IChoose.com is expected to officially announce today the upcoming availability of its new Savings Alert 2.0 targeted marketing platform.
The older iChoose.com model allowed clients to serve special offers to consumers at the time of checkout. For example, if a consumer checked out at Amazon.com with the newest Sidney Sheldon book in his cart, iChoose.com could notify him via a pop-up window of a 5 percent discount at Borders.com.
Version 2.0 allows client companies to serve a greater variety of offers throughout the Web site, not just at checkout. “You can deliver an ad while a consumer's reading an article about a certain product or category or with search queries,” said Lance Cunningham, CEO of iChoose.com, Carrollton, TX. “If you're at Edmunds.com looking at cars, an incentive to test-drive a car at a local dealer will appear.”
Aside from expanding its presence within the site, iChoose.com has increased the types of offers a company can present to the consumer.
“We want to do more than just compete on price. We want to compete on service as well as bundle products,” Cunningham said. “Instead of offering 5 percent off of a DVD, they can show more than one offer.”
The company also began offering competitive intelligence for merchants that allows retailers to configure targeted offers via iChoose based on opt-in consumer research and data.
To further benefit the 350,000 consumers who have downloaded iChoose.com as well as future users, it added form filling and password storage. Consumers also can personalize shopping experiences by setting thresholds for price savings and selecting product offers based on personal interests. Additionally, they can review and delete their transaction histories at any time.
Since the company's launch in November 1999, it has yielded significant results. Consumers accept 17 percent of the offers, and 50 percent of those who accept complete the purchase. IChoose.com earns a 10 percent average commission for each purchase made using its software.
To promote its latest offering, the company has shied away from traditional marketing.
“Offline advertising is cost prohibitive,” Cunningham said. “We've tried radio, television and direct mail. We've elected to use online pay-for-performance vehicles like opt-in e-mails about downloads and newsletters. We're also bundling the product with other downloads. We don't want to pay for how many people see our product. We want to pay for how many people install our product.”
