Later, Foursquare and AMEX extended those deals, even launching them across the pond.

Now, Foursquare is making a move to expand these offers to more types of plastic.

The company has announced that they will be extending these types of specials with both Visa and MasterCard, and most debit cards to provide similar check-in offers alongside participating businesses.

Foursquare is working with payment solutions company First Data and CardSpring to expand the seamless specials.

The AMEX/Foursquare deal has morphed over time to start producing more revenue for Foursquare, and the company says that the new deals with Visa and MasterCard will earn them a fee for every offer redeemed. It’s unclear whether that will be a flat fee per offer claimed or some sort of percentage deal.

“This is going to be a pretty core part of our revenue model going forward,” said Foursquare Product Manager Noah Weiss.

According to AdAge, the first offer that should be available today involves $1 off for $10 spent at 8,000 participating Burger King locations.

Since this is going to be a “core part of the revenue model,” it shouldn’t surprise you that Foursquare is also making these credit card deals more prominent within the app.

All you’ll have to do is sync your Visa, MasterCard, or AMEX with your Foursquare account to start earning cashback on purchases made through the app.

A Facebook spokesperson says the company is working with a few global retailers for this test, but for now other pages aren’t affected and their offers will continue to appear in the original format.

Facebook Offers launched last year. COO Sheryl Sandberg said last month that offers had already been claimed by 42 million unique users. I would imagine that the format that’s being tested would only help users claim more of them. It will also be interesting to see if Facebook adds Offers functionality to Graph Search, as it expands that to include different types of Facebook data.

In October, Facebook started letting Page admins promote Offers from mobile devices. That’s an important feature for this product’s succes, given that Facebook now considers itself a mobile company.

In recent weeks, we’ve also seen Facebook launch new physical gift cards that store gift amounts from various businesses, roll out the ability to let users pay to promote their friends’ statuses, and test a new “buy tickets” option for events.

Retailers can use the product to extend their existing incentive programs.

“Unlike traditional media, Zavers’ real-time data gives manufacturers new ways to measure coupon redemptions and analyze consumer preferences so they can manage distribution, tailor campaigns, and optimize budgets for maximum ROI,” says Google Commerce Director of Emerging Platforms, Spencer Spinnell. “Zavers also offers access to an extensive network of manufacturer coupons, opening up new retail revenue streams.

“With Zavers, shoppers find manufacturer discounts on their favorite retailer websites, and save the digital coupons to their accounts,” he explains. “Then they simply shop for those products and check out as usual. Redemption occurs in real time, with savings automatically deducted at checkout when shoppers provide their rewards cards or phone numbers—no scanning or sorting necessary. Manufacturers only pay when a product is moved off the shelf.”

The coupons are applied to purchases without the need to show and scan paper or digital goods. Customers using Google Wallet can redeem coupons instantly by tapping their phones at the checkout.

Google has New York grocer D’Agostino on as a partner, as well as A&P, Bi-Lo, The Food Emporium, Harris Teeter, PathMark, Price Chopper, SuperFresh and Waldbums. The company says it will be announcing new partnerships with major retailers in the coming months.

Now, in version 1.5, Page admins can make Offers directly from the app. Bringing Offers to mobile comes just a couple of weeks after Facebook gave their Offers program a huge global update.

That update to offers allowed businesses to include bar codes and other unique codes within to offers, for better analytics. The bigger change, however, is that Facebook Offers are now no longer a free option for page owners.

“[W]e will require that businesses include targeting and advertising as part of using Offers. Businesses will be able to run offers for a minimal fee, but more advertising budget will lead to greater distribution to your audience,” said Facebook.

This Pages Manager update also brings landscape mode to the iPad, and allows page owners to post longer status updates.

Here’s what’s new in v1.5:

• Use in landscape mode on iPad
• Eligible Pages can create Facebook Offers
• Post longer status updates
• Bug fixes and performance updates

The last update to Facebook’s Pages Manager app came back in September, when they allowed page admins to promote posts from the app.

You can download the updated app today.

If you were looking to purchase a year’s subscription to one of the most venerable newspapers in the country and have yet to purchase the device on which to read it, you’re in luck. Barnes & Noble is giving a free Nook Touch to anyone who purchases 1 year of the New York Times.

That subscription will run you $19.99 a month.

Doing the math here, that means that you’ll be paying roughly $240 for the year of the Times. The Nook Touch’s standard price is $99. A free Nook is a sweet deal, but in order to really feel like you’re saving on this promotion, you probably have to have already wanted a NYT subscription.

If you feel like upgrading, you can also snag the Nook Color for $99 with the purchase of the subscription. That’s $100 of the original price.

“We are excited to work with The New York Times to present this unique offer that, for the first time ever, gives readers a chance to get a one-year subscription to our top-selling digital newspaper with an award-winning NOOK Simple Touch at no cost, or a NOOK Color at a $100 savings,” said Jonathan Shar, vice president and general manager of digital newsstand at Barnes & Noble. “Our customers love to have their newspaper automatically delivered to their NOOK device each morning, ready to read anytime and anywhere.”

