1-800-Flowers.com just hit 500,000 Facebook fans and today is commemorating the social media milestone by pitching free shipping, no service charge and a $10 Zynga gift card via Facebook Offers. At press time, more than 2,000 had claimed the special, which the e-commerce player is pushing with ads on the social site. "Claims," in the Facebook marketing vernacular, are financially noncommittal—no immediate purchase required—and involve an email immediately sent to the consumer who can then redeem the coupon-like offer during a window of time normally lasting weeks.

The current 1-800-Flowers campaign follows up a similar effort it ran for Mother’s Day that produced 12,300 claims. Half of those claims derived from Facebook ads, said Amit Shah, director of mobile and social for the Carle Place, N.Y.-based flowers brand, while the other half came from proliferation in newsfeeds.

Compared to Mother’s Day 2011, when the brand

merely ran ads on the social site, Shah said, Facebook sales were through the roof for this year’s maternal-minded gift-giving holiday. It’s made his company a believer in the seven-month-old Facebook Offers platform from Mark Zuckerberg’s digital giant.

“The half-life of the redemption of the claims is very quick,” he said. “It’s in the matter of days—not weeks. It’s just a little more socially appealing, I would say, compared to $10 off in your email inbox. I know my Gmail box is filled with like 50 different deals.”

Coastal.com And Rosetta Stone Vouch As Well

1-800-Flowers isn't the only brand touting Facebook Offers, seemingly due to business-oriented advantages over other players in the deals space, which market research firm BIA/Kelsey this week said would reach $5.5 billion by 2016. Unlike Groupon, LivingSocial and Google Offers, Facebook doesn’t take a sales cut for redeemed vouchers. Facebook...(Read more)