The eastern PA borough of Kutztown is home to about 5,000 people and a college-town vibe thanks to the neighboring Kutztown University. The town’s economic development group, the Kutztown Community Partnership, wanted to come up with some way to lure more of the college’s 10,000 students downtown.
After figuring that students were likely to lose a discount card and prefer to get messages by texting, the partnership came up with a simple idea that combined both: A service that texts discounts to the phones of people who sign up.
The Kutztown Mobile Coupon is a simple idea: Sign up and get a weekly text with discounts to downtown businesses. Each week’s text includes three or four deals that are only available through the Mobile Coupon. Subscribers don’t have to pay to sign up and can pass the texts along to friends. Businesses pay $25 for each six months they use the service and take turns offering discounts.
Kutztown is the only Main Street community in Pennsylvania offering a service like this, says Geoff Brace, executive director of the Kutztown Community Partnership.
The Kutztown Mobile Coupon has been available for about two weeks. So far it’s drawn more than 80 subscribers and a dozen businesses. “The business owners are excited,” Brace says. “What they understand is that we have to give it a couple of months to see how it works.”
Source: Geoff Brace, Kutztown Community Partnership
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen