New service offers real-time local mobile offers

Woodland Hills, Calif. – A good politician knows to focus locally, and increasingly retailers are following that lead. In that spirit BrightStreet Ventures, the technology affiliate of shopping center developer NewMark Merrill Companies, has launched BlueList, a real-time mobile offers service for local merchants and nearby consumers.



The service, which launched on July 4, has more than 60 merchants signed up across a range of retail, restaurant, and service categories in Southern California's. Participating brands include Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Cold Stone Creamery, PostalAnnex, Subway, Walgreens, Jersey Mikes, and Sport Clips.



Merchants can post mobile offers in BlueList for $.99 per offer per location per day and time-limited flash deals for $2.99 per offer per day. There is no revenue share and BlueList doesn't have start-up fees, memberships, or contracts for the merchants.



BlueList is the end result of an 18-month outreach effort with local merchants, national chains, and shopping center owner-operators. A central goal of BlueList is being able to work in all kinds of neighborhoods and with all kinds of merchants. This has led BrightStreet Ventures to partner with shopping center operators like Regency Centers, Combined Properties, Westwood Financial Corp., DSB Properties, and NewMark Merrill Companies.



BlueList provides consumers with a proximity app that highlights daily deals at the places around them they already like to shop. Offers are sortable by Nearby, Popular, Category, or Favorites. When redeeming an offer, customers can provide feedback on the experience directly to the merchants themselves.



“While working with our over 1,500 tenants in three states, it became obvious that to be successful, tenants needed to have both an in-store and an on-line presence,” said Sandy Sigal, president and CEO of NewMark Merrill Companies. “The options available to our tenants were either paying a huge revenue share or needing to pay very large monthly commitments, and nothing provided a real-time opportunity for merchants to connect with consumers moment by moment. This led us to come up an inexpensive, localized, and real-time marketing platform that puts our small merchants on the same footing as the larger ones who can afford more expensive on-line platforms.”