Tracking business Yub has unveiled what it calls, ‘the world’s first offline affiliate network’, allowing merchants, retailers and restaurants to harness the power of the online affiliate model to drive in-store purchases.
The US startup, which is a spin-off from leading alternative online payment platform, TrialPay, has secured $12 million in funding from investors such as Index Ventures, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners and Visa Inc.
Burger King, The Body Shop and Gap are a few of the major brands to join forces with the new business.
With this cash boost, Yub, which is headed up by CEO and founder Alex Rampell, said it is now the first company to ‘effortlessly track consumers from online clicks through to offline purchases’, directly linking digital marketing spend to offline revenue.
With no integration or upgrades needed from merchants and easy to use offers for consumers, Yub says it is on the way to revolutionising the way brick-and-mortar stores reach more shoppers.
When a Yub offer is found online, users are prompted to activate the offer by registering a credit card. When the consumer uses the same credit card for the in-store purchase, Yub tracks the purchase through its TrueRealTime transactional tracking platform and the consumer instantaneously receives their reward.
A direct link
With these card-linked offers, consumers have no coupons to print, no mobile apps to download and no hassle to deal with. Yub also provides a complete analytics suite so businesses can track the performance of affiliate campaigns and measure ROI based on actual in-store sales.
Rampell said Yub provides businesses with a direct link between online advertising and offline revenue, improving the effectiveness of online campaigns and driving in-store purchases on a ‘massive scale’, utilising the demonstrated power of the online affiliate network model.
“Despite the billions of dollars spent annually on digital advertising, merchants have had no way to track the effectiveness of how online advertising translates into offline sales,” Rampell said.
“Yub represents a breakthrough for merchants by providing them an easy way to track how many of their in-store sales are directly attributable to their digital ad spend, if any at all.”
Already, two top 25 US restaurant chains and two top 50 US retail brands are using Yub to transform digital marketing efforts into traceable offline sales.
Good feedback
Based on analysis of transactions across various merchant campaigns, merchant feedback, and customer surveys, Yub said it has proven to deliver increased ability to acquire new customers, increased customer spend through Yub promotions, incremental email leads, and improved customer loyalty and purchase motivation.
General partner of Battery Ventures, Roger Lee, said: “Measuring the impact of online advertising on offline sales has been the holy grail for the digital marketing industry.
“For the first time ever, merchants can directly link online advertising to offline sales,” he said.
“Yub has the right team, technology and approach to fundamentally change how the industry accounts for online advertising, and how merchants use this marketing approach to boost and drive offline sales.”