By 2011, it is anticipated that the number of people who own a mobile device will reach 2.5 billion. Today 80% of the US population are mobile users with 98% of all mobile handsets in the US have SMS (texting) capabilities. Cell phone penetration in the U.S. has surpassed TV, Web access and Home PCs.

In 2009, the growth rate of digital coupons outpaced the typical annual growth rate of freestanding insert (FSI) coupons by more than 10-1. Digital coupons grew 170% in 2009, compared to a typical annual growth rate of 8-16% for FSI coupons. More than 20% of consumers use digital coupons with the average user being women 25 – 54, with an average household income of $97,000.

Examples of mobile coupon applications to take advantage of:

Groupon
Groupon offers daily deals on food and entertainment in major cities. Groupon offers Personalized Deals, a service that tailors each subscriber’s stream of daily deals to their personal preferences and buying history.

Each Groupon subscriber’s deals will become more relevant over time as consumers share more information with Groupon and form buying patterns. Subscribers won’t see any changes in their Groupon interface. They’ll still receive a deal per day via e-mail, available for at least 24 hours.

Personalized Deals are available in Chicago, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, New York and Seattle, and are slated to launch across Groupon’s more than 80 North American markets over the next few months.

Groupon has over 11 million subscribers in 22 countries and hundreds of cities.

MobiQpons
MobiQpons is a location-based service that brings consumers and businesses together when they are looking for one another. The application distributes offers to consumers by location, store or category and merchants can easily create coupons and deals to promote their business.

These coupons and offers are easily redeemed via barcode (retailer must have specific type of scanner) or cashiers simply enter in the redemption code provided on the offer.

MobileCoupons.com
MobileCoupons.com is another mobile coupon service that allows merchants to easily create coupons and deals to promote their business. There is no cost to merchants to create and publish the coupons at this time using MobileCoupons.com and MobileCoupons.com provides distribution of those deals. Merchants certify their coupons and set the expiration date and time.

Yowza
Yowza allows merchants to target their deals to shoppers who are near their store and looking to spend money. Push Notifications tell customers whenever merchants they like have added a new coupon.

Retailers that use Yowza’s mobile coupon service control offers, including expiration date, usage limits, and more. Advanced analytics let these retailers determine which offers are working and which aren’t.

Yowza allows merchants to run up to 3 coupons at a time. Retailers can change those coupons as often as they like. Yowza requires that all merchants that use their mobile coupon service have a physical store. Currently, web-based businesses are not eligible.

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