INTERNET EUROPE: German Coupons Make Worthy Content
When every little penny helps, by Arthur Graaff
26 November 2001
Who wouldn't like 100 deutsche mark in virtual vouchers when signing up as a
member of Bertelmann's German book club?
Now Bertelmann is big on the German web and its webcoupons easy to find. But
the many smaller online pickings may be just as good, or sometimes even better
- and in these cases, even the savviest search engine won't get bargain hunters the real fresh offers.
So 123coupons.de was set up to do the hunting and gathering, almost a year
ago, and has done this remarkably well, according to the German economic
weekly Wirtschafts Woche. This week, the site relaunched. The simple road to success here is no hassle with registration, offers galore and getting your discount after
just a click or two.
The future is bright, as this kind of content is brief and therefore also well suited for SMS or GPRS and UMTS, the owners of 123 think.
German Forrester's e-com consultant Christian Lipski says he is very positive about this web based venture, exactly because of its directness for the consumers. Also, the number of web buyers in Germany has increased 40% in one year, according to new research published yesterday by the German Post Office.
Until now, the portal has not spawned any worthy competitor, because as the
founders see it, all of them consultants with some of the larger players in content country like T-Online and Daimler-Chrysler, no one thought much of gathering
a mark here and five there on the German web, and those are still the discounts most frequently offered.
But gradually the better offers came in also, and you need them if you want to make
an impression on the side of your business partners as well as the consumers.
One of the spiciest offers this week, bordering on a breach of the law, is
'Schwarzgeld wegbringen und die Maut bezahlen lassen', or 'Bring your illegal stashes over and let us pay for your trip' as the Raiffeisenbank
from Liechtenstein proposes. But the site also allows surfers to get the content right from the shop next door - a clear necessity in countries the
size of Germany.
But for 123, finding the right content in time is their main achievement.
They also added a fast database and all the other specific management tools
the can read the multiformat offers from everywhere and regenerate them.
Now, they are able to sell or lease their software to webshops who want to
run their own webcoupon operation. To date, no taker has emerged but 123's
confidence is not dented, as their success continues and their company remains in the black.
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