One of our Top 10 Small Business Trends for 2012 is Loyalty Meets Daily Deals, which we describe as:
We think 2012 will see daily deals morph beyond shotgun-style attempts to bring in new business to more targeted methods and systems designed to attract, retain and reward loyal customers.
The startup Womply is an example of this shift. The company’s Loyalty Cloud product provides a simple way for merchants to reward loyal customer. It's very straight forward:
- Merchants decide on an incentive for their customers.
- Customers pay the merchant just like they normally would with their credit or debit cards.
- Womply tracks customer progress toward rewards and credits their debit or credit cards when the customer reaches award levels.
For example Cashion's Eat Place, a restaurant in the trendy Adams Morgan neighbor of Washington D.C., offers loyal customers a $35 rebate for every 3 visits. The rebate is applied to the credit or debit card the customer uses to pay the bill.
BTW I've had the opportunity to dine at Cashion's and agree with the New York Times, who called it "funky-elegant". Great food, fun neighborhood - but I digress.
A big advantage of this program is except for initial registration it doesn't require the merchant or customer to change how they do business. Customers pay their usual way and the merchant collects in their usual way.
This frictionless approach to loyalty programs is appealing to both customers and merchants and we expect to see other vendors quickly copy this approach.
Womply is available today in Washington D.C. and more cities will be supported in the coming months.
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