Irish Start-Up Launch New Version of Social Rewards Platform

Irish start-up Popdeem today launched their newest version of their social rewards platform. Popdeem is a social marketing platform which was founded in 2012 by Richard Whelan and Gavin Hayes. The concept of the start-up is to allow brands to reward their customers for sharing local experiences. By rewarding customers for sharing these experiences on social networks, brands can turn their loyal customers into brand advocates. The platform offers a set of social marketing tools for brands to engage users at physical locations. Brands can run mobile promotions that incentivise users to share content on social networks at specific venues. Customers can check-in or share photos on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram at a venue to redeem rewards.

They've added some great features to improve B2B and user experience to include Twitter integration to reward customers for sharing tweets with specific hashtags in-store or at an event (previously only Facebook integration to reward customers for check-ins and photos). A custom profiling tool to tailor rewards based on demographics, influence, interests and loyalty (e.g. fashion retailers can now target female influencers between the age of 21-35 who are only interested in fashion). And finally new branding including logo, website and marketing platform have been added to reflect latest change in direction from local businesses to larger consumer brands.

"Brands are constantly looking for innovative ways to spark conversation online. Popdeem's new profiling tool gives brands the ability to identify their most relevant audiences who have a strong influence in their own online networks", says Popdeem CEO Richard Whelan. "By incentivising these customers to share local experiences, brands can drive word-of-mouth marketing and increase brand awareness amongst their peers."

They recently raised €500,000 from venture capital firm Delta Partners, Enterprise Ireland and several leading angel investors. Popdeem has been tipped as the next major tool to enhance location-based apps. Popdeem has found it's own niche as a specialised social rewards extension, while other companies remain fighting it out in the payments and loyalty space. These guys seem ready to shake up the social marketing industry...