Plum District receives $20M funding, buys Chatterfly

General Catalyst Partners, Comcast Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Duke University back the deal

Mom-oriented daily deal platform Plum District is having a very busy day. The company secured a $20 million C round funding Wednesday, and announced the acquisition of digital loyalty and rewards platform Chatterfly, and discount service for kid-friendly products DoodleDeals.

Investors in the San Francisco-based Plum District include General Catalyst Partners, Comcast Ventures, Duke University, and Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield, & Byers. Concurrent with the investment, former Walmart.com CEO Raul Vasquez will join the board of directors. This round brings Plum District's total funding to $30 million.

Daily deal sites like Groupon and Living Social are all the rage these days, but Plum Distirct has a unique perspective. Plum District is a local commerce platform "for moms, by moms." Deals offered on the site are geared toward making mom's lives easier and more fun.

The site's mom-oriented services offer an additional boon, since mom sites are currently another highly popular Internet trend. Sites like Juice in the City, EcoMom, and Babble Media have similarly capitalized on the "mom factor."

Plum District intends to expand through the use of Chatterfly's consumer rewards technology, which basically provides a digital version of the old rewards punch card system, with some added benefits. In addition to digitizing consumer rewards accounts, Chattterfly also adds a social networking element, by rewarding customers based on how often they mention a given business on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Plum District has also indicated that it will soon be implementing a mobile solution for Chatterfly's reward technology.

Plum District also uses a "district consultant" system, which hires moms in a given area to interface with local vendors to work out marketing programs customized to the region and the product o service involved. And who better to know how to maximize the potential benefit for moms than the moms themselves, right?

Plum District is currently in 27 "districts" in the U.S., employing 300 "mom consultants."

And speaking of market, the acquisition of the New York-based DoodleDeals, the similar services of which had been a direct competitor with Plum Market, was a move to broaden their clientele further into the east coast market where DoodleDeals is based.

The acquisition of DoodleDeals also provides the Plum District with exclusive distribution through DoodleDeal's partnerships with Time Out New York Kids, What To Expect, and Diapers.com.