H2O Media is one of the busier companies on the Middle East scene. Having started out creating a portal for artists and musicians to share ideas and to network, the Web site and social network developer has created more than a hundred sites in the region. Now it seems the company has set its sights on the promo crown owned by Donna Benton and the phenomenally successful Entertainer books.
Claiming an innate understanding of the digital world and what it calls “collaborative social media platforms,” H2O is entering the field of promotional marketing. In August it launched PromosME.com, a Web site planning to offer vouchers and discounts for outlets across the Middle East.
“The last few years we’ve really been looking at the different directions that the social media landscape is going,” explains Steve Vaile, CEO of H2O. “And one of the largest opportunities we saw was promotions and discount voucher delivery. The way it works at the moment is, you have to cut out a piece of paper, and then take it the venue. We thought it would be quite good if we could build a platform that would actually deliver the voucher to your email or to your mobile phone, so you wouldn’t have to print it.”
But the idea goes a little further than that: When you register on PromosME.com, you can specify not only the types of offers you are interested in, but also (and perhaps more importantly) the times and places you wish to receive them.
“So if we offer a voucher for the Meat Co. restaurant, for example, and you happen to be within a kilometer of the restaurant and it’s between 9 am and 9 pm, which is when you want your vouchers sent to you, it will send you a voucher which also says, ‘The Meat Co. is just around the corner,’” explains Vaile.
The concept is relatively simple, but Vaile says that the practicalities of actually delivering such a service, especially in the Middle East, were a huge challenge. “The actual development of the site has been really difficult,” he says. “That’s because, normally, to do a location-based service that will actually send you contextual advertising when you’re close to someone that you actually want to hear from, you have to go through a telecommunications operator. Normally the telcos have to give you that information, but in the Middle East they don’t always have it to hand, or they don’t always have the location-based service platforms available. So we actually had to develop a platform that would do location-based services without going through the operator.”
Vaile considers such technological innovation to be a key part of the Web site’s competitive advantage, but he says it’s not the only factor. The site is free to use for consumers, and for merchants it charges “a ridiculously low price – around $500 for a year’s subscription.” And in that year, any number of offers can be displayed.
“If you get on there as a vendor you can define as many promotions and vouchers as you want during your subscription period – it’s unlimited,” says Vaile. “So you could have 50, or 10, or 20… it’s really up to you.”
The site has a broad range of offers and adds more continuously, and so far the reception has been good according to Vaile, despite the fact that the location based services have yet to go live. Ultimately, he believes that PromosME.com’s targeted mechanism will be the deciding factor for consumers.
“It drives me nuts when I get an unsolicited marketing message at four in the morning,” says Vaile. “So we’ve developed the whole PromosME concept so that you can go onto the site knowing what companies you like, what vouchers you want, and when you would like them. We were looking at ways to really bring personalized marketing and discount marketing to people in a way that just wasn’t bulk.”