It’s safe to say that if you’re reading this story, at some time, you’ve seen an online advertisement.
In fact, it may have been so compelling that it prompted you to make a purchase at the advertiser’s physical location. Obviously, that’s a win for the business, but it’s not very likely that the business has any idea exactly which customers walked through their doors because of the ad.
OffersBy.Me is helping to change that.
“OffersBy.Me solves the online-to-offline redemption loop for small businesses,” says its founder and CEO Adam Goldberg. “It allows them to market their business on the internet and on mobile phones. Then, when the consumer decides to buy at the physical store, we are able to track the online offer that brought the customer to their business.”
OffersBy.Me helps consumers broadcast their intent to the marketplace by telling the website what they want to do and how much they are willing to spend.
For example, someone can tell the site, “I am offering to spend $50 on Italian food.” OffersBy.Me then sends them offers from local Italian restaurants where they can do just that− the same day.
“Because the consumer tells us what they want, we don’t have to send them random deals in the hopes they’ll like what we have to offer,” Goldberg says, which differentiates OffersBy.Me from daily deal sites like Groupon.
“The problem with the daily deal concept is that rarely, if ever, are deals for things the consumer wants,” he says.
The average Groupon customer buys two deals per year, but on average they receive five offers per day and more than 1,800 deals per year, he says.
“If you do the math, the redemption rate is less than .001 percent,” he continues. “That’s proof that they’re not relevant.”
One of the biggest challenges Goldberg has faced while working to get OffersBy.Me off the ground is convincing business owners who were burned by Groupon or Living Social that OffersBy.Me is not the same thing.
Daily deal companies force businesses to discount their product 50 percent and they take 50 percent of the revenue, leaving the business with 25 percent of what they would normally make, he says. Plus, consumers buy the deals from the daily deal company, not the business offering the deal. Then, the business gets their share in three installments over 90 days or more.
OffersBy.Me lets businesses decide what they want to offer and when. For example, a business can offer a 20 percent discount on Mondays to customers willing to spend $75 or more, but only offer the same discount on Fridays (when they’re likely to be busier) to those willing to spend $150.
At the moment, OffersBy.Me does not charge businesses that use it.
“Down the road, our pricing structure will be much more business friendly than the 50 percent the daily deal companies take today,” Goldberg says.
Additionally, consumers do not buy offers from OffersBy.Me; they present the offer to the business using their smart phone.
OffersBy.Me allows a business to stop running an offer.
“This makes sure no business goes will go out of business because they have too many offers,” he says.
There are currently more than 225 businesses in Columbus making offers on OffersBy.Me.
To learn more about OffersBy.Me, visit OffersBy.Me.
