We love getting word of Boston area companies partnering to drive innovation. Today, WHERE and Constant Contact announced an exciting partnership that will enable small merchants to drive more local commerce.
The partnership will allow merchants with Constant Contact accounts to create daily deals through WHERE’s merchant services portal. These deals will then be distributed over the WHERE app — and to its 50 million mobile consumers — through location-based dedicated deals section and mobile advertising. Merchants will concurrently be able to market the deals to their currently subscribed customers through Constant Contact’s email messaging platform. WHERE, with help from recently acquired local commerce provider LocalGinger, will also provide Constant Contact merchants the opportunity to engage in group-buying at a localized level.
WHERE’s location-based advertising and deal aggregation allows local merchants to capitalize on the holy grail of incremental sales — new sales a merchant wouldn’t otherwise realize. WHERE app users see what deals are available around them and can determine where to shop before even entering a store. With many large merchants with scale like Walmart testing the waters in reaching consumers this way, the Constant Contact partnership provides an entry-point for small businesses to also engage in and reap the rewards of LBS in a cost-effectively and easy-to-understand way.
The WHERE and Constant Contact partnership will also include a “Join My Mailing List” (JMML) feature, whereby WHERE merchants can add a button to their listings that allow users to sign up for newsletters and other mailing list communications that will give them real-time updates on deals and marketing communications.
Constant Contact, who realeased a mobile app Monday that enables customers to create email messaging right from their iPhones, commented, “This is good news for small businesses because it means more opportunities to communicate with their customers wherever and whenever it suits them. Teaming up for the first time with a wireless offering is another way we are helping to make social media marketing and email marketing simple for small businesses.”
According to the companies, the offering will be available through WHERE’s merchant services portal before the end of this year – and hopefully in time for holiday campaigns.
