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Business Insider
Bill Freehling is a business writer for The Free Lance-Star and Fredericksburg.com. This blog is on Fredericksburg-area business. Send an e-mail to Bill Freehling.
Local company launches smartphone app for loyalty marketing
Rob Page
A Spotsylvania County-based technology company has created a smartphone app that aims to improve upon traditional loyalty marketing techniques used by local businesses.
Zope Corp., which President and CEO Rob Page co-founded almost 20 years ago, recently rolled out an app called Zebrareach that is now available on phones powered by Apple or Google operating software.
The basic idea is to offer shoppers and businesses an alternative to traditional printed customer-loyalty cards, which allow shoppers to get punches each time they make a purchase and eventually earn a free item.
With Zebrareach, customers can store loyalty card data on their smartphones using the app. Each user gets a distinct QR code that merchants scan when a purchase is made. Customers can search the app to see what local businesses participate, and then add those to their individual lists.
Zebrareach will offer plastic cards with QR codes to customers who don’t have smartphones.
The app is free for customers. Zebrareach sells its services to businesses, which pay $75 per month to be included in the loyalty program. For an additional fee, businesses can send messages to customers and allow shoppers to make purchases using pre-loaded money. Page thinks the service will help businesses save on printing costs and credit card transaction fees.
Page said there are many competitors offering similar services, but he’s targeting smaller yet healthy markets such as Fredericksburg rather than going after major metro areas. He’s also using sales representatives to call on businesses individually rather than hoping the merchants will find them through Internet ads.
Page saw Zebrareach as a logical extension for Zope, which employs about 18 people and has an office in one of the former Capital One call center buildings in the Lee’s Hill Commercial Center. Zope provides content management services for newspapers and other media organizations.
Page hopes to eventually scale Zebrareach by using sales reps at companies such as newspapers and phone directories that are already calling on small- and medium-sized businesses. A handful of local businesses, mostly in the Southpoint area of Spotsylvania, have already signed up, and Zebrareach is recruiting more.
The name of the company, Page said, comes from the fact that all zebras have unique stripes even though they look similar. The platform is intended to give participating businesses a way to stand out from the crowd.
