Punchcard | Rewarding Loyal and Providing Incentives
Customer loyalty, one of those seemingly innocuous facets of both large and small scale businesses that can be easily overlooked, but generally understood as ultra important to how well a business thrives. You’ve taken care of the 1) product, 2) marketing, 3) overall experience (to garner positive reviews), but then what? How do you guarantee a simply favorable review versus a regularly returning loyal customer?
Though the first three steps can generally be covered in house, there’s an interesting new Pasadena based startup with an app that can help both consumers and business owners with that final crucial point.
We were recently introduced to Punchcard, a great new startup company that’s supported by prominent incubator (also based out of Pasadena), Idealab. There’s a lot to like about the company as we took a look at their product and realized just how much benefit they were giving to multiple parties (consumers and businesses), to provide value for an entire ecosystem on multiple fronts.
The concept behind their company, driven by an iPhone/Android enabled mobile app stems from a couple of basic ideas:
- To help businesses build and maintain a loyal customer base
- To provide incentives for consumers to support their local businesses on a regular basis
- (New product addition): To help businesses track their loyal customer base and proactively provide their own incentives
The act of rewarding loyal customers, an extremely basic and age old business practice has us remembering the antiquated days of carrying multiple frequent shopper cards for various companies and services (usually things that you would go to anyway). In order to get that 10th free car wash, or an extra cup of coffee or tea, you fill your wallet up with your additional pieces of card stock. And if you were ever to lose this coveted item (with the all important value of 8 months of steady arduous loyalty) at that crucial moment before redemption, well… sorry, you’re S.O.L.
With a seemingly simplistic idea developed on an extremely familiar concept, Punchcard enables users to check in at locations, tag their purchase receipts, and collect gifts and prizes either directly through Punchcard (they have an incentives fulfillment system that will mail checks to you) or directly through the vendor as you’re shopping. Value for all parties.
In addition, Punchcard has recently announced the addition of a merchant’s insights tool to complement their customer loyalty app. The new software enables vendors to analyze the purchasing patterns of their loyal customers and gives the ability to actively push specials and offers to their customer base. It enables businesses to get a better idea of who their customers are and how to get them to return.
The video above is of CEO and Founder, Andy Steuer as he demonstrates the ease of use with the app. We actually got the chance to sit down and speak with him to get the full story on himself, the company, and where he sees things moving forward in the customer loyalty space, so be sure to look out for that soon!
Visit Punchcard‘s company website to get a better look at their company. They have a cleanly done testimonials video campaign that gives a great glimpse on the value their app is providing to consumers and businesses.
