London social loyalty startup and Startupbootcamp Berlin 2012 graduate LoyaltyLion has secured $370,000 of seed funding led by EC1 Capital.
EC1 is joined in this round by Jan Boluminski, co-founder of Payback, along with Startupbootcamp mentors Tim Jackson, founder of QXL, and serial entrepreneur Paul Burmester.
Having relocated from Berlin to London in August 2013, the white label social loyalty programme is set to use the funding to grow the LoyaltyLion team and test new concepts on the platform.
Purchase-driven loyalty alternative
LoyaltyLion offers companies the chance to retain consumers that may not be driven by purchases. For example, a customer can earn points by logging into their account or engaging with a brand on social media.
Loyalty programmes can yield a wealth of shopping trends and LoyaltyLion’s chief technology officer, Dave Clark, has his own vision of how to use this consumer data.
“We focus on key actionable intelligence – too many solutions drown store owners with information. In the future, we will use the vast amount of data we have to automatically optimise each loyalty program,” Clark said.
Berlin beginnings
Clark, one of LoyaltyLion’s co-founders, came up with the concept during Startupbootcamp Berlin 2012, along with Charlie Casey, who is now the company’s CEO.
The duo were originally building an events app that featured a rewards programme. However, after talking to an e-commerce store that revealed its need for a different approach to loyalty, they altered their strategy.
Now, LoyaltyLion boasts of the ability to give its customers a 21% increase in time spent on their sites and a 49% rise in engagement. More than 57,000 consumers have signed up to the programme and for the past three months platform growth has been multiplying by a factor of 10.