Tracking Offers Across Multiple Channels

• US 20150088607A1
• Filed: 09/18/2014
• Published: 03/26/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Retailmenot Incorporated (J2 Global, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Retailmenot Incorporated (J2 Global, Inc.)
• Inventors: Showers, Brian Keith, Georgoff, Michael Thomas, Song, Jimmy Jaejoon, Pile, John Thomas, Dapremont, Edgar Mitchell
• Granted Patent: US 9,978,078 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7.31
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0202 Market predictions or forecasting for commercial activities
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0211 Determining the effectiveness of discounts or incentives
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0246 Traffic
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0257 User requested
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0267 Wireless devices

Abstract

Provided is a process, including: obtaining a coupon issued by a merchant, the coupon being redeemable both on-line, at the merchant'"'"'s website, and in-store, at a physical location of the merchant; sending the coupon to publishers for presentation to consumers by the publishers on user devices of the consumers; and receiving indications from the user devices of the consumers that the consumers interacted with the coupon, the indications indicating a consumer selection of an in-store redemption option or an on-line redemption option.

Claims

1. An affiliate-network system configured to act as an intermediary between merchants issuing coupons or other offers and publishers promoting the offers to consumers, the affiliate-network system being configured to distribute and track usage of both on-line offers and in-store offers, the system comprising:

one or more processors;

memory storing instructions that when executed by one or more of the one or more processors effectuate operations comprising;

obtaining a coupon issued by a merchant, the coupon being redeemable both on-line, at the merchant'"'"'s website, and in-store, at a physical location of the merchant;

sending the coupon to publishers for presentation to consumers by the publishers on user devices of the consumers;

receiving indications from the user devices of the consumers that the consumers interacted with the coupon, the indications indicating a consumer selection of an in-store redemption option or an on-line redemption option;

after an indication that a given consumer selected an in-store redemption option, effectuating operations comprising;

sending the given consumer in-store redemption data documenting that the given consumer is in possession of the coupon for presentation to the merchant at a physical location of the merchant, the data identifying a first publisher that presented the coupon to the given consumer to credit first publisher;

receiving transaction data from the merchant indicating that the given consumer redeemed the coupon;

determining compensation for the first publisher based on the transaction data; and

after an indication that another given consumer selected an on-line redemption option, effectuating operations comprising;

storing on-line redemption data in memory documenting that the other given consumer selected the coupon and identifying a second publisher that presented the coupon to the other given consumer to credit the publisher; and

instructing the user device of the other given consumer to request content from the merchant'"'"'s website;

obtaining the on-line redemption data stored in memory upon the other given consumer redeeming the coupon; and

determining compensation for the second publisher based on the obtained on-line redemption data.

2. The affiliate-network system of claim 1, comprising:

after sending the coupon to publishers, obtaining a request from a user device of a consumer who selected the coupon upon presentation by a given publisher, the request identifying the given publisher, the coupon, and indicating display capabilities of the user device;

preparing a presentation of the coupon based on the display capabilities, the coupon, and the given publisher by performing operations comprising;

retrieving an coupon presentation template corresponding to the display capabilities from memory;

retrieving from memory publisher-specific content to be added to the retrieved template; and

retrieving from memory redemption options of the coupon to be added to the retrieved template, the redemption options indicating that the coupon is redeemable in-store and on-line; and

sending to the user device instructions to display the coupon according to the retrieved template, publisher-specific content, and redemption options in a user interface by which the consumer selects on-line redemption or in-store redemption.

3. The affiliate-network system of claim 2, wherein:

sending the coupon to the given publisher comprises sending a publisher-and-coupon specific uniform resource identifier (URI) of the coupon and the publisher;

the request from a user device of a consumer who selected the coupon comprises user agent information indicative of display capabilities;

retrieving publisher-specific content comprises retrieving images of the given publisher'"'"'s brand and colors selected by the given publisher; and

the in-store redemption option includes an option to print the coupon, a option to send a network address of a presentation of the coupon via text message, and an option to email a network address of a presentation of the coupon.

4. The affiliate-network system of claim 1, wherein receiving indications from the user devices of the consumers that the consumers interacted with the coupon comprises:

after sending a first presentation of the coupon to a first user device of a consumer, receiving a request from the consumer to send information about the coupon to another user device or account via short-message-service (SMS) text message, or email, or a card-linked offer application program interface.

