Canada Post Getting into Group Buying and Coupons

Hat tip to the folks at OneSpout for this one, it seems that the group buying and eCoupon craze is getting so hot that, wait for it, the post office is jumping into the game too. No, really Canada Post, according to an article in Marketing Magazine, is working with CentrSource SA to develop an ecommerce offering with time sensitive coupons, promotions, and other deals.

“Consumers are looking for a variety of offers, and through this application, businesses can take the same offer they have on [a service like couponing app GroupOn] and make it available to a much wider, more targeted audience,” Tim Skelly, director of product development

Canada Post is certainly doing its best to try to stay relavent in today’s world where people know all the various electronic contact points for a person but their postal address is often a mystery. Canada Post has been doing a lot of work over the years with eBills and secure electronic delivery of documents, but this might be something that consumers can get into. The problem is that this is already a pretty crowded space, to the point where Vancouver now has coupon-group buying offerings just for our local area.

We should see what Canada Post has up its sleeve soon enough. The service is slated to be tested in “two unspecified cities in Western Canada” (I would read as Calgary and Vancouver) this November.