MOBILE-OFFER CREATION
First Claim
1. ) A method of issuing single-use digital coupons by creating coupons tied to a merchant employee'"'"'s current geographic location using a cell phone of the merchant employee such that a limited number of the coupons are available for consumers to reserve and consumers who reserve the coupons are alerted to the coupons on cell phones of those consumers in response to those consumers'"'"' cell phones detecting arrival at the geographic location, the method comprising:
- presenting, with an offer-creating merchant mobile device, one or more coupon-creation interfaces configured to obtain coupon parameters specifying a coupon, the coupon parameters including an identifier of a merchant issuing the coupon, a title of the coupon, a description of a discount available to those who redeem the coupon with the merchant, an expiration time of the coupon, and an amount of instances of the coupon to be issued;
receiving the coupon parameters from a merchant user via the one or more coupon-creating interfaces with the offer-creating merchant mobile device;
obtaining a geographic location of the merchant with the offer-creating merchant mobile device;
sending, to a remote offers engine, with one or more wireless transmissions of the offer-creating merchant mobile device, the coupon parameters and the geographic location, wherein the offers engine is configured to distribute coupons from a plurality of merchants to a plurality of consumers over the Internet;
associating the coupon parameters and the geographic location with a coupon identifier in a coupon record stored in memory accessible to the offers engine;
receiving, at the offers engine, from a consumer'"'"'s computing device, via the Internet, a request for a reserving interface to reserve an instance of the coupon;
determining, with the offers engine, that the specified amount of instances of the coupon to be issued is greater than an amount of instances of the coupon that have been reserved;
sending, from the offers engine, to the consumer'"'"'s computing device, one or more reserving interfaces, wherein the one or more reserving interfaces display at least some of the coupon parameters and present a reserving input by which a consumer reserves an instance of the coupon;
receiving, from the consumer'"'"'s computing device, a request to reserve an instance of the coupon after the consumer engages with the reserving input;
after receiving the request to reserve the instance of the coupon and determining that the specified amount of instances of the coupon to be issued is greater than an amount of instances of the coupon that have been reserved, adjusting, with the offers engine, a reserved-amount value indicative of an amount of instances of the coupon that have been reserved;
sending the consumer'"'"'s mobile device a geofence containing the geographic location and instructions to alert the consumer after the mobile device is within the geofence;
sending the consumer'"'"'s mobile device redemption information that, when conveyed to the merchant and by the merchant to the offers engine, causes the offers engine to validate that the consumer reserved an instance of the coupon.
9 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Provided is a process for managing offers includes: presenting, on a mobile device, offer-creation interfaces by which a merchant specifies an offer, the offer parameters including data indicative of an amount of instances of the offer to be reserved by consumers; obtaining, with the mobile device, the offer parameters; obtaining, with the mobile device, based on wireless signals received by the mobile device indicative of location of the mobile device, a geographic location where consumers are to be alerted to the offer; and sending a request to an affiliate network to distribute the offer to a plurality of publishers within the affiliate network and limit use of the offer according to the specified amount of instances of the offer to be reserved by consumers, wherein the publishers each send a plurality of offers to consumers and wherein the affiliate network tracks redemptions of the offers with merchants.
