SEO Werkt!

Alright, I think marketers have jumped on the social media gravy train. eMarketer reported on a study from the Association of National Advertisers showing the growth of social media adoption by US marketers since 2007. When asked back in ’07 how many of them were using social media in their marketing, only 20% of marketers raised their hand. Fast forward to today, and a whopping 90% of US marketers claimed social media as part of their marketing strategy in 2012.

That means the medium’s over-saturated, and if your social presence isn’t awesome now any effort you put in will be too little, too late.

Wait, no, that’s decidedly not what it means. Just because these marketers are on social media doesn’t mean they’re using it well. I know Woody Allen said 80% of success is just showing up, but if everyone’s already nailed the showing up part, it’s no longer much of a differentiator. Now marketers using social media have to actually, well, use it. And use it well.

So where do you stand in your competitive social media landscape? Have all of your competitors showed up? Have some showed up and done an amazing job? Are some giving it a half-hearted try? Where do you and your competitors fit on the spectrum of crashing, coasting, or crushing it on social media?

If you don’t know where you stand, it’s hard to identify opportunities to be successful … and eventually creep up and overtake those competitors of yours! So this post will show you exactly how you can figure out where you stand in the competitive social media landscape. You’ll walk away with a quick and simple assessment you can run for your own business, and we’ll even show you how to run it using two big brands as an example — Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. Are you ready to start the process of crushing your competition on social media? Let’s do it.

How to Perform a Social Media Competitive Analysis

To know how much muscle you’ll need to put behind your social media marketing, you need to gauge how you stack up against your competitors. Time to perform a social media competitive analysis! First, grab your list of competitors — ha, like you even have to write them down. Then visit the following social media sites to determine if your competitors have a presence:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest

There may be other social media sites that are important to you — Google+, Quora, or YouTube, for example. If so, you should certainly perform an audit on those sites, too. But we’re going to focus on the sites that we hear marketers worry about the most.

For each social network, you’ll want to note a few key pieces of intelligence:

• Number of fans/followers
• Frequency of posting
• What kind of content is published
• How much content is their own, original content, versus how much is sourced
• Use of network features
• Fan/follower engagement

You should also hop off of the specific social media networks, and visit your competitors’ homepages and other main pages of their websites — particularly their blog, resource centers and any other parts of their website that frequently update with new content. What are you looking for? Social media follow and share buttons, which are a good indication of how seriously they take social media marketing. You’ll also want to note just how much readers are utilizing those buttons. Are there a few shares? Hundreds? Thousands? Are there more on, say, LinkedIn than Facebook? This is the type of information you need to collect to determine which networks are working best for your competitors.

Notice that these measurements are both quantitative and qualitative in nature. And there are, in fact, other things you can look for on social media pages and profiles to determine whether a presence is strong. That’s why we’re going to show you how to apply this analysis to a real-life scenarios — because there are plenty of indicators of a strong social media presence that supersede this more structured framework. You should still, however, revisit these metrics on a monthly basis to see whether both you and your competitors are making progress, stagnating, or falling behind. Remember, social media requires upkeep, and not every brand is cut out to be a social media marketer for the long haul.

Performing a Social Media Competitive Analysis: Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Starbucks

Alright, to make this whole social competitive analysis thing a little clearer, let’s pretend you work for Dunkin’ Donuts’ social media marketing team, and you’re curious how you stack up against Starbucks. Let’s walk through how Dunkin’ Donuts might assess their presence versus Starbucks.

Facebook

First, some quantitative measurements; Dunkin Donuts’ Facebook fan page has about 6,600,000 likes, 132,000 people talking about their page, and 21,000 people who performed a location-based check-in. Starbucks, on the other hand, has about 30,700,600 likes, 217,000 people talking about their page, and 5,400,000 people who performed a location-based check-in. Holy cow, Starbucks is killing Dunkin’ Donuts by numbers alone!

But you’ll still need to dig in a little deeper to see what’s making these pages successful (and where they’re falling short). First of all, both companies are posting visually appealing photos — a must for Facebook now that the new Timeline cover photo takes up more space on the page, and Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm favors content that received higher fan engagement (which visual content does). In fact, Simply Measured reports that visual content on Facebook has seen a 64% increase in engagement since Timeline debuted. I mean, how yummy does this look?

