Valpak Extends to Windows Phone 7
Related to the previous post on battles waging over smartphone OS market share, coupon heavyweight Valpak announced it’s joining the Windows Phone ecosystem with a dedicated native app.
The free app, available now in the Windows Phone Marketplace, will offer 37,000 local offers for restaurants, auto care, entertainment, professional services, and home and garden. It will also come with social sharing tools and tie-ins to social graphs like Facebook.
The rest of the features spotlighted in the press release include:
— Instant results based on your current location
— Displays locations found on a dynamic map
— Sorts the coupons by distance
— Provides complete business and coupon details including location, phone, etc.
— Filter coupons by selected business categories
— Tracks your location as you move about
— Easy to use — just show your phone screen to the cashier
— Favorite your businesses and their coupons for easy retrieval
— City and ZIP code-based coupon searches (US and Canada)
— New coupons added daily
— Simple, intuitive and easy to use
Valpak already has an iPhone app, as well as Android, Palm and BlackBerry, all released within the past year. When I spoke with Valpak’s Jim Buckley about a year ago, he expressed a “platform agnostic” attitude to not only be available across platforms but also on partners’ apps.
Expect to see Valpak better leverage its massive base of coupons and advertiser relationships into greater mobile distribution through many channels. This will complete a multi-pronged approach across mobile, online and of course its flagship direct mail operation.
