The Big Fat Marketing Blog

Coupons.com, which offers members digital discount offers via Web and mobile phone, has expanded its platform with a new portfolio of services, including the ability to save discount offers to selected retailer loyalty cards, the company announced today.

The Mountain View CA-based company also unveiled enhancements to its popular Grocery IQ shopping list app for the iPhone, as well as an iPhone app version of its Coupons.com Web site and a new optimization of the http://www.Coupons.com site for other feature phones. more

Did you realize that October 5 to 9 was National Layaway Week? Value retailer Kmart did—after all, they called the holiday– and celebrated by launching an online center where customers can find, hold and make installment payments for the items they want to pick up in-store and give this holiday. more

Retailer Sears is showing its “softer side” in more than its ad slogans: It’s getting into social marketing in a big way, first with two back-to-school initiatives designed to get high schoolers and incoming freshmen engaged with each other as much as with the brand, and now with a new community site for home and appliance repairs called ManageMyHome.com.

Sears Holdings (parent to the Sears retail chain) launched the site in August as a central stop for all home projects. But the site was for several years in what Jim Hilt, vice president of divisional holdings for Sears, calls a “public beta”, open and being used by selected groups of consumers. “We were learning the nuances of what people wanted to do online relating to taking care of their homes,” he says. “It was a way for us to experiment live in the marketplace.” more

When it comes to mobile marketing, two channels have gotten most of the attention: text messaging, because almost every phone in the nation can be reached via SMS, and for little cost; and specialized downloadable apps for smartphones, because they create the most buzz, tap into a relatively affluent consumer, and may—just may—earn a little revenue if people are willing to pay something for them in iTunes.

But there are other ways to get an explicit marketing message out to handsets, and research firm eMarketer predicts that one of them—ads displayed in various places on mobile content, including content pages, search results and as independent ads within text messages—will draw increasingly large budgets over the coming four years. more

A new social media campaign for Sara Lee brand’s Fresh ideas pre-sliced deli meats is bringing a bit of humor into the lives of busy, harried moms with satirical “video confessions” courtesy of players from Chicago’s Second City improve troupe.

The content actually comes via Second City Communications, the company’s business-services division, which worked with Sara lee to generate copy for three fictional-but-very-real-sounding “Mama Sagas” that poke fun at life’s mothering problems and manage to work in a pitch for Sara Lee’s Fresh ideas deli line to boot. more

Retailers and brands that sell online are stampeding into social media, a new survey finds—some for fear of looking less modern than their competitors, and others out of concern that they may be getting bad-mouthed without their knowledge.

According to the survey, fielded by multichannel retail consultant The E-tailing Group and consumer review platform PowerReviews, a surprising number of social media tools have achieved wide adoption by brands and retailers in the relatively short time they’ve been available. Eighty-six percent of the brands and merchants who responded to the “Community and Social Media Study” poll said they now use a Facebook fan page. more