Dive Brief:
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Online coupon site RetailMeNot Inc. Tuesday raised its yearly guidance, saying that revenue will only decline 9% for the year, to between $240 million and $242 million, compared to its earlier projection of expected revenue of $231 million to $239 million.
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Q3 profit of $343,000, or a penny a share, was down 86% year over year, from $2.5 million, or five cents a share.
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Q3 revenue declined 7.2% to $52.4 million, besting the company’s projected $47.5 million to $50 million for the quarter. The coupon site said that mobile transaction net revenue rose 55% in Q3 and helped by adding 9% of Q3 revenue.
Dive Insight:
RetailMeNot is struggling somewhat as online coupons have failed to catch on in a profound way, ceding little ground even to paper coupons, even among millennial consumers.
"Our transition from a desktop to a mobile business is far from struggling," RetailMeNot VP of communications Brian Hoyt told Retail Dive Tuesday morning. "Like other Internet companies, we're looking find ways to monetize our growing mobile audience. We're making steady progress growing our in-store business and monetizing our mobile traffic via advertising. We know we have more work to do, but we're executing on our plan as traffic shifts to mobile."
Mobile wallets could present another challenge in the coupon space. Retailers have new opportunities in mobile wallets to offer their customers, especially their more loyal ones, many deals directly. Mobile wallets could be a boon for retailers, who could leverage their capabilities through personalized coupons and loyalty programs, and could erode the engagement efforts of sites like RetailMeNot, unless such sites could also figure out a way to make payments a part of their transactions, a possibility that for them seems remote.
Still, mobile is the good news part of RetailMeNot’s report. The number of Q3 visits fell 1% to 159.7 million, while monthly mobile unique visitors totaled 67.2 million, up 41% from a year earlier. On desktop, visits fell 19% to 92.5 million.
