Chatterfly: online rewards for local businesses

Customer retention is a key to success for just about any business, and the best organizations are constantly looking for ways to keep their customers coming back. Airlines, hotels and car rental companies were some of the first to employ reward programs as a way to ensure the loyalty of their best customers. Now Chatterfly is looking to bring the practice into the digital age for local businesses.

"Chatterfly is a mobile-based rewards platform for local businesses," explains Charles Michael Yim, CEO of Chatterfly.com. "We just launched in March, and the beta is picking up some traction."

Over 150 businesses in the Bay Area are using Chatterfly, and the company hopes to expand nationwide soon. Retailers who want to enroll in the program go through a short, 60-second signup process during which they provide their name, credit card and other basic information. Chatterfly suggests optimal rewards for each retailer's particular vertical and completes the process within four to five minutes. Shortly thereafter, customers can begin accruing points.

"A consumer can walk into any local business within their neighborhood," says Yim, "and they can earn points for purchases and also social activities at the actual physical venue. Once they earn these points, they can rack them up and redeem them for products and services locally, or they can kick them up and redeem with Chatterfly for what we refer to as global rewards."

Chatterfly offers two lines of products. Its mobile apps are consumer facing and are currently available for the iPhone and the Android. Consumers use these apps to accrue points for purchases and social activities, such as checking in on Foursquare or sharing pictures or videos from a local business with friends. For businesses, there is a web portal that gives retailers access to a full dashboard of analytics that allows them to monitor customer purchases, all the rewards that are redeemed, and other activities. This portal is strictly business facing for now, but eventually Chatterfly plans to open up a consumer portal as well.

"We're after the long term—the loyal customer that comes back [repeatedly]," explains Yim. "What the Chatterfly product does is it focuses on that particular segment, and really what we offer is a retention mechanism solution—being able to keep your customers sticky, enhancing that relationship, giving them a compelling reason to come back again and again and again."

More info:

Chatterfly web site: http://chatterfly.com/
Chatterfly blog: http://blog.chatterfly.com/
Chatterfly profile on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/chatterfly
Chatterfly profile on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Chatterfly

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• chatterfly
• customer retention
• rewards