On the heels of Facebook Deals and just in time for Black Friday, Yelp is getting into the check-in rewards business. Yelp Check-in Offers demonstrates a growing appetite for geolocation services that motivate consumers to shop.
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman described Yelp Check-in Offers as a way for businesses to reward their most loyal customers and attract new ones. From the consumer’s perspective, he called it a “great way to save money or get free stuff for what you’re already doing.”
Yelp initially launched check-ins in January. The company reports on average a 50 percent month-over-month growth in the use of the feature. Yelp also said more than 500,000 sales and special offers have already been uploaded to its site via its free suite of business tools. That signals interest from retailers promoting deals.
Yelp vs Facebook
Yelp Check-in Offers is available for Android phones via an app, and the company said an iPhone app is coming. There are already more than 1,500 Yelp Check-in Offers for consumers to choose from, and Yelp said businesses are reaching 2.6 million users each month.
Here’s how Check-in Offers works: A consumer checks in at a retail location to unlock an offer. If a consumer chooses the Use it Now! option for the offer on that visit, it will disappear automatically from his or her smartphone device in a few hours. The user or the business staff can also tap a button on the phone to mark the offer as used, expiring the timer immediately.
If a consumer chooses Save it!, the Check-in Offer will be saved in several places on the device. The user can then redeem the offer anytime, following the same process. Yelp did not disclose specific retailers with which it has relationships.
Facebook rolled out its Deals service earlier this month. It works in a…