If celebrity gossip is more your thing, you can also buy a 1-year subscription to People and you will be rewarded with $50 off the Nook Tablet, which will shoot the price down to $199. The People subscription win cost you $9.99 a month.

Just last week, the product launched in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, with 25 more cities promised in the near future. I guess that leaves 21 more to be on the look out for soon, though it’s highly doubtful they’ll stop there.

The first offer for Baltimore is for the Blue Hill Tavern, which is called one of the city’s “most impressive dining spaces.” For Minneapolis, it’s the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. In San Diego, customs can get an offer from Crazee Burger, and in San Jose, it’s Sonoma Chicken Coop.

While some of the daily deals providers have seemingly backed off a little (namely Facebook and Yelp), it’s clear that Google is far from backing off of the space.

Last week, Google also introduced a new feature for Google Wallet called “Featured Offers,” which gives Google Wallet users more exclusive offers from businesses.

We had an interesting discussion with Emily Keye, Marketing Strategist of email/mobile/social marketing platform provider Bronto Software about daily deals conversions that we thought would be worth sharing with WebProNews readers. The company recently released a set of best practices for daily deal services to stand out from competitors. First, here’s a quick look at those:

Segmentation is key – Sending out untargeted email blasts to deal subscribers is a big mistake when it comes to the daily deal industry. Receiving too many irrelevant offers is a chief complaint from many daily deal subscribers. Ask your subscribers key information beyond their location such as gender, age and interests through a manage preferences center. You can also gain information on their interests through click behavior, or you can conduct periodic surveys of your subscribers to gather more detailed profile information over time, continually improving your targeting by providing content tailored to their interests. Using these tactics, you will be able build a profile for each subscriber so you can segment your lists and provide members with deals targeted to their specific interests. Remember, the quality of the list is as important as its size.

Timing is everything – Email timing is also extremely important for daily deal companies. If people don’t open emails on time, they miss out on expiring deals and the company and merchant both miss out on a sale. When is the best time to send an email? Answering that question can be a challenge since optimal send times are a moving target based on many variables. Test your email messages to see when your subscribers are opening them. Your email service provider should offer send-time optimization capabilities for automatically monitoring and sending messages at the time a subscriber is most likely to open it. Timing is everything, so test, analyze and optimize. Given the timing competition around daily deals sends, also work on targeting inactive or unengaged subscribers by automating “win-back” messages. Test this message at different times during the day, typically later in the day, to avoid competing against other daily deal messages.

What makes these best practices the best practices?
 
“I think simplicity is at the root of the incredible success we’ve seen with daily deal sites,” Keye tells WebProNews. ”It’s a simple and effective way to connect consumers with great deals from merchants right in their neighborhood.  Now daily deal marketing practices are evolving to the next level.  Segmentation, deliverability and timing have been core online marketing best practices for years now and their value has been proven time and time again, especially with cross-channel marketing campaigns in which email plays a central role.”
 
“Let’s take a closer look at deliverability,” she continues. ”Reaching the inbox is essential for daily deal providers. Each undeliverable email means a lost sales opportunity.  You need to do everything in your power to ensure that deal emails get through.”

“Email deliverability depends on a complex array of factors, including close relationships with ISPs, which are the gateways for electronic message delivery,” she adds. ”Email authentication and reputation management also figure into the equation. Email Service Providers (ESPs) spend years establishing close relationships with ISPs as well as authentication and reputation management services in order to boost deliverability performance.  There are a host of other factors and best practices that influence deliverability, and ESPs make it their business to become best practices experts in these areas.  That’s why many daily deal services rely on ESPs as their message delivery platform.  It’s a core competency of ESPs that allows daily deal services to focus more attention on their subscribers and merchant clients.”
 
“Regarding segmentation and timing, we all know from experience that getting the right offer at the right time makes all of the difference in the world,” says Keye. ”Daily deal providers that analyze data and periodically survey their subscribers to learn more about them can better segment their lists by interest and preferences. For example, the golf enthusiast gets the 50% off deal for nine holes at a great golf course located between home and the office. In the dead of the New England winter that same subscriber receives a deal for golf swing lessons at an indoor driving range nearby.”

“These are great examples of segmentation and timing at work,” she says. “It’s also important to remember that beyond seasonal, holiday or calendar events such as birthdays, optimal timing for sending daily deal offers to the inbox is a moving target. At what time of day are deals most like to be seen and opened?  When do you get the most conversions? Is it first thing in the morning, or later in the day when you’re less like to bump into competing offers?  The only way to know for sure is to test, analyze and optimize. Try sending deals at different times of the day and analyze the results. Then make sure you revisit those same tests periodically as the optimal time to send is likely to shift due to a number of variables.”

Email vs Social

“Email is the primary gateway for daily deal sign ups and remains the primary delivery vehicle for offers, so it definitely plays a crucial role in driving sales,” Keye tells us. “Ultimately, it comes down to a consumer seeing a great deal targeted to their interests, and that can happen via email, social or mobile channels.”

