Whether you call it group-buying, online coupons or simply daily deals, the industry popularized on an international scale by Groupon and LivingSocial is getting more and more entrants every week.
In the past few months on Silicon Prairie News, we’ve written about local services like Deal Garden out of Omaha and DSM Daily in Urbandale. Adding to that group today is a new player, TownPoints.
A joint effort from the teams at BitMethod, a Des Moines-based application development company, and Info2go, an advertising and technology company in Indianola, TownPoints is not just a new take on an old idea, according to Daniel Shipton, BitMethod’s CEO.
“We know we won’t be able to shake the ‘deal site’ moniker,” Shipton said in a recent email interview, “but TownPoints is really much more than that.”
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“Groupon and LivingSocial were hardly the first ones to try daily deals. Traditional media has been doing it for years, Groupon and LivingSocial just did it better. TownPoints is looking to further refine the model by more efficiently rewarding users for their promotion of a brand. We’re not looking to launch TownPoints to capitalize on a trend, we are launching TownPoints in spite of a trend.”
Those rewards are part of what TownPoints calls a “one-two punch” in that users take advantage of a promoted deal from a merchant on the front end and can earn additional deals with promotion of that merchant over time.
“Users earn points by buying weekly offers and performing tasks, such as following a business on Twitter or emailing the offer to their friends. You keep every point you earn, even as the weekly offer changes. You can cash in your points for rewards as small as a free ‘cup of joe’ to larger rewards such as a private party for you and your friends. It’s a win-win: users are saving money and earning cool rewards, and businesses are drawing consumers through their door and getting a promotion entirely focused on them, not TownPoints.”
Screenshot from TownPoints
Early merchants to come on board include Being There Coffee House and Over the Top Chocolate and Ice Cream.
Shipton said the rewards concept is an iteration on an identifiable element missing from the larger, more established service.
“The idea came out of a lunch conversation between myself, Neil Roberts, Steve Scheidecker and Ben Cox about Groupon’s impending arrival in Des Moines and what could be done to improve their model,” Shipton said. “The conversation focused on how little was done to actually promote the businesses involved in Groupon’s deals. They’ve effectively commoditized the service industry and while that’s great for their bottom line, it’s not helping small businesses over the long run.”
He further explained how TownPoints is executing on the missing element: “When a business sets up their TownPoints campaign, we are basically giving them a highlighter and asking them ‘What’s important that you want people to know about?’ That’s how we configure the ‘earnables’ – how you get points – and the ‘rewards’ –what you can redeem points for. If a business really wants to drive Likes on Facebook, we can focus on that. If they want everyone to know about their new brunch menu, we could make a private brunch-for-two one of the rewards to draw attention to it. We’re committed to making TownPoints a true marketing platform for small businesses. If all we do is sell coupons, we’re not doing our job.”
Shipton said TownPoints is starting in Des Moines, but they plan to roll out nationwide within the year. Potential users in more than 30 cities around the Midwest and California can register their interest at townpoints.com/beta/towns.
Additionally, the two companies involved are collaborating on operations through the service’s development, but Shipton said they’re currently working on hiring staff dedicated to the project.
