Most advertisers interested in running mobile campaigns are caught up in wondering when the channel will break big: amass large audiences for mobile Web or mobile video, build the interconnections to launch nationwide campaigns easily, and rack up a large base of users willing to accept ads and promotions on their phones.

By contrast, Web startup 8coupons.com is content to keep things small and localized—at least for now. The site launched last year as a way to bring the promotional possibilities of Web 2.0 and mobile marketing to the boutiques, bodegas and one-store businesses in Manhattan’s Soho and East Village neighborhoods.

“We wanted to provide a platform that would let local businesses—restaurants, bars, dry cleaners, salons—would have an opportunity to take advantage of today’s Internet technologies and mobile marketing,” says Landy Ung, the 20-something entrepreneur who co-founded the business in August 2007 and serves as CEO. “For a local restaurant, a mobile marketing campaign is cost-prohibitive. Our network gives them an affordable way to get mobile coupons to the customers most likely to be able to use them.”

On the customer side, visitors browse available discounts at the www.8coupons.com Web site. If they find an offer they like, they click a link, enter their mobile carrier and cell phone number, and agree to the terms of service. The offer is sent to their phone as an SMS text message that they can then redeem simply by showing it to the retailer.

If they prefer, those users can print off the coupons for paper redemption. They can also opt in to have deal offers from their chosen local businesses e-mailed to them or sent via RSS feed to their personal My Yahoo! or iGoogle pages. The deals are also available via a desktop widget from SpringWidget.com.

Someday, 8coupons will also be able to push SMS deal alerts directly to users’ mobile phones. But right now the company’s main mobile concern is reassuring users they’re not opening themselves up to a world of mobile spam by using a mobile coupon. After all, the Web site points out, they’re really sending those coupons to themselves. No one is retaining their phone number or other data without permission.

“Everyone is all excited about the possibilities of mobile marketing,” Ung says. “But our whole business is built on the realization that it’s ultimately up to the consumer. Quite frankly, many consumers are not ready for the full potential of mobile marketing. Very often we’ll get a first-time user printing out a paper coupon. But then when they come back, they’re likely to adopt the mobile coupons. They’re just reluctant to risk their privacy until we’ve proven that we’re responsible.”

The site has built in social features that let it act as both a community and a sales force. A “Top 8 Deals” tab uses a combination of user feedback and click rates to find the 8 most popular discount offers at any given moment. Users can also e-mail coupons to a friend, getting the word out quickly about deals they like particularly.

8coupons also offers a Facebook “Me Coupons” application that lets registered users of the social net create their own coupons to send to friends.

Users who want to register for e-mail alerts at the site are eligible to take part in exclusive “Ocho Loco” (“Crazy Eight”) offers, time-limited discounts that sell cocktails or burgers for 8 cents, pedicures for 88 cents or restaurant entrees for $8. A promotion in early June offered 8-cent ice cream scoops from one single franchisee’s Cold Stone Creamery store on Astor place—on June 8, of course.

Other deals on the site are equally neighborhood-specific, from a free order of potato pancakes at Friedman’s Deli to 88 cents for baklava from Snacklicious Falafel in the East Village.

The coupons are searchable on the Web site in a number of ways, including special tabs for restaurants, entertainment, spas and salons, services and shopping. Visitors can browse a tag cloud of the most popular keyword searches. (“Free” is the leading keyword at press time, with “hookah bar”, “hair removal” and “belly dancing” coming in mid-pack and “museum” down at the bottom.)

They can also search coupons by New York neighborhood; since its launch in the East Village 8coupons.com has grown to take in offers from most of Manhattan from TriBeCa to the Upper East and West Sides and has even jumped the Hudson to Hoboken.

Some of that growth has come from users getting their favorite local merchants to open accounts with the Web site, permitting them to start setting up coupons on the fly in return for a flat fee. The users get an $88 dollar referral fee, and the marketers get a self-service platform that lets them bang out a quick time-limited coupon without much effort.

“Say a restaurant owner is noticing a slow afternoon,” Ung says. “he can log into his account and use our platform to shoot out a coupon offer, knowing that a local customer base will see it and use it.”

From the merchant end, 8coupons’ biggest challenge is finding ways to help them train their staff how to treat mobile coupons. “The merchants and owners are totally on board,” Ung says. “The problem comes when you’re dealing with a wait staff or sales staff that might have high turnover. Many employees have been on the job a short time and have never had to deal with a mobile coupon before.”

And if too many users find their mobile deals turned down by dubious employees, the damage to the overall user experience could spell disaster for 8coupons’ business. So the firm sends out a packet of welcome materials that merchants can use to train their workers in how to handle a mobile coupon. It also tries to get the mobile numbers of all the employees working in any business that opens an account with 8coupons.com—with permission, of course.

“We then send them some coupons, to let them use them in other businesses and see how the process works,” Ung says. The company also lets customers get in touch via instant message in order to learn about and correct redemption problems or other issues as soon as possible.

Some things about New York seem to make it particularly suited to 8coupons’ business approach. For example, New York neighborhoods are sized to a radius of about 10 blocks, with a good distribution of all the 8coupons.com merchant categories in each. So users are likely to find a number of different coupons available for their area.

Nevertheless, Ung says, there is potential to spread the model to other urban areas around the country. That’s the long-term goal for 8coupons.com. For the rest of the year, however, the company will concentrate on spreading to the other boroughs of its Gotham home base, and then propagating in other pockets of the tri-state area.

Why the constant stream of eights in the name, the deals and the special Ocho Loco offers? Ung points out that in many Asian traditions, the number is twice as favorable as the lucky number 4. Hence the company’s launch date last year—Aug. 8, or 8/8–and its even more auspicious upcoming first birthday on the same day in this year of ’08.

Who knows? If it’s good enough for the Beijing Olympics, which hold their opening ceremonies that same day at 8:08 p.m. local time, then maybe enlisting the power of eight isn’t so crazy after all.