All posts by robyn

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Announcing Badges!

Posted by robyn on February 8, 2012

This whole gamification thing as been a hit so the PunchTab team decided we would build out some badges for publishers who wanted to offer social rewards and achievements with badges

We ran a private beta trail of the new badging system and we’re really excited about the results. And now, we’re even more excited to let you know badges are now generally available!

The Urban Shogun, an early PunchTab adopter, is a blog for tech enthusiasts, leveraging all that PunchTab has to offer to increase readership and overall engagement. Their users can earn and unlock badges for visiting, commenting and social sharing and readers can earn points for the same and redeem for cool prizes with a loyalty program.

“Increasing content distribution across social channels is how we drive traffic and boost our reach, by adding PunchTab’s loyalty program, running PunchTab powered Giveaways, and by offering PunchTab badges, we quickly and easily lifted our Facebook and Twitter presence,reaching the networks of our loyal users with zero engineering resources or spend.” -Edwin Khoo, Editor-in-Chief, The Urban Shogun

By adding PunchTab’s badges to your website, blog or ecommerce site you’ll increase social sharing and overall engagement by getting your users to compete for status and social rewards

The results speak for themselves. Users who have added badges are seeing:

  • 100% increase in repeat visitors
  • 50% increase in fans and followers
  • 15% increase in social sharing

Login to your dashboard today and add badges to your site! Since launching last week, 7,000 badges have already been awarded. Get your users in the game!

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Comments: 8 Tags: badges, gamification, loyalty, PunchTab
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New Month, New Rewards!

Posted by robyn on February 7, 2012

Good news, Publishers! We’ve added new rewards to our curtsy default catalog this month. If you’re running a PunchTab loyalty program on your blog, website or ecommerce site and you’re using our default catalog, you’ll notice great new prizes like AMC gift cards and Restaurants.com gift cards. We think your loyal readers will love these new prizes and we’re looking forward to watching your loyalty programs grow.

Remember, you can create your own custom catalog of prizes that are specific to your readers. Just login to your dashboard and get going!

We love your feedback! Come visit us on facebook and follow us on Twitter.

And thanks for being a PunchTab fan!

Comments: 13
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Democratizing Loyalty

Posted by robyn on January 30, 2012

A guest post by Dror Ceder, CEO and Co-Founder of Wibiya

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At Wibiya we’re fortunate enough to be adding new publishers all the time.  But I’m particularly excited to be writing my first blog of the new year for my friends at Punchtab.

You see, we share a similar spirit and passion.  My partners and I created Wibiya so that publishers of all sizes can take advantage of the social revolution.  In seconds, they can copy and paste a magical bit of code. And ta-da, their users can connect with them on Facebook and Twitter, without even leaving their site.

It’s gratifying to see others innovate in parallel ways. Punchtab is a great example of a new company that gives small and mid-sized publishers another powerful advantage, one that’s absolutely critical in today’s world.

Whether users are visiting a blog, or making a purchase on an ecommerce site, there’s a constant drive to for site owners to capture their users’ loyalty.  Users are multi-tasking like mad, they’re omni-curious and with so many exciting places to visit on the web, maintaining their attention can become a challenge.

I’ve become really interested in loyalty marketing – which, of course, precedes the Internet by decades.  The idea behind it is basic to human nature – you can change behavior by rewarding people in positive ways.  (Remember Pavlov?)   How old is it?  Well, back in 1793, a “U.S. merchant started giving out copper tokens which could be collected by the consumer and exchanged for items in the store. This practice caught on and was used by many merchants throughout the 19th century.”

The most successful loyalty concept – the one that changed the game in many ways, and many industries – was the airline frequent flyer program.  Most people think it was American Airlines who created the first program.  They launched theirs back in 1981, and all the others quickly jumped in.  Today, it’s become a giant industry.

The real story, though, is that the first program was actually developed by Texas International airlines.  Except they didn’t have the computer resources of American, and could only offer a punch card program.

In case you thought I was just rambling, the old-school punch card program brings me right back to the PunchTab innovation.  PunchTab makes it possible for small publishers of all kinds to implement loyalty marketing programs for their blog, brand or business – even reaching their customers on their mobile phones.

Think how hard it is for small businesses to compete against giants who have massive databases that can analyze customer intelligence and create loyalty marketing programs based on that information.

