Seattle-based Pirq, a digital loyalty and deals platform provider, is now moving away from the deal space entirely, the company says. In addition to deals, the startup had earlier been testing a digital loyalty program which includes smartphone apps that allow consumers to earn rewards at nearby businesses, and going forward, this will become Pirq’s sole focus. The loyalty platform was previously only available in the Seattle area and San Francisco, but as of this week, it’s opening up nationwide and is dropping to a more affordable price point of $14.95 per month.
“We never had a standalone loyalty product, you had to do the deals,” says CEO James Sun of the transition away from the deals space. In the past, businesses had to offer a certain number of deals per day with savings between 20% and 50%, which consumers could then locate using the Pirq mobile apps.
The company’s claim to fame came last spring, when it was outed as being used by Apple. At the time, Apple had signed on with Pirq to offer food and drink deals to its employees living in the Bay Area by way of Pirq’s iPhone app.
But now, times have changed.
Sun says that when they were making phone calls from their call center pitching their mobile deal engine to small businesses, the hangup rate was over 25%. But when pitching the loyalty solution instead, the hangup rate fell to under 10%.
“SMBs and brick-and-mortar businesses don’t want to do deals anymore,” Sun says.
The company even let go of all of its sales staff surrounding its earlier deal efforts. ”Nobody has ever tried this before without sales staff, it’s a big risk,” he admits. “But it’s working,” he adds. The standalone loyalty solution launched nationwide this week, and already they’ve gained 80 more paying customers in both the U.S. and Canada. The company already had 500 customers on its deals and loyalty platform before, who are now being transitioned to the newer, simpler product.
In recent months, there have been a number of startups that have been working to replace paper “punch cards” at small businesses like restaurants, bars and other shops, with their own digital solutions. (See for example, Five Stars and Belly.) But Pirq’s advantage over some of its competition in this space is that it doesn’t require any additional hardware or tablets in the store, nor does it require point-of-sale integration.
Instead, the process from sign up to launch on the merchant side is meant to take only minutes. The business owners sign up on the web by filling out a short form, then they can print out their temporary signage and merchant Tag (a scannable Microsoft Tag barcode) from their computer. That’s the extent of it. A merchant kit arrives 48 hours later with a few extra goodies including a 5
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