But Dunkin’ Donuts is doing a better job at making that visual content relatable to their fans; many of the photos posted to their Timeline are encouraging fan engagement — like their Get SanDDwich’d campaign, for example. In the long run, that type of content could help drive more fan engagement that will help Dunkin’ Donuts expand their reach on Facebook. If their gamble is right, it’s better long term thinking for their social strategy as they create more loyal fans.

But Starbucks has found their own way to increase engagement using an app in Facebook’s ‘Views and Apps’ section. They have a Starbucks Card that can be e-gifted by their fans to their friends — if that’s not a genius way to get new fans and customer, I don’t know what is. While Dunkin’ Donuts does have an Instagram app available on their Facebook page, Starbucks is also doing a much better job of integrating their Facebook account with their other social media profiles, letting fans pin Pinterest content right from Facebook and even driving them to join Google+ hangouts via status updates.

Dunkin’ Donuts earns a few points back, however, for being a bit more forward-thinking — they’ve integrating gamification into their apps with a Sim City Social game, and a Baseball Shuffle game. They’re also dedicated to promoting their MIB3 campaign, utilizing every means possible to get their fans to download their mobile app and get more “Likes.”

Qualitative and quantitative measure all considered, both Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts are doing a great job on Facebook. But on Facebook, high levels on engagement is critical to stand out in your network’s Timelines, otherwise your growing reach will begin to stagnate. If I worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, I’d say that Starbucks takes the cake. Or muffin.

Pinterest

Before we talk about what’s making Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks successful (or not so successful) on Pinterest, let’s review our quantitative metrics again. Dunkin’ Donuts has 2,866 followers, is following 2,403 pinners, and has 14 boards with 266 pins. Starbucks, on the other hand, has 10,202 followers, is following only 470 people, and has 405 pins across 7 boards.

So it looks like Starbucks is being more efficient — getting more engagement with their Pinterest content without much more content creation required. Why are they seeing this success? Because they’re posting more lifestyle content, as opposed to product-focused content like Dunkin’ Donuts. Starbucks has boards like, ‘Coffee Moments,’ ‘Coffee DIY,’ and even pins beautifully designed quotes to their boards.

Incidentally, HubSpot Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrella’s research shows “DIY,” and quotes are two of the most frequently repinned types of content on Pinterest.

If I worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, I’d be taking cues from Starbucks on the types of visual content that resonate on Pinterest. Clearly they’ve figured out the secret sauce for amazing, repinnable content on Pinterest … so much so that they can see dramatically better results than Dunkin’ Donuts with only marginally more effort.

LinkedIn

Let’s start with the numbers. Starbucks has 106,966 people following their company, while Dunkin’ Donuts only has 988. Yikes.

You may be thinking — who cares? These are B2C companies, and LinkedIn is a B2B social network. It matters big time. One of the easiest ways to grow your social media reach is through your employees! And if your employees aren’t active on social media, you’re going to have a lot of trouble leveraging their super powers. And we won’t even touch the recruiting superpowers LinkedIn possesses!

So let’s take a look at each company page to see if they are doing anything else to make their LinkedIn company profiles better. Frankly … Dunkin’ Donuts simply isn’t. They aren’t proactively posting updates to their page and haven’t built out company tabs. But is Starbucks faring any better? Well, they are proactively posting company updates about who they are hiring, and where. They’ve also built out a Careers tab with both visual and written content that explains why prospective hires might want to work there. Not bad for a B2C company on LinkedIn!

The winner is kind of obvious here, it’s the guy who actually uses LinkedIn … way to go, Starbucks. The thing is, neither social network is totally crushing the other. If I were in Dunkin’ Donuts marketing department, I might think of unique ways to leverage LinkedIn as a B2C company, and be the first of my competitors to conquer the professional network. You know, get it while the gettin’s good.

Twitter

Alright, let’s break down the Twitter numbers for Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts:

Dunkin’ Donuts has tweeted approximately 13,200 times, and Starbucks has tweeted approximately 11,700 times.

Dunkin’ Donuts is following approximately 53,800 people, while Starbucks is following approximately 78,200 people.

Finally, Dunkin’ Donuts has approximately 156,600 followers, while Starbucks has a whopping 2,690,000 followers.