PunchTab instantly shrinks the competitive advantage.  Thanks to these guys, sophisticated loyalty marketing tools aren’t the exclusive province of the big guys.  Small companies don’t have to worry about suffering the fate of Texas International.

And I’m sure PunchTab isn’t going to stand still.  They will continue to innovate and add new features, new layers of customer data and “taste map” implications.   Because there’s a natural correlation between loyalty and recommendations.  The more you know about your customers’ tastes and sensibilities, the better your recommendation algorithm can become, and the more sales and loyalty you can generate.  Which is why eBay bought Hunch. dthin.gs/t3RVQQ

So we’re going to be hearing a lot from PunchTab, I bet, as it becomes an expanding platform for customer intelligence.  The future, as many say, is Big Data.  And PunchTab is quietly going to own vast amounts of it, as their embedded loyalty programs capture information on millions of consumer purchases.

Smart guys, smart company.

Comments: 20 Tags: customer loyalty, loyalty, loyalty program, platforn, punch tab, PunchTab, wibiya
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Startups and booze. It’s a thing.

Posted by robyn on December 21, 2011

Leave it to the mobile developer with a gaming background to introduce the alcohol…

As we settle into our new office (updates on that later), we’ve started to piece together all the cliche and necessary components a start up needs… A Nurf armory, a skateboard, a dashboard with up-to-the-second analytics… and now, thanks in part to the holidays, we’ve got adult beverages.

I was out of the office yesterday when I got this:

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Today… We’ve gone multicultural with Scotch and Samosas (Yeah, Scotch and Samosas… so good!):

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So yes we work nutty hours because we really, really care about what we’re doing and how our users feel about it. We’re running a no-fat team where our amazing founders put our Ikea desks together themselves. We don’t have a super fancy office. We don’t have little corporate luxuries. We don’t even have a sink. But what PunchTab does have is a crazy awesome team of talented people that I feel super lucky to work with. And now. We’ve got booze. (Thanks Ben!)

Even amongst the piles of empty monitor boxes and a half put together couch, things are feeling complete around here.

I’m feeling compelled to go girly tomorrow… Mimosas anyone?

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The French intern's induction.

 

Comments: 43
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Big News from Twitter!

Posted by robyn on December 10, 2011

When we read on Mashable about all the cool new things that Twitter is rolling out. We thought we should share:

Along with Twitter’s redesign announcement Thursday, the service has rolled out a new way to let website owners embed tweets that give visitors the ability to reply, retweet and favorite without leaving the page. Twitter users now can place embeddable tweets on their websites by simply using one line of code. A single-click action also lets visitors follow the creator of a tweet… (read more)

We think this whole embedded Tweet thing is pretty dang cool- Twitter’s Brian Ellin walks users through a quick how-to in his recent blog post.

But just like adding a PunchTab Giveaway or Loyalty Program to your website or blog, embedding a tweet is crazy easy and allows your users to engage within a post, follow or favorite a tweet, click on live links and lean more about conversations that are happening beyond your website. It’s as simple as clicking on the “details” link on a tweet, then select “Embed this tweet”.

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You copy and paste the code and, boom:

I just voted for Punchtab as “Breakout Startup of the Year” #MashableAwards on.mash.to/pbWZnh

— Robyn Hannah (@robynhannah) December8, 2011

 

We’re excited about how this is going to make a difference for our PunchTab users and interested in seeing the adoption of these new features.

What are you thoughts? Have you checked out the new features? Plan on using them?

 

Comments: 19 Tags: embedded tweets, Mashable, PunchTab, tech news, Twitter
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Thanks for the nominations! PunchTab is a Mashable Finalist.

Posted by robyn on November 22, 2011

Not gonna lie, *some* of us at PunchTab might have done a little jig of joy upon finding out that we made the list of finalists for the 5th annual Mashable Awards.

“Punchtab, Mashable’s Breakout Startup of the Year”
… It’s got a nice ring to it, huh?

Will you help us make it happen? Vote today and earn 200 points!

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Comments: 9 Tags: Awards, customer loyalty, loyalty, Mashable, PunchTab, social rewards
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Now Available: A PunchTab’s Plugin for Magento

Posted by robyn on November 10, 2011

Add a loyalty program to your Magento eCommerce site, instantly!