5. The affiliate-network system of claim 1, wherein:

sending the coupon is associated a geographic area in which the coupon is redeemable, the geographic area being specified by the merchant; and

sending the coupon to publishers comprises;

receiving a request from a publisher for coupons redeemable within a queried geographic area;

determining that geographic area associated with the coupon is at least partially within the queried geographic area; and

in response to the determination, sending the coupon to the publisher from which the request was received.

6. The affiliate-network system of claim 1, comprising determining compensation for the same publisher based on both in-store usage of the coupon and on-line usage of the coupon.

7. A method, comprising:

obtaining a plurality of offers from merchants, each offer being redeemable on-line and in-store;

sending information about the offers to a plurality of publishers, each publisher informing consumers of the offers on-line;

tracking, with one or more processors, usage of the offers by consumers; and

allocating credit for usage of the offers by consumers to the publishers based on the tracking; and

sending information about the allocation of credit to merchants and publishers.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein sending information about the offers to a plurality of publishers comprises:

for each publisher and for each offer, sending the respective publisher information specifying a respective uniform resource identifier (URI) of the respective offer, such that each publisher has a different, publisher-specific URI for each offer to be included in content provided by the respective publisher to consumers.

9. The method of claim 8,

receiving a request for content identified by a given publisher-specific URI for a given offer from a user device of a consumer that received the given URI from the given publisher;

and

sending the content to the user device of the consumer that requested the content.

10. The method of claim 9, comprising sending the content to a user device of a consumer that requested the content with steps comprising:

determining a version of the content based on the identity of the publisher specified by the publisher-specific URI.

11. The method of claim 9, comprising:

in response to the request for content identified by the given publisher-specific URI, tracking that the given publisher presented the corresponding offer to a consumer.

12. The method of claim 7, comprising sending content to a user device of a consumer that requested content describing the offer with steps comprising:

obtaining information about the type of user device of the consumer the requested the content; and

determining a version of the content based on the type of user device.

13. The method of claim 7, comprising sending content to a user device of a consumer that requested content describing the offer, wherein the content includes a user-interface by which a consumer interacts with an offer, the user-interface including interaction options to navigate to a website of the corresponding merchant and to send the offer to another device or account of the consumer for in-store usage of the offer.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein:

tracking usage of the offers by consumers comprises tracking user interactions requesting that the offer be sent to another device or account; and

allocating credit for usage of the offers comprises attributing credit for the tracked user interactions to a publisher that provided a URI by which the content was requested by the user device of the consumer.

15. The method of claim 13, comprising:

receiving a request to send the offer to another device, the other device being a mobile phone, and the request specifying a cell phone number of the other device; and

sending a link to, or other information about, the offer via text message with the cell phone number.

16. The method of claim 13, comprising:

receiving a request to send the offer to an email address; and

sending a link to, or other information about, the offer via email to the email address.

17. The method of claim 13, comprising

receiving a request to send the offer to a card-linked offer account;

and

sending a request to load the offer to the card-lined offer account.

18. The method of claim 13, comprising:

receiving a request to send the offer to an electronic wallet application on a mobile phone; and

sending a request to load the offer to the electronic wallet application.

19. The method of claim 13, comprising:

receiving data indicative of consumer demand for goods or services; and

automatically adjusting terms of one of the offers based on the data indicative of consumer demand.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the data indicative of consumer demand includes one or more of the following:

a weather forecast, and aggregated feedback of both on-line usage and in-store usage of the one of the offers.

21. The method of claim 7, wherein sending information about the offers to a plurality of publishers comprises:

receiving a request from a given publisher for offers redeemable in a geographic area specified by the request;

determining which offers are designated as being redeemable in the geographic area;

sending responsive offers to the given publisher.

22. A tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable medium storing instructions that when executed by a data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to effectuate operations comprising:

obtaining a plurality of offers from merchants, each offer being redeemable on-line and in-store;

sending information about the offers to a plurality of publishers, each publisher informing consumers of the offers on-line;

tracking, with one or more processors, usage of the offers by consumers; and

allocating credit for usage of the offers by consumers to the publishers based on the tracking; and

sending information about the allocation of credit to merchants and publishers.