Those numbers are swaying pretty heavily in Starbucks’ favor — they have about 17X as many followers, and are only following approximately 25,000 more people … and with less tweets, to boot. So what’s making them so successful? Well, both brands are tweeting at the same frequency every day and interacting with fans consistently. Starbucks has incorporated visual content into their tweets far more than Dunkin’ Donuts, though, which could be contributing to their wider reach. Starbucks is also making great use of hashtags to engage their audience; and if a hashtag takes off, it’s a quick way to imcrease your follower count by leaps and bounds. Of course it could also be that Starbucks’ account is just older, and they’ve had more time to accumulate that giant network of followers — the Seattle brewers have a whole year on Dunks. There’s an instance of the early bird catching the worm (or more worms, anyway) in real life.

After running an analysis like this for your own business and your competitors, you’ll know where you stand, which means you know how far you have to go. Not only that, but you’ll identify creative ideas to implement in your own social media strategy during this analysis! And when you revisit these metrics every month, it’ll feel good to watch your number creep up faster and faster, until one day … you overtake your competitors completely!

Have you performed a social media competitive analysis? How are you stacking up?

Image credit: pasukaru76

Yesterday Bing announced they have added Foursquare data to the Bing social bar.

It works pretty well.

You search for something local, be it movie theaters, places to eat, barber shops and so on and if someone has something to say about it on Foursquare, Bing may show it.

For example, I searched for Dunkin Donuts and this is what came up:

I am highlighting one of three Foursquare reviews that show up. Note, there are also comments from Twitter and Facebook users for this query in the Bing social bar.

The only issue? This can become a headache for local stores worrying about customers trashing them and it showing up in Bing for searches on their name.

A WebmasterWorld thread has one member saying:

Great now I see this is really going to kick in the ransom demands to a business. “Pay me this or our network will write all these bad reviews”. In the news the other day how companies are getting these pay up to shut us up demands. I am soooo leary of this anyway but the general public makes decisions from these reviews, just wonder how will this play out.

Here is a video:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

SocialTimes recently caught up with Kevin Vine, interactive marketing manager at Dunkin’ Brands, to discuss Dunkin’ Donuts’ social media strategy, which platforms it uses, its most successful social media campaigns and more. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

You’re a rockstar inbound marketer. You spend your time figuring out how to increase your web traffic, generate more leads, and analyze your marketing analytics so you can keep your competitive edge on the web. Come on, what’s more rockstar than that?

There’s just one thing getting in between you and inbound marketing dominance — your competitors. And what you don’t know about your competitors may actually be doing more harm to all your hard work than you realize. But what’s a marketer to do?

Luckily, in the immortal words of Apple, there’s an app for that! It’s called the Marketing Grader app, and with it, you only need about ten minutes every week to stay up to date on your competitors. This ensures you’re doing the work you need to maintain your stellar online presence and slowly overtake that your competitors. Learn how you can monitor your competitors in just 10 minutes a week with this free marketing web app — let’s get started now by setting it up!

Set Up the App

Go to marketing.grader.com and run a free Marketing Grader report — it’ll be done in a flash!

Once you’re in the report, click on the Sign In link on the top, right-hand corner of the application.

If you don’t already have a HubSpot account, Register for a free Marketing Grader Account. If you already have a HubSpot account, sign in!

Enter your competitors’ websites so the tool can start tracking them. For the sake of this example, we’ll pretend we’re Dunkin’ Donuts, and we want to track Starbucks.

Voila! You’ve just set up competitive tracking in the free Marketing Grader app! Now, let’s learn what to do with the information.

Weekly Check-in (5 Minutes)

Now that you’ve set up your Marketing Grader app, set aside 5 minutes each week to log in at marketing.grader.com to see how you are faring against your competitors. When you first log in, you will see the Grade History tab. The Grade History tab lets you see how the Marketing Grade for your website and your competitor’s website has changed over time. To get really specific feedback, click on the By Metric button, as indicated by the blue arrow in the screenshot below.

When you click on the By Metric button, you’ll be able to explore the following metrics Marketing Grader is tracking to get specific ideas for ways to improve:

• Indexed Pages – We all know that Indexed Pages can increase your website visitors by up to 55%, so it’s no surprise that this is a big metric to keep an eye on for your competitors. You don’t want them stealing your traffic, do you?

