Location Based Coupons- How to Make them Better

Interesting piece on how to make location based coupons and advertising work better. Love this space. More via Mobileinc and excerpt below:

Looking towards the future, mobile coupons need seamless integration into the phone operating system. Especially with technologies like NFC coming into the mix. No downloads and no crap, just comes as standard like your SMS inbox. Pushing adverts is still the right solution because location based ‘pull’ is unrealistic.

What if you had another inbox for coupons that used your data connection? Always running in the background, it’s own entity on your phone, and constantly updated with proper coupon management.

When a coupon comes in you get a notification on your homescreen which contains the companies logo and offer info, then fades after a few seconds and then goes into your coupon wallet. You can sort coupons by expiry date and distance as well as get alerts if one is about to expire. You’ll even be able to control the way alerts sound and act.

If you take Tweetdeck on the PC/Mac as a example. The way it deals with large amounts of constantly updated information could provide some great learning’s for how coupon wallets should work for the average person who walks past dozens of shops every day.

Large detailed notifications provide enough information at a glance for you to decide to find out more info, it’s unobtrusive and has enough options to customise alerts so it doesn’t annoy you.