Early results from Pioneer's launch of Forkfly's mobile coupon platform

So far, so good. Forkfly's first implementation is showing fast adoption.

Site: Herald&News.com
Owner: Pioneer Newspapers
Traffic: 40,000 Unique visitors monthly
Market: Klamath Falls, Oregon
Marketsize: 40,000 population in the city with a much larger, DMA (Redding, Mount Shasta, Bend)
Key executive: Kendal Daiger, Ad director

Summary: Pioneer’s Klamath Falls newspaper site, Herald&News.com, went live in mid-March with the first outside implementation of Forkfly, a locational mobile coupon platform (it also includes a daily deal, which will launch later). Within three days the platform had 1000 visits, 150 clicks on the banner ad, 110 sign-ups; a 10% adoption rate. The rapid early adoption in this small market region of Southern Oregon and Norther California looks good for mobile coupon sites.

Challenge: Pioneer’s Herald&News.co wanted to implement a mobile iniative that would appeal to younger people in their DMA, people who were not necessarily newspaper readers or users of the online site. So a mobile first platform could provide “first to market” technology in partnership with Forkfly had possibilities. The challenge was how to launch an advertising driven app while still starting out with a sustainable critical mass, organize the sales effort. Could this platform also reach younger people who were not touched by other media properties?

Strategy: The Forkfly platform allows merchants to self-enter listings with up to four coupons, and then push notifications to people who have “favorited” their business. Push notifications are outside the app, thus appearing whenever a user turns on the phone, and drawing them back into the app. The app is also locational and allow users to select coupons by map or category, share them. To launch the new program, Daiger created the following initiatives:

•Solving the Chicken/egg problem

Since her company could not go to market without merchants, and could not sell merchants without having data on people signing up, the launch strategy had to create some temporarily free accounts. Daeger’s identified personally contacted 15 merchants who she “felt would have the biggest reward based on who they were, and asked them to be part of the launch.” These local businesses will have a month and half to make a decision about staying going on the site. Meanwhile they get to test the platform. “The only cost to them was giving us deals."

•Service and set-up
Herald&News staff did the back end set up of information about the merchant and its deals, assuming that eventually businesses will catch on and begin to use the platform. “We allowed them the opportunity on the back end to load their own deal. All but two of them however, wanted us to do (all the work)."

•Focusing on key strengths and yellow pages as competition
Many businesses like restaurants liked the real-time demand aspect, ie “if your restaurant is not having a busy Friday night, you can fill it immediately.” Similarily, people who don’t like paper coupons did not mind using mobile deals.

The group also looked at yellow pages categories they did not have to upsell campaigns that included print and digital.

•Three tiered pricing to merchants
Pricing for just a listing for a year is $100, or $105 on a month to month basis. Beyond that are three tiers, that include extra promotions through the web site and in the newspaper:

a) For up to 4 deals, the advertiser pays $75 a month with a 12 month commitment
b) The second tier includes 25,000 page views on the main web site and two 3x5” newspaper ads
d) The third tier includes 45,000 page views plus four 3 x5” newspaper ads

Merchants who want to build notifications can use a simple set of buttons to push them to their Facebook fans and Twitter.

•Reaction from the first 15 businesses
One company includes “Forkfly Friday’s” to create real time promotions “they love that. They love it that that day they have three ongoing deals up, but at lunch time when it's really slow and they can go on and do a coupon. “

“Right now the reps touch base with the merchants and handle the back end fullfilment. But I think that once the merchants catch on, they will do it themselves. It will happen on a slow Saturday night when they are wondering “Why don’t’ we have a deal ? The rep is not available , so they will do it themselves."

•Promotions
An extensive promotional campaign will includes T-shirts, front page labels on the paper, and table tent cards for the merchants (restaurants have a requirement to put them on the tables for the launch), ¼ to ½ page ads, new business cards with the icon and $2000 in outdoor billboards with the message, “What’s all the buzz about.”

•Sales organization
Sales team is only three people full time and two parttime (who service outerlying and small businesses). They were each charged with bringing ten forkfly leads to the sales meeting, and huddle every morning to sell the launch.

“We did not change comp plans for reps," Daiger says. "I am a former marketing person, we are more like an agency. The sales team embraces that culture, they absolutely view this as an opportunity to take market-share from yellow book and take on a new category."

•Deal requirements

While the Herald&News already runs a daily deal, which has a requirement to be at least 50% off, this will soon be integrated into the Forkfly platform. However, for coupons, there is no requirement except that “they are good deals." One interesting feature of the merchant interface is the ability to submit daily deals for approval, although this may create the problem of having to turn down a submitted deal from an otherwise good, paying advertiser if it is not good enough.

Results: So far, 1000 total visits with 110 people sign-up, 80% of which signed up via mobile phone downloads.

Our take: A number of publishers reacted to the logo and colors of this platform; a new brand that has heavy Seattle-like earthtones. To Daiger, the Forkfly is “fresh , innovative, youthful, people go ‘what is that?’”

We tend to agree. The lay-out is web savvy and the icon, simple and memorable. We do think the media brand is also important and should have more significant placement on the insider pages, which Forkfly CEO Paul Wagner says is in the works now.

We also like that Forkfly is an independent company with venture financing. While its future is not yet fully secure, it has the advantage of waking up everyday breathing "How do we do this better." While publishers have complained that small businesses won't adopt self-serve, the devil's in the backend merchant interface, and we think this one is as simple as anything we've seen before. The most active merchants will take control of their notifications, otherwise there is a "service-sell" opportunity that blends well with selling social media like Facebook.

FInally, notifications have the advantage over text messages that they are free. Unlike Shooger, Forkfly's notifications are outside the app, and it is exclusive by DMA, it's business model is fully reliant on securing publishers. Wagner says there is a $2500 one time set up fee, but that the platform is otherwise free to publishers, except for a 5% revenue share on the daily deal if that aspect of the platform is used. The company is planning to make their money on future products which will be fully integrated.

The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and  MediaExecsTech,  developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine,  to showcases perspectives from around the  world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.

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