“The benefit of social media is that your social connections usually know you well, so when people share deals via Facebook, Twitter or other social networks, they have a high likelihood of leading to a purchase,” she adds. “Also, you may be signed up to receive deals via email, but you also follow the provider on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, many people spend so much more time in social networks than on email, so it may be the first place they find a deal. You happen to be checking your Facebook page when the horseback riding lessons deal you’ve been waiting for pops up.  You click on the link and buy.  So, while email is the communications hub for daily deal offers and still the place where most deals convert, daily deal companies should leverage the mobile and social channels for even higher conversions and for better engagement with fans and followers.”       
 
On how deals providers can set themselves apart from the pack…
 
“As the recent Rice University study shows, consumer demand for daily deals remains very strong,” says Keye. ”This is good and bad news for providers. The good news is obvious.  The challenge is that competition for the consumer inbox is getting tougher and at some point, daily deal fatigue may set in, so only the most relevant, targeted and timely deals have a chance of standing out from the pack.”

“Geo-targeting by city was good enough at the beginning,” she says. ”But now consumers subscribe to two-three-four or more daily deal services – all with competing offers in their home town. That’s why forward-thinking providers are thinking beyond relying solely on location data and are learning more about individual subscribers in order to create more detailed consumer profiles.”

“You won’t have the best offer for every subscriber every time, but the more frequently you reach consumers with deals matched to their interests and preferences, the more you’ll set yourself apart and be remembered as the deal company that ‘knows what I like,’” she adds.

Well, the competition is certainly great, and there are some major players for the small ones to contend with, but as we’ve discussed in the past, there does seem to be room for plenty of verticals within the space.

As you may recall, Google tried to buy Groupon last year, but Groupon turned down the offer (reported to have been in the ballpark of $6 billion). It’s been a somewhat turbulent year for Groupon, though the IPO is supposedly back on track. The company is also testing the e-commerce waters, which could end up being huge for the company.

But despite come competitors pulling back a bit, the fact remains that there is a lot of competition in this space, and that includes a product from Internet giant Google, which just launched Google Wallet – an important product for continued success of Google Offers.

According to a report from Yipit, Google Offers is already doing pretty well in the few markets it’s available in. “Google Offers didn’t do particularly well in August – total revenue dropped 23% from July despite a 22% increase in its total number of deals,” the firm reports. “However, Google’s Daily Deal product has radically improved in September. Through just the first three weeks of the month, Google has already surpassed last month’s total revenue of $265k and is on track to more than double this figure by month’s end.”

“Google isn’t running significantly more deals in these markets – deal performance is markedly improving,” says Yipit. “Through the first three weeks of September, revenue per deal is up 160% and vouchers sold per deal has increased five-fold.”

Google did plug Google Offers on the Google homepage recently. It also launched in more markets and acquired DailyDeal. Still, the company is running “far fewer” deals in any given market than Groupon and LivingSocial, according to Yipit, who says Google is closing in on LivingSocial on average revenue per deal, and is selling more voucherws per deal than both LivingSocial and Groupon.

On Friday, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason announced that COO Margo Georgiadis is returning to Google, which is actually where she used to work.

The feature is launching in New York City for now, with other markets coming before the year’s over. Launch deals include:

• $7 for a one-hour bike rental in Central Park ($15 value)
• $5 for $10 at Dangerfield’s Comedy club
• $59 for one month unlimited yoga classes at Bikram Yoga Grand Central ($180 value)
• $5 for $10 worth of ice cream and ice cream cakes at Coldstone Creamery
• $45 for lunch at City Winery ($98 value)

“Since we introduced special offers and lowered the price of Kindle to $114 and Kindle 3G to $139 earlier this year, customer response has been overwhelmingly positive – these quickly became our bestselling Kindles,” said Jay Marine, Director, Amazon Kindle. “Customers tell us they love the new lower price for Kindle and the money-saving special offers that display when they aren’t reading. We think customers are going to be thrilled with this new, convenient way to take advantage of AmazonLocal deals – you can view, purchase, and redeem the deals using only your Kindle – no computer, no printer, no hassle.”

Late last month, Amazon launched Amazon Local into more markets, including: New York City, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago’s northwest suburbs, Northern Virginia, Orlando and the San Francisco Peninsula.

The product was initially launched in Boise in June, and by late August, it had been expanded into 30 locations in 10 states. It also launched in 14 new markets today:

Since then, reports also came out that the company was being sued by its own sales staff, based on claims that the company violated federal and state labor law, and that Groupons can actually hurt the reputations of businesses who offer them. That was based on academic research of how Groupons impacted Yelp ratings for businesses that offered them.

More bad press. It hasn’t been all bad, however. This week, it was reported that the company is testing e-commerce deals, which if they turn into more than a test and go mainstream across Groupon’s markets, could be a tremendous new source of revenue for the company. Revenue, by the way, is also one area where the news hasn’t been so bad.

Now, the New York Times is reporting that the company is back on track to launch its IPO as soon as October or November. This is based on comments from “people briefed on the matter” who say that the IPO roadshow could take place in the mid-October.

The SEC issues have apparently been resolved, and Groupon will go forward with its IPO at a time when others are waiting for better market conditions.