-
Citations
27 Claims
-
1. ) A method of issuing single-use digital coupons by creating coupons tied to a merchant employee'"'"'s current geographic location using a cell phone of the merchant employee such that a limited number of the coupons are available for consumers to reserve and consumers who reserve the coupons are alerted to the coupons on cell phones of those consumers in response to those consumers'"'"' cell phones detecting arrival at the geographic location, the method comprising:
-
presenting, with an offer-creating merchant mobile device, one or more coupon-creation interfaces configured to obtain coupon parameters specifying a coupon, the coupon parameters including an identifier of a merchant issuing the coupon, a title of the coupon, a description of a discount available to those who redeem the coupon with the merchant, an expiration time of the coupon, and an amount of instances of the coupon to be issued; receiving the coupon parameters from a merchant user via the one or more coupon-creating interfaces with the offer-creating merchant mobile device; obtaining a geographic location of the merchant with the offer-creating merchant mobile device; sending, to a remote offers engine, with one or more wireless transmissions of the offer-creating merchant mobile device, the coupon parameters and the geographic location, wherein the offers engine is configured to distribute coupons from a plurality of merchants to a plurality of consumers over the Internet; associating the coupon parameters and the geographic location with a coupon identifier in a coupon record stored in memory accessible to the offers engine; receiving, at the offers engine, from a consumer'"'"'s computing device, via the Internet, a request for a reserving interface to reserve an instance of the coupon; determining, with the offers engine, that the specified amount of instances of the coupon to be issued is greater than an amount of instances of the coupon that have been reserved; sending, from the offers engine, to the consumer'"'"'s computing device, one or more reserving interfaces, wherein the one or more reserving interfaces display at least some of the coupon parameters and present a reserving input by which a consumer reserves an instance of the coupon; receiving, from the consumer'"'"'s computing device, a request to reserve an instance of the coupon after the consumer engages with the reserving input; after receiving the request to reserve the instance of the coupon and determining that the specified amount of instances of the coupon to be issued is greater than an amount of instances of the coupon that have been reserved, adjusting, with the offers engine, a reserved-amount value indicative of an amount of instances of the coupon that have been reserved; sending the consumer'"'"'s mobile device a geofence containing the geographic location and instructions to alert the consumer after the mobile device is within the geofence; sending the consumer'"'"'s mobile device redemption information that, when conveyed to the merchant and by the merchant to the offers engine, causes the offers engine to validate that the consumer reserved an instance of the coupon. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8)
-
-
4. ) The method of claim 4, comprising:
-
receiving, at the offers engine, from the offer-redeeming merchant mobile device, the identifier unique to the reserved coupon instance; and after receiving the identifier, sending confirmation that the reserved coupon instance is valid to the offer-redeeming merchant mobile device, wherein the confirmation includes a confirmation code to which point-of-sale system of the merchant is responsive.
-
-
9. ) A tangible, machine-readable, non-transitory medium storing instructions that when executed by a data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations, comprising:
-
presenting, on a mobile device, one or more offer-creation interfaces by which a merchant enters offer parameters specifying an offer, the offer parameters including data indicative of an amount of instances of the offer to be reserved by consumers; obtaining, with the mobile device, the offer parameters after a merchant supplies the offer parameters with the one or more offer-creation interfaces; obtaining, with the mobile device, a geographic location where consumers are to be alerted to the offer; and sending a request to an affiliate network to distribute the offer to a plurality of publishers within the affiliate network and limit use of the offer according to the specified amount of instances of the offer to be reserved by consumers, wherein the publishers each send a plurality of offers to consumers and wherein the affiliate network tracks redemptions of the offers with merchants. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
-
-
16. ) A system, comprising:
-
one or more processors; and memory storing instructions that when executed by the one or more processors effectuate operations comprising; receiving, from an offer-creating merchant mobile device, an offer to be distributed to consumers, the offer being defined, at least in part, by offer parameters including; an amount of instances of the offer to be reserved by consumers, and a geographic location indicative of where consumers are to be alerted to the offer; creating an offer record in memory, the offer record including data based on the offer parameters; causing at least some of the data based on the offer parameters to be sent to a consumer'"'"'s computing device; receiving an indication that the consumer requests to reserve an instance of the offer; determining that an amount of reserved instances of the offer is less than the amount of instances of the offer to be reserved by consumers included in the offer parameters; after the determination, sending a consumer mobile device an indication that an instance of the offer has been reserved; causing the consumer mobile device to be sent data indicative of the geographic location; and causing the consumer mobile device to be sent instructions to alert the consumer to the offer after the consumer mobile device determines that a current geographic location of the consumer mobile device corresponds to the geographic location included in the offer parameters. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24)
-
-
25. ) A system, comprising:
-
one or more processors; and memory storing instructions that when executed by the one or more processors cause the one or more processors to effectuate operations comprising; sending an offer instance and instructions to display the offer instance to a consumer device; receiving a signal indicating that the offer instance is no longer valid; and in response to receiving the signal, sending instructions to the consumer mobile device to display an indication that the offer instance is no longer valid. - View Dependent Claims (26, 27)
-
Specification