We’ve spent the past year talking to independent retailers. From coffee shops to boutique clothing stores, we have asked this question:
Why don’t you have your own app?
There are, after all, a plethora of companies offering off-the-shelf white-label apps for businesses, and the cost is low.
And some businesses use them with varying degrees of success, but most don’t. We know this because today, we all encounter businesses whose loyalty and engagement solution revolves around a printed stamp card or “membership” for a discount, which is nothing more than email capture. We also know the statistics for the open rates on marketing emails!
The answers are interesting:
Customers don’t want more apps, especially apps they will barely use.
Businesses don’t always have the traction or variety of activity that justifies an app.
Even if they get past all that and set up an app, they must maintain it, which is where most new digital initiatives fail.
All these answers we guessed. The one we did not imagine was this:
Businesses are concerned with the consequences of breaching privacy laws, which become ever more draconian (for good reason) worldwide. The consequences of misusing data for marketing purposes are severe, and the printed stamp card or a double opt-in email newsletter feels familiar and safe.
Our challenge was to enable businesses to connect with their customers via their phones, with acceptable push capability but without the need to set up, maintain or ask their customers to install an app.
Additionally, could this be done without sharing private information? The answer was yes because you don’t need to know a customer's name to personalise their experience. You need to know their behaviour.
Meed solves all these problems with ready-made infrastructure that allows a business to create a loyalty program from scratch in under 60 seconds, finishing with a QR code they can display anywhere.
Customers scan that QR code to join the program instantly. The video in this article shows both processes.
Our beta uses a mobile app (one app for all loyalty programs). Still, the commercial launch in the Spring will migrate to a progressive web app, bypassing the App stores and removing almost all friction from the joining process for customers.
Join our waitlist today to be updated on the impending launch of meed.
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