Features: 1. Location based coupons, offers, deals from Groupon, Valpak, Yelp, Opentable and local individual businesses. 2. Share to Save - the more users shared, the higher the savings became. 3. Garage sales & classified ads. 4. Weekly circulars from all major local chains. 5. Events, including local HS sports calendar. 6. Ad curtain & push notifications.
As you can see here, we made the platform very easy to rebrand - in this case for the Sonoma County version of the app.
1. "Share to Save' feature that enabled an advertiser to increase the value of a deal every time someone shared the deal on Facebook or via e-mail. 2. Consumers can peruse deals in both a map view or list view. 3. A detailed view of the deal showing it's locked/unlocked status.
The app was built to be very community oriented - including garage/yard sale listings and a community bulletin board. The app also featured weekly circulars to all the major retail stores in the vicinity.
PROJECT: Local Deals App Platform (Reach Messaging)
Role:
Hired by Reach Messaging as GM of Product to be responsible for creating, developing and managing the product portfolio. Charged with meeting customer needs and driving aggressive business growth and profitability.
Challenge:
Launch a local deals app platform that exceeded from a feature, cost and time to market perspective anything existing in the marketplace.
Resolution:
Based on market research, determined their was a need for a deals product that focused on the hyper-local offerings for the suburbanite. The app included everything a person would need related to shopping and deals in their locale. Enabling CGC was the primary differentiator as well as the 'Share to Save' feature that enabled an advertiser to increase the value of a deal every time someone shared the deal on Facebook or via e-mail. The platform was built to support easily rebranding the app for a given market. The business model was to sell the apps as a franchise to entrepreneurs who wanted to run a mobile business with low investment. By the time I moved on to Verizon two franchises had been sold.
Skills Used:
Product Management | Project Management | Product Strategy | Matrix Management | Partner Management | Business Development | Strategic Planning | Business Strategy | Competitive Analysis | Advertising | User Experience | Usability Testing | Customer Engagement | Driving Revenue | Monetization | E-commerce | Contract Negotiation | Audience Engagement | Mobile Devices | Mobile Applications | Location Based Services | Agile
Specifics:
- Oversaw all aspects of solution development, architecture and management processes from concept ideation through development, launch and maintenance.
- Researched existing mobile deals app environment including trends, best practices and company preferred architectural frameworks and alliances to ensure company offerings matched business trends.
- Defined and established the product vision, goals, supporting business metrics, and success indicators for the local deals app platform
- Suggested necessary upgrades or solutions to improve company competency in meeting changing business needs.
- Interfaced daily with IT, sales and executive management to develop and grow the portfolio of local deals app solutions and offerings and to increase company productivity and profits.
- Provided support to sales/proposal teams during the launch phase of the life cycle.
- Provided leadership and strategic guidance during the platform development process to ensure bridging of the gap between business problem faced by customers and benefits available from company's celeb apps.
- Translated customer requirements into operational strategies to ensure customer needs are met in a cost-effective and timely manner.
- Interfaced and participated in business development discussions across cross-functional teams and internal and external executive managements to ensure consistency in product development and deployment.
- Facilitated reduced risks to company; managed product profits and losses; authored platform business plan creation, monitored platform financial performance against plan; prepared financial models to ensure that customer interests were met.
- Managed a team of 4 product managers, 2 business development managers & 5 sales associates
- Conceived and defined product features and UX
- Created all marketing material for businesses and potential franchisors
- Synthesized market feedback to team of product managers