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Harland Clarke Acquires RetailMeNot for $630M
- knownothing 10y agoOnce upon a time RetailMeNot was just a fly-by-night operation that scammed retailers using PPC ads and affiliate links. Look at them now.
- elastic_church 10y ago> RetailMeNot started out as WhaleShark Media and changed its name in 2013 after acquiring RetailMeNot.com, an Australian-based coupon site founded in 2006. huh so thats what happened
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoRetailMeNot is a weird name isn't it? "don't sell stuff (to me)" for a site for selling stuff (to me)!?
- elliottcarlson 10y agoIf you read it as "don't sell me stuff at retail price" then it makes more sense.
- alaskamiller 10y agoRetailMeNot means don't charge me retail price and rather give me the discounted price by use of coupons found on the RetailMeNot website. It was a wordplay of BugMeNot.
- knownothing 10y agoHuh, totally forgot about that! This was at least partially due to the fact that "WhaleShark Media" had become synonymous with large-scale fraud in some affiliate programs around this time.
- RileyJames 10y agoIt actually started as RetailMeNot, a website run by two Australians. Whale shark media bought it, and then renamed their company to RetailMeNot. The website has always been RetailMeNot.com.
- nerfhammer 10y agoIt started out as bugmenot, for sharing logins to web sites to deal with mandatory signups.
- elastic_church 10y agoya know, thats exactly how I read the statement I quoted........
- omarchowdhury 10y agoIn what way were they scamming retailers?
- 55555 10y agoThey pretend (or pretended) to have coupons that you needed to click in order to reveal. Often upon clicking, the coupons were invalid. Perhaps some were never real. But upon clicking, a pop-under would launch which would drop their cookie. So a user who was already committed to buying, and in the process of doing so, who simply checked for a coupon while going through the checkout process, would end up generating an affiliate commission for RetailMeNot even though RMN provided no value to either the customer or the merchant. This is basically a scam that pretty much all coupon sites pull, which is why many companies ban coupon sites from joining their affiliate programs.
- rcarrigan87 10y agoIt blows my mind how many companies still eagerly work with coupon sites given this has been true for over a decade.
- ipsum2 10y agoWhat you're describing is cookie stuffing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing). People have been prosecuted over this: http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-the-fbi-shawn-hogan-and-brian-dunning-2013-4?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-the-fbi-shawn-hogan-and-.... I'm surprised about your claims that a public company would be doing this.
- dangrossman 10y agoI run affiliate programs for my businesses, none of which have a box for coupon codes when you sign up. Despite that, nearly every day new coupon sites sign up for the affiliate program. They usually have a webpage full of "coupon codes" offering discounts that don't exist made up, ready to add the referral link to. I remove all these sites from the program, some leave the pages up anyway. Even coupons.com has a page for my business with several "Click to Save" buttons that do nothing. They're publicly traded as well.
- unixhero 10y agoUnbelievable
- AznHisoka 10y ago"Never build your startup on another conpany's platform" That's true.. and if you followed that advice.. - You would never have started retailmenot (too dependent on Google traffic) - You would never start Buffer and have over 10 million in annual revenue (too dependent on twitter api) - You would never would have started Heroku and get acquired for millions (too dependent on AWS) - You would never have started SimilarWeb and be valued at over 100 million dollars (too dependent on browser extensions and Google)
- timdorr 10y agoYes, there are certainly success stories built on the shoulders of giants. But for every success, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of failures because the giant decided to brush off their shoulders. It's a risk you just have to factor into building a business this way. And always have a ready-to-go Plan B for when that risk turns into reality.
- jaredklewis 10y agoI think it's wishful thinking that you can build a business and not have dependencies on things outside of your control. It's just a fact a life. Not all things are equally risky, but you can't do everything in house.
- TallGuyShort 10y ago>> That's true.. and if you followed that advice.. ... still pretty true.
- theGimp 10y agoGoogle traffic and AWS are commodities to an extent since they're replaceable. So Heroku and RetailMeNot don't qualify in my book. More importantly though, the trend is that most companies relying on someone else's platform for survival are cannibalized. A few examples to the contrary don't make it a good idea.
- AznHisoka 10y ago
- poxrud 10y agoThey've successful gamed SEO to show up for every "<site> coupon/promo code" search result. Unfortunately it's been years since I've actually found a working code on their site. These days I don't even bother clicking on their links.
- utnick 10y agoI use their papa johns codes frequently, they always seem to be good for 40% off - however lately I've noticed papa johns trying to cut out the middleman and run their own coupon adwords offers
- adventurer 10y agoPapa Johns is partnered with MLB again this year. If a team scores 6 or more, your online order the next day is 50% off. I'm not sure if you have to be local or within a certain mileage of the ballpark. The promo code is usually yankees6, mets6, rays6, etc, as you can see in their NY twitter account below. https://twitter.com/PapaJohns_NY https://twitter.com/PapaJohns_NY
- pmulv 10y agoThey also have an affiliation with the New York Rangers for 50% off the day after the Rangers score 3 goals. It's amusing to me how aggressively they advertise in NYC when all the alternative pizza is cheaper and better.
