consumers’ attitudes towards mobile coupons. In the heap of marketing hype on the web, we managed to find one paper actually published in a peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Interactive Marketing. The 2008 paper, titled “Coupons Going Wireless: Determinants of Consumer Intentions to Redeem Mobile Coupons,” looks at consumer attitudes and predispositions to mobile coupons. The findings help elucidate the way consumers approach mobile coupons:

“… Consumers appear to be worried that the mobile way of using coupons might be complicated and cost more (in effort) than the coupon is worth to them.”

“… perceived control significantly affects consumer redemption intentions.”

“As expected, this perceived control is strongly affected by the extent to which consumers fear SMS spamming practices.”

“Consumers are extremely sensitive to such intrusions because the mobile space is considered highly personal and consumers are willing to go to great lengths to protect their personal, mobile space.”

“The results show no significant effect of social norms on intention to redeem mobile coupons.”

“Past use of coupons also does not have a significant influence on the intention to redeem.”

Disclaimer: the paper was a study through a survey in Austria, not the United States. While some of the conclusions surely overlap, it would be erroneous to say that Austrian consumers are like their American counterparts. Nevertheless, we can use the findings as a lens when viewing the mobile coupon implementations here in the U.S.

Our goal at Coupious is to approach the problem of “how can consumers save money” from a user experience perspective. While the benefits of mobile coupons are plenty for merchants and advertisers, the real value comes when we solve the consumer’s problems. That’s why we’ve chosen to make our core service a free, on-demand, non-SMS mobile application. As we roll out our pilot on the Purdue University campus in West Lafayette, Indiana we will publish our findings so that hopefully others too can craft a better consumer experience.