Dollar-A-Day Coupon Service to Launch

The CellThis Co. of Marion, Ill., is launching a new coupon distribution service priced far less than most other coupon services. Retailers and service providers will be able to offer a different coupon every day for a flat fee of $30 per month.

The new service, which is currently in beta testing and is due to roll out fully in a few weeks, will allow retailers to automatically create, publish, and upload coupons to the CellThis coupon Web site and change their coupons daily. CellThis will also offer optional services that allow merchants to simultaneously advertise multiple products or services via separate Web pages and telephone extensions.

"The merchant will be able to hit a button and generate a coupon that is uploaded to our servers and then sent to customers who access our site," says Bob Henderson, CEO of CellThis.

Some of the mobile marketing/lead-generation features included in the monthly fee include the following:

•  the ability to track phone calls received, with caller ID data attached, and then automatically send text messages in response to customer calls;
•  the ability to receive instant notification of customer inquiries;
• built-in lead tracking and reporting;
• a hosted Web site;
• follow me phone numbers; and
• voicemail.

"The merchant can track every product because he gets an instant notification of every call, every click, every lead," Henderson says.

Another unique feature of the service is the ability for the merchant to type product descriptions and upload them to the site. Those descriptions are then converted from text to speech using a TTS engine from Cepstral, and the audio file is connected to a special telephone extension created for each participating product. When a customer dials that extension, he can hear an audio file that tells him about the product or service being offered. A new Web site and extension can be created for every product offered.

Everything related to the coupon service is stored on CellThis’ dedicated, fully managed server and backed up in the cloud, Henderson says.

CellThis' unique, patent-pending marketing method combines voice, text, phone, and the Internet to provide merchants an affordable, cost-effective, results-driven way to distribute coupons and to market their goods and services. The customer can receive coupons by phone, email, or via the Web.

Recognizing that most businesses cannot afford coupon services that often charge fees equal to half of the price of the coupon, Henderson calls his company's service "a lead-generation, mobile marketing system, not just a couponing service, that’s all done for just a dollar a day."

Henderson says the new service is geared primarily toward small to midsized merchants, or, as he calls them, "the average, mom-and-pop stores that don't have huge product assortments." But, he says it could handle large accounts as well.

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