The success of the deals space and emergence of big data has opened the door to transactional marketing that drives new revenue for businesses. Key revenue streams are emerging such as monthly/annual fees, commissions for loyalty business, bounties for new customers and mark-ups on transactional fees. Major tech players and VCs …

The opening day of BIA/Kelsey’s SMB Digital Marketing conference provided a stark reminder of the persistent challenges in reaching local businesses. Groupon VP of Global Merchant Marketing Sanjay Gupta offered a different view – a reality check of the assumed reality checks. Call it the “what SMBs think vs. what they do” dynamic. As just one …

MasterCard has dived feet first into the card linked loyalty battles with the acquisition of Truaxis. The company should prove to be an anchor for MasterCard Offers Services, where it has partnered with Local Offer Network and others.
Formerly known as BillShrink, a lowest rate guide which developed a customer base of 1.6 …

In the loyalty space, we’re closely watching how major tech players are vertically integrating loyalty offerings into their SMB product suite. Google, Facebook and Amazon each have acquired loyalty startups and will likely make them part of their SMB suite. But how about media companies, which can add the power of their promotional reach?
Today, …

A big milestone was reached last week when Bank of America launched its BankAmericaDeals loyalty and rewards product to many of its 59 million customers. The launch of the product, a partnership with Cardlytics, suggests a coming of age for the new card-linked loyalty space. Indeed, more than 20 card-linked companies are vying …

In a reflection of the industry’s ongoing interest in developing SMB promotional and loyalty services, Yodle founder Nate Stevens’ venture fund announced last week that it is putting $1.7 Million into Punchey, a new mobile-oriented payments and promotions platform.
The 12 person, Boston-based firm was founded in late 2011 and is focused on SMB “upstream marketing …

A major feature of the current crop of loyalty and rewards programs is that they link to credit card or debit card accounts. This gives them the ability to process transactions and provide deeper analytics.
But a number of players are skipping this step. The list includes developed players such as Closely, Plink, Shopkick, Cardagin, Spreebird …

The card-linked loyalty and rewards space is seen by a lot of the smart money as the next Groupon. Today, we saw new money being poured into FiveStars ($13.9 Million), LevelUp ($9 Million) and LocalBonus ($900,000). The companies have now raised $16 million, $21 Million and $1.4 Million respectively — about half the $78 Million …

We’ve calculated that more than $287 Million has been invested in more than 20 transaction marketing players. The investment reflects the inherent opportunities in transaction marketing, which is a synergistic mash of loyalty programs, offers, reputation management and the “big data” sets that can analyze behavior and target specific customers.
A lot of progress has …

What happened to the theory that Facebook Credits would become a universal virtual currency, competing against the likes of PayPal and others? Facebook very quietly closed the program down a few weeks ago, reverting to a more standard model that enabled spending and credits to be made with local currencies around the world (similar to …

As major players such as Google, Groupon, LevelUp and Square position themselves as next generation payment processors, the role of banks and other financial institutions in the emerging payment is a little unsettled.
The financial institutions are potential giants here – not just for payments, but as partners for targeted promotions. They have built-in customer and merchant …

Amazon has reportedly purchased UpNext, the five-year-old, 3-D mapping and directory service that now provides “clickable building”-oriented maps for more than 50 cities, including 23 that are enhanced in depth. The service has experimented with a number of features, including transportation guides, events, happy hour deals, etc. While the purchase price hasn’t been reported, UpNext …

“Mobile is a big part of our business,” said Mihir Shah, Groupon’s VP-Mobile, in an interview this afternoon with BIA/Kelsey analyst Peter Krasilovsky at the Mobile Local Media event in San Francisco.
Shah said that 30 percent of Groupon’s transactions in April occurred on mobile devices. That figure was 25 percent last December.
Mobile customers spend 50 …

Cox Target Media announced its acquisition of Savings.com, an online coupon website, and its British-based sister site, Savoo.co.uk today. Terms of the deal are undisclosed. Cox Target Media also owns and distributes Valpak coupons. Its print coupons from national and local retailers are mailed to more than 44 million homes a month. Savings.com gives online …

We’ve been thinking for a long time about having a mobile-centric event that wouldn’t get lost in all the converging agendas of our mega Interactive Local Media conferences. That’s what we’ll do June 27 at our Mobile Local Media event in San Francisco. It should be a totally new discussion and perhaps a turning point …

Amazon doesn’t usually speak at industry gatherings. But that was before it needed to reach out to the advertising community to sell display ads on its sites, ads on Kindle, national and local offers on Kindle, and extend its promotional reach on third party sites. Hence a luncheon keynote today from Seth Dallaire, VP of …

Not to be cynical about it, but charity has always been great for business. “Charitable marketing,” or “altruistic marketing,” has been embraced by many of the leading brands, from McDonald’s and Ben & Jerry’s to the National Football League.
It works even better at the local community level. More and more of our local marketplace companies …

Constant Contact has made a really big bet on presence management with the acquisition today of SinglePlatform, a provider of a one-stop “write once, read everywhere” presence management network that provides parsed searching capabilities and services for 600,000 SMBs, including 10,000 paying customers. The service also has valuable partnerships with a growing roster of major …

Mobile local promotion and wallet services that marry offers to linked credit card accounts and track usage are proliferating. A partial roster of players includes Plum Rewards, MyFavEats, RewardLoop, AirPay and PunchCard. They’re all fighting for a share of smartphone users in a given community.
Why not just focus on college towns, which have a much …

Loyalty and engagement programs are now flooding the local ecosystem. They see themselves as the next step up from daily deals. At the same time, they hope to be more effective than “buy 10 get one free punch cards,” according to execs from LevelUp, Swipely and Closely who were among those who spoke at …