• Linking Domains – Inbound links are the best way to increase your web authority, but the key is breadth of links rather than depth of links. Make sure your inbound links are evenly distributed across a number of domains to get the most impact!
  

• Facebook Fans & Twitter Followers - Sure, social media is a great way to build a community to evangelize your products and service. But the bigger your social media following, the more eyes on your oh-so-valuable content — that’s what we like to call “reach,” and it’s critical for getting traffic and leads.

All of this nitty gritty analysis is great, but the Marketing Grader report you know and love is still available to you, too. If you want to see that analysis broken down into the three sections that matter to you most — Top of the Funnel, Middle of the Funnel, and Analytics — you can always head back to the Reports tab. In case you forgot, the top of the funnel addresses how you bring in traffic, the middle of the funnel addresses how you convert that traffic into qualified leads, and analytics addresses which marketing activities work, and which do not.

Develop an Action Plan (5 Minutes)

So you’ve set up your Marketing Grader app, you’ve seen the competitive data — now what? Now, it’s time to craft your plan of attack! Start by asking yourself 2 questions:

1) Where did you underperform against your competitors?

2) What actions can you take to improve your performance in these areas?

Let’s use Dunkin’ Donuts as an example. Here in New England, there’s a pretty big loyalty divide between Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks — except on the web. Dunkin’ Donuts has a lower overall Marketing Grade and is lagging behind Starbucks when it comes to indexed pages, linking domains, and Facebook fans.

So what would you do if you were Marketing Director of Dunkin’ Donuts?

That’s right! You would need to beef up your content strategy; I’d get started with more frequent blogging as the most efficient way to solve your problem with indexed pages and linking domains. Think about it — every new blog post you publish is a brand new page for your website, a brand new opportunity to generate inbound links, and a brand new piece of content that you can feed to your social media followers. Talk about a powerful marketing opportunity! And you’ll not only be able to identify this opportunity with the free Marketing Grader app, but track the impact of your efforts in just a few minutes every week.

See? You can handle this! Take your competitors by storm with this new weapon in your arsenal! Now, let’s get started…

Have you started tracking your competitors’ online performance yet?

Image credit: Gamma Man

It started with a tweet from a friend:

Never one to pass a scam, I dutifully clicked and landed on a page with this URL: http://giftinterest.com/coffee_ob9ve

The ticking “packages remaining” counter communicates the sense of urgency.  I am feeling lucky; I am WAY ahead of the Internet crowd. Of 500 available packages, only 74 have been given away and 424 are left. Even if the total number of pins is already in excess of 39K. But who are you going to trust – your lying eyes or an unforgiving counter?

The page beckons: “Pin it”. I pin it. Step 1 – check.

This is my pin. The picture of the coffee cups was not on the page I just pinned. Who cares. Five other schmucks users have already liked it.

I am thinking “Hey, that was easy. I am going to get not just one, but TWO cards”. I open another browser and type in that giftinterest URL again.

Oh, what a stroke of luck. Look, the number of packages remaining – 442 – now is larger than it was a minute ago. Someone must have returned theirs. I refresh the page. The number is different yet again. Eventually, if you let the page just sit there, it will go down to zero. Refresh the page, and it reset to  some random number greater than 0 but smaller than 500.

But whatever. I pin again.

This time, the pinned picture is different.

I figure since I don’t drink coffee anyway two cards are enough. I go back to the giftinterest page and click “Final Step”.

Yes! Here I learn that the value of the card is $100 (but only if you qualify).  The page asks me for my email.

The pop-up window tells me to write “I Love Starbucks” on Facebook. That I can’t do. I love Dunkin’ Donuts. 

The rest of the story is familiar to everyone who has ever taken Free iPad surveys.  You get into the funnel…

… and fill out a bunch of surveys and leave your personal info…

… and at some point you are gently prompted to install some spyware…

Needless to say, it is very unlikely that Starbucks has anything to do with this project. Giftinterest.com was registered on February 24, 2012 in private, and both coffee-blends-now.com and yesusrveymedia.com (the two domains that popped up in various fine prints) are registered to a company in India.

This is it…the Season Finale! And, what a way to end Season 2 of (R)evolution….

