Cold Stone Offers New Yorkers Downtown Discounts via Mobile Coupons
A New York Cold Stone Creamery franchisee will roll out a mobile- and Web-based coupon promotion offering 8-cent ice cream scoops on June 8.
The campaign, involving the Cold Stone Creamery located on Astor Place on Manhattan’s East Side, will be built on the local couponing platform assembled by Web startup http://www.8coupons.com.
Visitors to the Web site can opt in to receive their Cold Stone coupon via text message to their cell phone. They can then redeem the coupon by displaying the text message to the store cashier on the day of the promotion.
The campaign will also take advantage of the “me coupons” application on the Facebook social network to spread the promotion virally. Point of sale signs will also encourage current Cold Stone customers at the store to opt in and submit their mobile numbers.
The mobile numbers acquired will be used in building an in-store database of customers for the Astor Place ice cream seller.
The 8coupons.com Web site launched last August as a clearinghouse for highly localized discounts specific to New York’s trendy but student-heavy neighborhoods: Chelsea, SoHo, Greenwich Village, Union Square and the Lower East Side. Visitors can view offers, choose the ones that interest them and send them to their mobile phones or register to receive mobile coupons in real time from selected merchants. The site has since expanded coverage to midtown, the Upper East Side and Hoboken NJ.
“Partnering with 8coupons.com has provided us with an innovative and more efficient way to reach out to and stay in touch with our customers,” said Astor Place Cold Stone Creamery franchisee Dainiel Petryszyn in a statement.
The Astor Place Cold Stone franchise is the first hybrid store combining the premium ice cream brand with soup offerings from the Original SoupMan, a company formed around the menu created by Al “Soup Man” Yeganeh.