From purchases to social sharing, reward-enable any action you want to incentivize your users to take on your Magento eCommerce site.

Adding PunchTab to your Magento store shopping cart means customers earn points for every dollar spent and every time they share your products and store on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Reward users from a custom rewards catalog of discount offers, swag, or other goodies.

Head over to the Magento Extension Marketplace and follow the easy step-by-step instructions to download and install the free PunchTab plugin for Magento. Installation will take just couple minutes.

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Comments: 21 Tags: ecommerce, magento, magento connect, plugin, PunchTab
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PunchTab is proud to be partnered up with North America’s largest Toy Conference!

Posted by robyn on November 10, 2011

Toy Fair NY is in it’s 109th year and we’re pretty dang excited to hop in the virtual sand box with them!

Committed to staying as cutting edge as their vendors and customers, the folks at the American International Toy Fair have created Play Happens, a virtual and social board game that will bridge the online and offline activity of Toy Fair 2012.

This year, the Play Happens game will begin right on their ToyFairNY blog.  Powered by PunchTab, the Toy Fair attendees will start earning points when they get connected and stay engaged before the event even begins.  And when they get there, they’ll be using the PunchTab technology to earn points while they run around the streets of NYC.

For more details check out the Toy Fair NY blog. It’s a fun place to visit.

Play on.

Comments: 13
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PunchTab Raises $4.4 Million in Series A Funding

Posted by robyn on November 8, 2011

We’re beyond excited to share the news… We’ve closed $4.4 million in Series A financing, led by Mohr Davidow Ventures.

PunchTab is now powering more than 3,000 loyalty programs and thousands of giveaways, reaching more than 7.5 million users each month. Allowing bloggers, websites, e-commerce businesses and event organizers to build loyalty and awareness through online, offline and social channels, PunchTab’s platform has helped our uses experience a 50 percent increase in Facebook Fans, up to a 100 percent increase in repeat site visitors, and a 2x increase in online purchases.

We recently announced the debut of our mobile application, PunchTab Local, allowing local businesses to drive in-store traffic and incentivize social sharing of products, services and giveaways. And! We’ve got plug-ins for the most popular publishing sites, along with mobile and web-based developer tools, including an iOS SDK, allowing mobile developers to extend a loyalty program to mobile applications. Most recently, we’ve extended our platform to the e-commerce community with the successful release of a rewards application for the Shopify App Store.

“We’ve been listening to our users, refining products and ensuring that we’re everywhere they need us to be with the most effective implementation possible to drive real loyalty and meaningful engagement,” said Ranjith Kumaran, PunchTab founder. “The Series A funding accelerates our timeline for expanding PunchTab’s full suite of loyalty reward programs and sweepstakes, and allows us to deepen our market reach.”

“We’re confident we’ve hand-picked the best team for PunchTab, and that this round of funding will provide the opportunity to prove the need for loyalty programs in leveraging the lifetime value of user engagement,” said founder Mehdi Ait Oufkir.

Mohr Davidow partner Katherine Barr will join our founders, Ranjith Kumaran and Mehdi Ait Oufkir, on PunchTab’s Board of Directors. Barr brings over 13 years of both operating and venture experience and focuses on the web and mobile sectors at Mohr Davidow. Other companies she works with include: Ticketfly, Root Music, Wordnik, Massive Health, and Visible Measures.

“We are excited to be working with Ranjith, Mehdi and their team,” said Barr. “They have proven to be incredibly nimble to date in scaling their business and building an integrated loyalty platform that is easy to use and drives strong, measurable business value for their customers. The data that they leverage for their business is also compelling, and is something that we look for in many of our web and mobile investments.”

In addition to Mohr Davidow, other investors include the Michael Arrington-backed CrunchFund, former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya’s The Social+Capital Partnership, and Kosmix (now @WalmartLabs) founders Venky Harinarayan, and Anand Rajaraman, who also participated in PunchTab’s seed funding round in February 2011.

Here’s to building the best loyalty and rewards programs and giveaways to make your websites, blogs, apps and e-commerce sites even more successful!

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A post-it attached to an investor's check.

Comments: 53 Tags: chamath palihapitiya, developer tools, Facebook, financing, Funding, iOS, Kosmix, loyalty platform, MDV, Mike Arrington, PunchTab, Series A, social rewards, Uncrunched
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