In this episode, Yamaha shares what is by far the most expansive view of disruptive technology’s impact on business infrastructure and culture on the show to date. What you’ll see is a genuine discussion with Jeff Hawley and Rick Williams of Yamaha explore how an already successful business is exploring new opportunities to better define the customer experience before, during and after transactions. It comes down to workflow. Nowadays, it either works for you or works against you. Here, Yamaha shares that it needed “to blow up” its existing systems and processes and “start over” to compete more effectively for the future.

I think you’ll enjoy Yamaha’s approach to listen, learn, and engage with customers in their channels of preference. Please watch and share!

Season 2, Episode 16

This episode was recorded during the Salesforce Social Advisory Board meeting in San Francisco. Participants included brand managers from the likes of Disney, Livingsocial, P&G, Nissan, SunTrust, Dunkin Donuts, Get Satisfaction, and VW, we address the need for businesses to not only react to conversations but also lead them.

Season Two:

S2E1: How Mercedes Benz Successfully Uses Social Media to Engage
S2E2: Technorati’s Richard Jalichandra on the State and Future of Social Media
S2E3: Guy Kawasaki on the Art of Enchantment
S2E4: Adly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh on the Social Era of Celebrity Endorsements
S2E5: Filmmaker and Webby Awards Founder Tiffany Shlain
S2E6: Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO on the Future of Broadcast and Web Television – Part 1 of 2
S2E7: Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO on the Future of Broadcast and Web Television – Part 2 of 2
S2E8: Marcel LeBrun of Salesforce Radian6 on the Future of Social Media Monitoring
S2E9: Our Digital Society in the Next 30 Years: An Interview with John Battelle
S2E10: How Social Customer Service is Changing the Culture at Comcast
S2E11: Dunkin’ Donuts Uses Social Media to Improve Customer Relationships and Experiences
S2E12: USA Today’s Jon Swartz on Disruptive Technology’s Impact on Business and Culture
S2E13: Ford’s Jim Farley on the importance of putting your brand in the hands of customers
S2E14: How Suntrust Uses Social Media to Engage Customers and Comply with Regulation
S2E15: Nissan Embraces Social Media to Improve Customer Experiences and Foster Advocacy

Season One on YouTube

Now on iTunes!

Facebook credits are a virtual currency that can be purchased with a credit or debit card to buy virtual goods in games and apps on the Facebook platform. However, never before have they been earned through purchasing goods offline. That is until Plink — a credits-based loyalty program that rewards Facebook users for dining at chain restaurants.

Launched last month, Plink was created to help restaurants and offline retailers reach and motive their customers online. To start using the program, consumers log in via their Facebook account, register the debit or credit they use when eating out and select the restaurants and shops they visit most. Plink then rewards diners with credits for each transaction made at one of those participating stores. Designed with ease of use in mind, no paper coupons or staff training are required. Credits can be used to buy music downloads, movies and TV episodes, as well as virtual goods in Facebook games. The program is free for consumers to join and Plink receive a payment from their partners — such as Quiznos, Taco Bell and Dunkin’ Donuts — each time a registered card is used in their restaurant or shop. Consumers can choose from more than 25,000 participating venues across the US.

The Plink platform taps into the potential of 800 million Facebook users, rewarding them for their offline purchases and motivating loyal behaviour. With 50 percent of purchases still made offline, inspiration here to improve your customer rewards scheme?

Website: www.plink.com
Contact: www.plink.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=main.contactUs

Spotted by: Raymond Neo

Related Ideas:

1. Loyalty program rewards customers for previous purchases
2. In Singapore, loyalty card rewards coffee fans for being disloyal
3. In the US, iPhone app sends real-time offers to shoppers in-store

In this episode of (R)evolution, Nissan’s David Mingle, Director of Customer Management and Erich Marx, Director of Marketing join me for a refreshing conversation about social media’s impact on business transformation, customer experiences, and building an adaptive business model to learn and evolve based on new opportunities.

We explore Nissan’s approach to new media for not only marketing, but also how the company uses social media to invest in and shape the customer experience over time. Having both David and Erich on the show offered a 360 view of the customer and also demonstrates how organizations must rethink the customer journey before, during, and after transactions to ultimately define and lead it. I must say that I appreciate the honesty and full transparency in this discussion. It shows why Nissan is on the road to successful engagement.

