Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school of the Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead efforts for advocacy and community relationships Congressman Carloyn Maloney in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 where it was ... ? Read More
Placecast's ShopAlerts service that provides retail and commercial offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones, today announces the new functionality, integration with Mobile Smartphone apps.
As we wrote in the past, ShopAlerts is a white-label geofencing platform for businesses that want to deliver the GEO work offers to its customers on their mobile phones. Consumers can sign up to receive text messages in different ways — in-store, online, via text message, mobile Web sites, or on Facebook. Geofences virtual cause around physical location; When the user selected in the geofenced area, it receives a message from the business, including discount, sale, shop or other content.
With the new feature, retailers have deployed mobile applications can allow users to obtain from the nearest store, retailer or other appropriate location, location-based communication without the app being open in the same way as ShopAlerts programs work on any phone, this new feature works on any Smartphone platform.
Once a retailer integrates with ShopAlerts, clients (who are in receipt of alerts) will have location-based push notifications when they are in the area of geofenced. Retailers can also use the preferences expressed by the consumer, such as loyalty or past purchase data to improve the relevance of the message or transaction. Time of day and weather can also be taken into account for the creation of added value, and brands could also enable location-based notification when a particular product is available in a nearby store.
Placecast says that he will work directly with retailers to integrate ShopAlerts into their applications, helping them to develop a programme and a messaging strategy, choose the number and size of geofences and activate the field.
Integration with retail Smartphone applications makes a lot of sense for Placecast. With the increase in offline and online commerce Placecast gives retailers another way for consumers and offer relevant transactions and information. The aim is to bring the user in the repository, and messages sent via the Smartphone app can help do that.
Placecast is already used by a number of high-profile brands such as North face and even AT&T.
