Riding Groupon’s huge success in the daily deal space, numerous companies have come out of the woodwork to apply the social coupon model to mobile, taking advantage of smartphone technologies like GPS and push notification to tailor and target marketing campaigns. Ping4 is no exception, but it is utilizing those technologies in exceptional ways. It is using GPS location to geo-fence businesses offering such deals, allowing it to actively push what it calls “the deal of the moment” to customers.
Many of the deal services offer location-based service in some for another. For instance Groupon’s Now service can search out a smartphones immediate in the vicinity of timely deals available. But rather than have customers use location-based services actively, Ping4 is reversing the flow of the deal. Ping4 users passing within a preset radius of a business offering a deal will trigger notification to their phones alerting them of the deal. Rather than push a daily general deal out to its customers or rely on customers to search out nearby deals, Ping4 pushes only the deals a customer can immediately take advantage of.
Getting constantly pinged with a coupon every time you drive by a mall or shopping center would get pretty annoying, but Ping4 seems to have a fairly sophisticated settings menu that allows customers to customize what kinds of deals they’re offered. Merchants who sign up to the Ping4 network can also customize their offering. Coffee shops, for instance, could send out their coupons only after the morning latte rush, while a café might offer an early lunch promotion. Ping4 also offers a setting called Driver’s Advantage, which sends an audio file via MMS to the phone that reads out the details of the deal as the customer drives.
The mobile coupon craze may burn itself out any month now, as consumers and businesses become inundated with the different deals and services out there. But Ping4 may be able to put its geo-notification technology to other uses. According to the company it’s already exploring how it can be used in public safety and social gaming.
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