Mobile Couponing.

Below you can read the English version of the interview of Cupoco with Internet World Business. We got such great feedback, so we decided to translate the German version into English:

Cupoco is starting a mobile couponing platform today, which will attract smartphone users especially. internetworld.de spoke with Till Issler, managing director of the German-Estonian startup GeoVoucher, about the app, the chances of couponing and the thrill of mobile.

Can you briefly explain what Cupoco is about?

Till Issler: Cupoco is a coupon platform and provides attractive local deals to the mobile phone of the user. The offers – so-called Cupocos – ranging from limited discounts, 2-for-1 offers to vouchers and group offers. Since Cupoco iw available via the mobile phone, you have it with you all the time and you are always up to date.

How does the service work?

Issler: I give you an example: A young woman is in town and wants to go there to buy shoes. She starts Cupoco on her cell phone and selects the category of shoes. The Cupoco-App locates her and shows her all the available Cupocos in her environment. Then she can choose a suitable offer and go to the respective shop. When she is paying she shows the coupon on the phone and saves money.

How is the location detection?

Issler: Just as the user wants: automatic via GPS and cell information of the network operator or the user chooses his current position.

How can companies use your platform?

Issler: A contractor registered with us. Our team verifies him and unlocks the Cupoco Wizard within 48 hours. With the wizard, he can then create in a few minutes a own mobile campaign. With it he can create, for example, multilingual coupons with pictures and any discounts and also the conditions can be freely defined. A onces created coupon can then be saved as a template in our system and be used as a template for new campaigns.

How can you manage your mobile campaigns?

Issler: Basically, it works just as with a campaign management tools in online marketing. The employer or agency can use it to create and manage mobile campaigns. With a dashboard, you can track the success of the campaign in real time. There you can see which Cupocos has been redeemed already.

Is the benefit for companies especially in getting new customers?

Issler: Firstly, yes. On the other, you can avoid peakes with specific activites. An example: everybody want to change back to summer tires. The workshops have problem that they have too many customers at once. If they now offer a coupon that the customer gets a discount between 10 and 12 clock, they can straighten their customer requests.

You find lots of online coupon portals today. Is the business model out of date already?

Issler: Most online coupon portals are offering only online coupons. Only a few of them have coupons of local stores. But this is the point where it gets interesting in my view. Especially with mobile coupons we are pioneers in Germany. In the U.S. it is already a mega-hype.

Can the model be transferred to the German market?

Issler: The Americans are definitly more used to use coupons than the Germans. There is already coupons in the newspapers for longer times. They were also “trained” for some time. We are convinced that mobile coupons are changing the voucher culture in Germany positive.

What is the business model of Cupoco?

Issler: At the moment we focus to establish Cupoco as a service. For the user Cupoco is and will be free. The operator may use Cupoco free during a testing period and get to know it without any risk. Since the mobile coupon market is still at the beginning, we have not decided on a “when” and “how much” for mobile advertisement yet. Now it is time to make the next steps with our business partners and users together an create an exciting product that gives both sides a clear added value. We are looking forward to it.

Thanks a lot to David Henning from Internet World Business for this interview!