Wanderful Media Revamps Find&Save With Personalization in Mind

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wanderfulWhen we last checked in with Wanderful Media, the company financed by $27 million from media companies including Advance Digital, Belo Corp., Community Newspaper Holdings, Cox, Scripps, and Gannett was trying to remake the $4 billion circulars market.

Today, the company continues to chase that market and is launching a revamped version of its Find&Save product that includes discovery mechanisms, list-making features, and plenty of other social concepts. “Consumers expect shopping and circulars to adapt to the way they interact with the world,” CEO Ben T. Smith, IV, said in a release. “Find&Save is opening the door for local retailers to connect with their customers in compelling new ways. Our goal is to drive more shoppers into the store, more often.”

In a conversation with Street Fight, Smith and Dave Thomsen, EVP of product design, explained the idea further.

“We’re building toward a completely personalized experience, like Netflix,” Thomsen said. “When you’re logged in, you get a unique circular that’s customized for you based on what we know about you.” In short, Wanderful’s new product will understand what you have looked for in the past and show deals you might be interested in now.

One of the key features is the ability to make lists. This was originally not going to be part of the product, but Wanderful designers found that consumers wanted to be able to save deals in one place and send them to a smartphone for viewing. Additionally, other users can see another person’s lists, which gives Find&Save more shareability and adds to the “lean back” experience on a tablet.

The company plans to help big brands like Target and Macy’s as well as small businesses create, curate, and explain deals through use of all the data they collect. “We can share with retailers so they can get smarter as well,” Smith said.

Smith was coy about the number of people using the original Find&Save product, but he said he believes the new launch is the start of something much bigger: “We had a beta product that we evolved from a legacy product. We’re continually launching new features on a weekly or biweekly basis, and plan to open firehose on promotion in the coming months.”

The key to success, obviously, will be Wanderful’s ability to funnel and highlight deals for consumers. If they can successfully show these, people will continue to use the service on a regular basis. The company has high hopes they will succeed in doing so, using the reams of data to suss out the best of what’s around. “We can tell people: ‘Actually, this really is a great deal,'” Smith said.

If that’s in fact the case, Find&Save could be one of the best deals around.

A retailer’s page:

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A view of the public profiles:

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Noah Davis is a senior editor at Street Fight.

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