Teach you to use Foursquare's fully automated merchant platform

Foursquare launched a fully automated merchant platform, users to their favorite places to sign in, but the preferential activities need to check in for location verification. And obviously, you have to go to the appropriate shop to show the staff on the phone screen coupons to get a discount.

According to foreign media reports, Foursquare and American Express (Anglo Express) partnership in the past few days has become the headlines, and Foursquare also launched a new version of the iphone and Android applications. But the company's "shock and awe" campaign to prepare for the Texas Music Festival (SXSW) is more than that, and the newest and perhaps most powerful "bomb" is a new, fully automated merchant platform Foursquare Merchant Platform. Industry insiders believe that this platform will certainly have a considerable impact on the future business model of Foursquare.

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Krauli (Dennis Crowley) said that Foursquare began to build a merchant platform from the end of 2009, and by the beginning of 2010, the prototype of the platform had been basically established. But it's hand-operated. When it comes to how the business's preferences are determined, Crowley said: "The head of the Operations Development Department will need to answer the phone." As larger brands show interest in the merchant platform, the manual approach does not work, and Foursquare must establish a fully automated system.

Foursquare used automatic telephony to process business audits, but that did not meet Foursquare standards, so they developed this powerful automated tool. It can serve large and small businesses, whether it's a couple store or a chain of thousands of stores around the world.

Features of the new platform

Businesses are free to use these tools once they have validated the new system. They can create promotional events with mobile devices and add them to the entire Foursquare network in minutes or so. This also includes all the offers in the new 3.0 version of Foursquare ("Flash specials", group specials, new specials, etc.). The point is that the Foursquare database already has 250,000 certified businesses, each of which can immediately use these new tools.

The new platform is worth mentioning a few highlights include: A store can offer a variety of promotional activities at once. Before a store can only carry out a discount, to provide new concessions, you must cancel the old. Now, not only a storefront can provide different types of concessions, there are a number of store shops can also provide and manage different promotional activities in different stores.

Foursquare now also provides statistics for businesses to show how effective their promotions are. Once you can only see the data of a promotional activity, you now see the overall situation and compare the effects of various promotional activities.

Merchants will now also be able to take advantage of the "nearby offers" feature in the new version of the Foursquare application, and they can see what kind of check-in this feature brings.

All of these features are useful for helping businesses interact with nearly 7.5 million users of Foursquare. In fact, these tools will not only lead to a surge in digital loyalty and promotional activity in the Foursquare ecosystem, but will also have an impact in the overall geographic services sector.

What can the new platform bring to Foursquare?

But the other obvious question is: does that mean bringing in a lot of cash for Foursquare?

The answer is "not yet".

' While all this helps to lay a solid foundation for Foursquare's final business model, ' we're not going to charge for things that are not mature, ' Crowley said. We always say that we will not try to profit from it until we do it well. "Crowley says these tools have made them closer to their goals, but they haven't really reached their targets yet.

With these new tools, Foursquare's merchant platform has also attracted a number of major brands, such as QSL authority, Applebeels, RadioShack, the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Barnes &A mp; Noble, Arby ' s chilli ' s, Whole Foods, Toys R ' Us and h&m.

As for how to get a discount, the method is still the same: the user goes to the place where they like to sign in, but the preferential activity needs to verify the location of the check-in. And obviously, you have to go to the appropriate shop to show the staff on the phone screen coupons to get a discount.