Kyle
Charlottesville Virginia startup Cardigin isn’t about rewards games, checking in, or loyalty cards. Their loyalty platform gets to the roots of what customers are actually doing in their favorite establishments and then allows businesses to play right into those trends to keep loyalty customers coming back for more.
In the past two years we’ve all seen that loyalty and rewards startups are literally a dime a dozen, however Cardigin’s founder and CEO Rob Masri saw that everyone was doing it wrong.
“We witnessed first-hand local establishments attempting a myriad of conventional approaches to their loyalty programs – buy-10-get one-free punch cards, keychain fobs, paper coupons, social media, check-in games and daily deals – none of which produced significant profits or customer retention.” Masri told us in an interview.
Cardigin has an iOS app and an Android app as well but Masri knows there are still a lot of customers out there that either aren’t using their smartphones for things like loyalty or are much more comfortable without fumbling with technology while grabbing a latte. That’s why businesses using Cardigan can sign customers up with just their phone number. Once the establishment has the customers phone number they can start earning loyalty rewards real rewards that they will use.
Check out the rest of our interview with Masri below.
What is Cardigin?
Cardagin has the modern answer to an age-old question – how can a business create real loyalty with its customers, so they keep coming back over time? At Cardagin, we help businesses worldwide identify and retain their best customers. By combining our knowledge and expertise in the field of loyalty and retention with our powerful technology, we have developed a business-centric customer loyalty and rewards platform that connects customers with local commerce. Retailers can now know who their customers are by name, frequency of visit, amount spent, favorite location, and redeemed rewards and offers.
Consumers are rewarded with points for dollars spent and provided VIP offers at their favorite local spots for their continued loyalty to local establishments.
In layman’s terms, how does it work?
There are many methods a business can use to acquire customers. However, there are very few outlets a business can use to retain and create one-to-one relationships with those customers. Cardagin now makes this possible.
Using the Cardagin platform, businesses can set up rewards and offers that make sense for their specific business goals. Cardagin is not a “check-in” game or a daily deal program, but rather it tracks actual spending that a customer does with a business. While Cardagin offers a free downloadable app for iPhone and Android devices, customers can also easily participate by simply providing a phone number (just like at the grocery store) to the merchant to begin earning rewards.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Rob C. Masri, Cardagin’s founder and CEO, grew up in a small town in Virginia, where his exposure to the power of customer loyalty began. Rob’s family owned and operated a small restaurant and depended on the loyalty of its customers to keep the doors open for more than 30 years. While Rob’s parents used word of mouth loyalty to reward its most valuable customers, Cardagin pairs the same age- old technique with modern technology.
Prior to founding Cardagin, Rob cultivated an extensive background in emerging technologies and law, and most recently served as Chief Development Officer for the University of Virginia’s Law School Foundation, where his core competency was his ability to foster loyalty among the alumni base.
While Rob brings a wealth of technology and customer loyalty knowledge to Cardagin, the entire founding team was hand selected by Rob to add extensive expertise across various business functions, including technology, sales, marketing, legal and finance to the operation and growth of the Company, which has resulted in our company’s growth and success so far.
Where are you based? What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?
Cardagin is based in Charlottesville, Va. The State of Virginia has a long history of developing some of the greatest technology innovators and inventions of our time. That history attracts tremendous talent from all over the world, making it a strategic location to headquarter our company.
Specifically, Charlottesville boasts a vibrant, consumer-centric, small business- friendly culture due to its close proximity to the University of Virginia. The community provided a bountiful opportunity to pilot and test the loyalty technology before launching in larger cities across the country and internationally.
How did you come up with the name Cardigin?
The name Cardagin came from constantly overhearing customers fumbling around looking for a punch card or coupon to earn points and discounts
“Oh, now where is that card again?” or, “I can’t find my card, can I get another card again?” is what they’d say. With Cardagin, a customer need never remember or ask for another card again.
What problem does Cardigin solve?
While there are many ways for businesses to acquire new customers, there are very few ways to engage and retain those customers. Business owners are overwhelmed with existing customer acquisition outlets that focus on mass broadcast and steep discounts without providing tools for engaging customers and building ongoing customer relationships. Not every customer is created equal. Cardagin helps businesses segment and tier their customer base in order to target their marketing dollars and reward the precious few that cultivate their VIP club.
What’s your secret sauce?
Cardagin sits at the crossroads of mobile loyalty, mobile commerce, mobile marketing and CRM, providing a platform designed to help businesses identify and retain their best customers. Retail merchants – from large brands to small mom and pop shops – can now know who their customers are by name, frequency of visit, amount spent, favorite location, and redeemed offers. By implementing a customer rewards program using Cardagin, these merchants are able to: (1) engage a captive audience of customers who care about their business; (2) establish a new form of currency that can be used to respond to customer complaints and to incentivize customer behavior; and (3) create a customer database that can be used to increase the value of the enterprise.
Cardagin offers retail merchants a self-service mobile platform for connecting with their customers. At its core, Cardagin’s mobile loyalty platform allows merchants to award points, track rewards and offer redemptions, identify customers, and analyze spending data. In addition, merchants gain insight into their customer base by using Cardagin’s analytics dashboard and reporting tools. Lastly, Cardagin’s mobile alerts (“Shouts”) leverage the immediacy of mobile technology to provide a direct line of communication between businesses and their customers via in-app notifications.
What’s one challenge you’ve overcome in the startup process?
It was often a tough challenge for our sales force to reach the key decision makers in the SMB (small and midsized business) space – owners of shops, restaurants, and other local businesses. These folks are extremely busy running their day-to-day operations, and while they all want the best way to attract and retain customers, they were reticent to commit additional time investment for a new initiative, having had negative experiences in the past trying some of the conventional approaches to customer loyalty.
But Cardagin has overcome that challenge by partnering with trusted community organizations that are leaders within the local community. BID (Business Improvement Districts) organizations, Local Chambers of Commerce, and SMB advocacies have proven to be powerful allies in helping Cardagin effectively and easily integrate the platform into existing businesses across the country.
Developing this channel has been terrific for all parties involved. For the Chambers and local SMB organizations, Cardagin goes hand-in-hand with their core mission: helping local businesses stay in business. For our local business owners, with Cardagin they have the best cutting-edge way to increase profits, and build loyalty and long-term value for their businesses. Cardagin has a very high retention rate with those who experience the benefits of the platform because of its ease-of-use and incredible return for time invested.
What’s next for Cardigin?
Cardagin has had tremendous success working with local businesses, with more than 2,000 business locations using the platform and over 570,000 consumers using the app. Based on this success, some mid-sized franchises and large corporations have already approached Cardagin to license its API and build a white-label version of the mobile app. To our knowledge, Cardagin is the only mobile loyalty platform that makes its API available for license to app builders, marketing companies and other third parties. In addition to the enterprise opportunity, we have closed deals with international sales and marketing companies and have already begun expanding abroad.
You can find out more about Cardigin here at cardigin.com