At one point at about 1:54 in the discussion Erich Marx shares how the pact between leadership, customer management, and marketing at Nissan is creating a culture of exploration and innovation, “…understanding that we’re defining as we go what our ability is to play and play effectively in this space, a willingness to talk about what’s possible, a willingness to invest…to me, that’s leadership in the space right now…and, a trust that we will deliver ROI and value to the company.”

Season 2, Episode 15

This episode was recorded during the Salesforce Social Advisory Board meeting in San Francisco. Participants included brand managers from the likes of Disney, Livingsocial, P&G, Nissan, SunTrust, Dunkin Donuts, Get Satisfaction, and VW, we address the need for businesses to not only react to conversations but also lead them.

Season Two:

S2E1: How Mercedes Benz Successfully Uses Social Media to Engage
S2E2: Technorati’s Richard Jalichandra on the State and Future of Social Media
S2E3: Guy Kawasaki on the Art of Enchantment
S2E4: Adly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh on the Social Era of Celebrity Endorsements
S2E5: Filmmaker and Webby Awards Founder Tiffany Shlain
S2E6: Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO on the Future of Broadcast and Web Television – Part 1 of 2
S2E7: Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO on the Future of Broadcast and Web Television – Part 2 of 2
S2E8: Marcel LeBrun of Salesforce Radian6 on the Future of Social Media Monitoring
S2E9: Our Digital Society in the Next 30 Years: An Interview with John Battelle
S2E10: How Social Customer Service is Changing the Culture at Comcast
S2E11: Dunkin’ Donuts Uses Social Media to Improve Customer Relationships and Experiences
S2E12: USA Today’s Jon Swartz on Disruptive Technology’s Impact on Business and Culture
S2E13: Ford’s Jim Farley on the importance of putting your brand in the hands of customers
S2E14: How Suntrust Uses Social Media to Engage Customers and Comply with Regulation

Season One on YouTube

Now on iTunes!

Buy a hamburger and get rewarded with Facebook Credits to spend on a virtual cow. That’s the mouth-watering promise of startup Plink, which is launching a virtual currency loyalty rewards system for restaurants. You register a credit card with Plink, and then when you make purchases at Taco Bell, 7-Eleven, Dunkin Donuts, or one of Plink’s other clients you’ll get Facebook Credits automatically deposited into your account. As demand for Facebook Credits to spend on social games and media increases, expect more virtual currency incentive companies like Plink to pop up.

The reason virtual currency microincentives work is because they are so cheap to distribute, and users perceive their value as higher than their cost. Mailing someone a coupon or rebate can cost enough to prohibit small incentives for small actions and purchases. Since it essentially costs nothing to drop Credits into someone’s Facebook account, businesses can cost-effectively reward users with just a few Credits, which typically cost $0.10 each.

Those cheap Credits power entertainment by letting users continue playing their favorite social games or buy virtual goods and powerups. Many games accept Credits, but few users actually pay, and those that do may feel guilty about it. This and some A/B tests I’ve heard show users prefer a reward of 50 free Credits to $5 off a purchase show users may irrationally value virtual currency at higher than its actual cost.

That means incentive companies like Plink can be more persuasive giving away Credits than money, and that margin between perceived and true value turns into profit. Since late 2010, Ifeelgoods has been helping online businesses reward users with Credits for signing up for email lists, following Twitter accounts, and making ecommerce purchases. Plink is targeting offline restaurants instead with a very valuable business proposition.

Plink helps businesses draw new customers and increase loyalty with a system that requires no point-of-sale integration, hardware, staff training, or up-front fees, Plink told AllFacebook. Rewards are distributed automatically when customers pay with a registered credit card, and clients pay Plink a percentage of what its users spend.

The only friction for users comes in with registering a credit card. Since Plink needs read-access to your purchases so it can see when you make purchases at its clients, you have to log in to your online banking account. While totally secure, this process could cause significant drop-off during sign up.

Still, Plink’s idea is brilliant. It has the beneficiary trifecta, where restaurants drive sales, users get rewards without having to change their behavior, and Plink takes a cut. Businesses have been searching for a better loyalty system, but most come with the barrier of complicated in-store redemption. Plink’s system could easily expand to support retail or any other type of businesses. At that point, it could be taking a small percentage of a huge volume of sales with little overhead. Doesn’t that sound tasty, investors?