We’ve already talked about Placecast and their ShopAlerts service in the past. At that point their offering was targeted toward big companies and now they’re going to the small and medium sized businesses with a new product called ShopAlerts Self-Serve. As you can imagine that “Self-Serve” part means interested businesses will be creating their own offerings using a web-based interface. However, Placecast doesn’t target businesses directly — rather their solution is made for bigger companies which could offer such a service to their clients. Think of it as a real-time mobile marketing solution for the Groupons, Yellow Pages and American Expresses of the world, and all of the SMBs they work with.
To that end, ShopAlerts Self-Serve delivers a complete, white-label geofencing solution for businesses that want to deliver geo-triggered offers to their customers on their mobile phones. 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 like a discount, notice of a sale, directions to a store or other content.
The keyword here is “opt-in” otherwise we would be scared to walk nearby any store, afraid someone could spam us… Anyway, you can see how ShopAlerts Self-Serve works from a short video below. Enjoy!