- lighthazard 10y agoWhat alternatives are you talking about? I love NYC mom&pop pizza places, but are there any chains that are better?
- pmulv 10y agoI think what I was getting at is that there are no chains that compare to the small pizza businesses in NYC. I prefer Domino's to Papa John's if we're comparing chains though.
- rcarrigan87 10y agoPretty horrible outcome for anyone who got in on their IPO ($21/share) just 4 years ago. It's kind of a fitting end for mostly a sham company. The business model was shaky at best, mostly just milking first page rankings all over google. The argument that coupon codes incent buying activity is valid, but literally all this company did was be the first on google. If the actual retailer ranked ahead of RTMN for coupon searches, RTMN wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today, and retailers sales would be exactly the same.
- nabraham 10y agoIt's not easy to be first on google, especially on brands where you don't own the brand. If you can do this consistently please immediately set up a company, charge, and go eventually go public.
- paulcole 10y ago>Pretty horrible outcome for anyone who got in on their IPO ($21/share) just 4 years ago. Anyone who got in at 21 and didn't sell at 42? They have all my sympathy.
- qeternity 10y agoRetailers sales would be the same, but they wouldn't be paying unnecessary commission to RMN. Sales commissions make sense when someone is directing new customers to a business. But as has been said in this thread, they were simply better at SEO. The customer was already a) aware of said product and b) showing intention to purchase. These are precisely the value propositions that affiliate marketing was designed for.
- rcarrigan87 10y agoI was with you until that last sentence. Are you saying RTMN's model is the same value proposition as all affiliate marketers? Sites like Expedia, Wirecutter, and hundreds of other review or aggregator websites that monetize through affiliate marketing add way more value to the user than RTMN.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- aaron695 10y agoBugMeNot started RetailMeNot. Good example of a pivot from what I assume? was a hack for fun to a business. Also a good example of SV style buyouts etc
- jasongill 10y agoThe BugMeNot guys started the site, but they sold it shortly after creating it - they have nothing to do with the (public) company it turned in to
- aaron695 10y agoBugMeNot sold it for $90 million to WhaleShark Media Sounds like a good pivot to me. https://delimiter.com.au/2010/12/03/90-million-payday-aussie-startup-sells-retailmenot/ https://delimiter.com.au/2010/12/03/90-million-payday-aussie...
- a5seo 10y agoShortly? It was at least 5 years before Guy and Bevan sold it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- madebysquares 10y agoWow, I always thought retailmenot was like a small 2 person company with a bunch of scripts to scrape coupons and rank high in SEO. What do their 500+ employees do.
- AznHisoka 10y agoverify coupons probably.
- altoz 10y agoFormer employee here. It used to be a 2-person company before it was acquired. A large part, surprisingly is scale. During Black Friday to Cyber Monday, for instance, the site is hit pretty hard by all the on-line shoppers. There's also a ton of different sites they manage, of which RetailMeNot is just one (deals2buy is another, a bunch of other international sites). They also have iOS and Android apps, mobile versions of the sites and a lot of community engagement. There's a whole department to figure out which coupons do well and which affiliates pay better than which other ones to figure out which ones to feature. There's another department to manage all the different commission rates (mostly to call those companies to pay more). There's a whole community engagement group that tries to get more users to submit coupons or more users to use the site. There's a sales department that tries to get exclusive coupons in return for featuring them. There's even customer service to deal with users that are having trouble. Finally, there's a department to acquire new properties. Also, all those international coupon sites have their own mini versions of all these departments. You also need HR, finance, office manager, etc. The headcount goes up pretty quick. When I left it was around 400 employees. It actually hasn't grown that much in 3+ years.
- mistermann 10y agoWow, very interesting. I too thought it was a 1 man website, largely based on the aesthetics - is that accidental or deliberate? I think the 1 man show might be a better image.
- altoz 10y ago
- dbg31415 10y agoI can't hear the name without thinking of the Omni shooting in Austin a few years ago. * Victim, gunman identified in Downtown Austin Omni shooting | KXAN.com || http://kxan.com/2015/07/06/gunman-identified-in-downtown-austin-omni-shooting/ http://kxan.com/2015/07/06/gunman-identified-in-downtown-aus...
- elvirs 10y agohow do borderline scam businesses like these go public? why do people buy their shares? why has ipo market turned into a swamp where sneaky insiders unload their useless shares to?
- mwexler 10y agoThey started as such the un-mainstream group, trying to aggregate coupon codes so you could get fair prices without getting hammered with marketing. My, how things have changed. Kudos to them for the payout, but sigh.