Discount voucher company vouchercloud has partnered with Vodacom to launch its offering in South Africa and incorporate deals with exclusive codes across a range of sectors including discounts from McDonalds, NuMetro Cinemas, Makro, Game, Jet, Planet Fitness, Edgars, Adega, Doppio Zero and Billabong.
The partnership with Vodacom, which provides GSM services for 35 million people across the whole of Africa as well as more than 50% of the mobile market share in South Africa, means that vouchercloud is able to reach a large swathe of the consumer mobile market.
The prevalence of smartphones in Africa is still relatively low, so the company is using USSD USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) technology so that the brand can target second generation (2G) phones which are common across the continent. USSD allows offers and discounts to appear as text, as opposed to appearing on smartphone apps.
Further to this, for the first time, vouchercloud has managed to secure closed loop in-store redemption in a number of leading supermarkets and restaurants in South Africa, which was something previously only available online.
Any transactions generated by offers found on vouchercloud will be registered via a third party at the point of sale, using software integrated into the merchant’s till system. This enables both the merchant and vouchercloud to establish the total number of sales generated and therefore a clearer understanding of the propagated business.
John Kelly of vouchercloud made the following comment: “This launch for us is huge. The African market is fast growing and we’re keen to get a foothold on the continent with the intention of growing our brand exponentially across the coming years.”
He continued: “The introduction of closed loop in-store redemption is a massive step, as it allows not just us but also our merchant partners to monitor just how well our deals do in terms of sales driven; allowing us to fully evidence the business generated through our promotions. By utilising USSD technology, we’re in an excellent position to fully exploit our partnership with Vodacom to reach as many consumers as possible with our money saving offers. It’s an extremely exciting time for us.”
The success of www.vouchercloud.com’s UK operations, followed by successful launches in Europe which saw the brand surpass the milestone of 5 million global app downloads last year, has enabled vouchercloud to look at further expanding its money saving offers into one of the world’s fastest growing economic markets. The launch will include a money saving website, offering South Africans discounts and deals available to them at a wide variety of stores and restaurants; and an accompanying mobile app showing discounts available both online and in their local vicinity.
