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Douglas MacMillan is one of the Ninja Hamsters at ADOTAS aka an intern. He previously spent several months working as a dutiful intern under the dictatorship of Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, only to be set free by our own Kiran. He does not get Jaime skim lattes in the morning.

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RSS Breathes New Life into Coupons

Written on
April 19th 2006
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by Douglas MacMillan  |
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Put away your scissors and stacks of newspapers. Coupons have come to the Internet, and with the help of RSS technology, they are attracting thrifty shoppers to local and national businesses like never before.

Last year, 323 billion print coupons were distributed in the U.S. American shoppers used only 4.5 billion of these coupons, throwing away a potential savings of $315 billion dollars. As more and more consumers abandon print media, a gap in the demand for the age-old marketing model of coupons widens. Advertisers moving to the online space tend to reject the idea of coupons altogether, precisely because they lose their “clip and save” practicality and summon up the archaic image of dotted lines and newsprint.

That is, until now. In the past few months, RSS feeds have begun to revive advertiser and consumer interest in coupons. Online consumers are attracted by the ability to receive instant product updates tailored to their specific areas of interest and geographical location. Online businesses are hypnotically drawn to the RSS model, which relies entirely on their customers opting in to promotions themselves, and supplies their campaign with instant feedback and consumer statistics.

Internet coupon sites such as Coupons.com and MonkeyBargains.com have existed for several years, aggregating promotional deals offered by various advertisers throughout the web into a single database. When a consumer clicks on a particular item on these sites, they are usually taken directly to the manufacturer or retailer, who gives the coupon publisher a percentage of any sales they provide.

Such sites have proven moderately successful, but generally lacked the accessibility they need to reach an audience beyond routine bargain hunters and habitual shoppers. When RSS came under the crosshairs of many different online industries last year, and began to be used to serve many different purposes, coupon sites saw an inroad to the general public.

When affiliate coupon sites discovered the simplicity and low cost (essentially nothing) of operating an RSS feed, implementing them into their site was a no-brainer. MonkeyBargains made this move in August of last year, and has benefited from a tremendous boost to their traffic ever since. “Even though the RSS feeds have taken us practically no time to develop or maintain, they’ve generated approximately 25,000 extra page impressions for us each month,” Melissa Kendall, operator of MonkeyBargains told ADOTAS.

After all, for a site which is constantly changing, there is simply no better exposure than to be in the RSS sidebar of a user’s browser window.



Reader Comments.

Great Article. We implemented Over 30 Coupon RSS Feeds for the different categories in February. It was the best low cost feature with the highest return ever.

Customers also learn slowly but steady to appreciate the offers delivered via RSS too.

Some people still trust email more than a RSS Feed, but that is no problem at all, because you can syndicate the RSS Feeds and Send them out via Email (check out the Free Email/RSS Aggregator service Feedblitz).

Posted by Carsten Cumbrowski | 11:02 pm on April 26, 2006.

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