Too many apps on your smartphone already? Well here’s another you might like. JLife’s Evangeline Spachis investigates Israeli-founded DrinkedIn, the app to help you find the best beer in town.
The race for innovative new ideas that reward and maintain a customer base is fiercely competitive in today’s consumer-driven world. DrinkedIn – a mobile app designed to bring together breweries, bars and drink aficionados together to enjoy exclusive rewards, tips and customer loyalty schemes – is one such competitor.
According to its mantra, DrinkedIn is poised to “drag the alcoholic beverage industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century” by helping beverage brands and drinking venues engage and interact with their customers before the first drop of drink even hits the glass. It does this by enhancing businesses’ exposure on a worldwide social media platform by allowing bars, clubs, pubs and eateries to use the app to advertise deals and reward and interact with customers. Think professional network, LinkedIn, but instead of spotting that next great job, browse instead for the hottest new bar or a pub with the best ale selections just around the corner from your location.
The app works much like other popular consumer-led websites such as TripAdvisor: “It gives users a whole array of information such as the phone number, address, maps and reviews of any bar signed up to DrinkedIn,” explains Josh Morrison, DrinkedIn’s UK Marketing Director and who hails from Manchester.
Still in its infancy in the UK however, DrinkedIn, has, according to its website, 200,000 places to drink and 25,000 alcohol brands already signed up and using the app. Founded by Israeli businessman Haim Barad in 2009, and with its headquarters in Tel Aviv, DrinkedIn intends to become a global property.
Another Round
Meanwhile in the UK, drawing in students and social groups is a big target for the business. “We would love to get to a point where DrinkedIn becomes the main point of access for students.” adds Josh. “If you’re going on a bar crawl or to a social event, the app can work as a private group for those invited and it includes a map for everyone in that group who is logged in.” The app also has the ability to give customers exclusive promotions and offers at each bar they visit via its BarDeals function.
Another facet to DrinkedIn’s ambitions is redeveloping loyalty schemes. As well as creating an online social network for the drinks industry and its customers, the plan is to move away from the traditional loyalty card schemes, instead using the technology built into most of our smartphones: “Digital loyalty schemes and the mobile wallet as a whole has a history of being extremely robust,” Josh explains. “Currently 28 of the biggest brands including Starbucks, British Airways and Airbnb use this technology. We want to offer it to individual bars as well as chain pubs, whether it’s an owner of an idependent establishment or a brewery.”
For consumers, it might sometimes appear that new customers are the main target for enticing rewards. Josh believes in reassessing this: “Statistics show that customer retention is one of the most difficult things for a business. We want people to find the right bar and become a loyal customer to that bar. Once you have a customer on board, you’re 60% more likely to get repeat business from them, rather than always courting new customers.”
As fickle as retailer and customer loyalty might seem however, the idea of a loyalty scheme germinated from the first trading stamps of the early 20th century: “The whole idea of loyalty has been going on for around 120 years. I remember my dad telling me that my grandparents would collect them and go to the market give a whole book of stamps to gain premiums and rewards. We keep the same idea alive.”