Swipely, which allows local businesses to manage customer loyalty programs using credit card purchase data, has expanded its loyalty system, according to CEO Angus Davis.
Swipely helps local merchants accept payments, understand customers, and grow sales, Davis told Loyalty 360.
“We started out by unlocking the data in the payments network, giving merchants powerful analytics and profiles that reveal the customer behind every transaction,” Davis said.
Swipely is live on more than 50 leading POS platforms and its merchants conduct business in about 100 cities and towns throughout the U.S.
“Our Spring 2013 release adds tools merchants requested to help them understand customers not just through the lens of payment data, but also online marketing data, to see how online marketing efforts impact offline sales,” Davis explained. “In other words, local restaurants, salons, and stores don’t care about likes, tweets, or fans if they don’t translate into real world sales and loyal customers.”
Merchants don’t want to log into a multitude of different services to understand customer reviews, ratings, payment trends, and marketing campaigns, Davis said. Swipely’s expanded credit card-based loyalty system gives small businesses a comprehensive view of online marketing, in-store revenue, and customer reviews tied to specific campaigns.
“It saves them time and helps them engage with the right consumers at the right time,” Davis explained.
The new major features include:
Campaign Insights - measure how event-based campaigns impact sales, and monitor which customers return over time.
Reputation Management - monitor your reputation across Yelp, Google, and OpenTable, and compare it to nearby businesses.
Davis said Swipely strives to make things easier for merchants -- not only to understand their customers, but to turn those insights into actions. In the future, Davis expects Swipely to add more data and expand with more features.
“Our vision is to be an integrated online operating system for local commerce -- payments, analytics and marketing tools are only the beginning,” Davis said.
One of the key ideas behind Swipely is not changing merchant or consumer behavior.
“Competing solutions require new hardware and software, new staff operations, and new ways for consumers to pay,” Davis said. “With Swipely, merchants accept payments with systems they already have and consumers pay with cards they already use. More value, no new costs, no new behavior changes - this is key because merchants don’t have lots of money or lots of time -- and they need to focus on growing their business rather than learning new tools.”