In the tech industry, a willingness to iterate is key to success. This is especially true when it comes to young companies like Rewards21, a restaurant-focused customer loyalty startup launched by former Restaurant.com President and CEO Cary Chessick.
“When we started the business, we wanted to dive deep and figure out all the nuances of card-linked offer technology as it applied to the restaurant space,” said Chessick. “We’ve narrowed our focus because now we know what works well for our restaurant partners,” said Chessick.
Rewards21 initially featured more of a consumer focus. Diners were prompted to create profiles and link their cards to them, and in exchange they would receive cash back when they ate at in-network restaurants.
Rewards21 bridges the gap between online ads and offline transactions for restaurants.”
Card-linked cash back is still Rewards21’s bread and butter, but the company is now focused primarily on bringing restaurants, not diners, onto the platform. When a restaurant signs up with Rewards21, their cash back offer is promoted across the internet on sites such as Yelp, Shop.com and USAA.
“Rewards21 bridges the gap between online ads and offline transactions for restaurants,” Chessick said. “Our technology gives us the ability to track an online ad to an in-store transaction. This lets restaurants advertise all over the internet but only pay for the ads that worked.”
Purchases are tracked via APIs provided by credit card companies that allow the startup to track when cards registered to affiliated rewards programs are swiped. Restaurants can track the views their ads received, the in-store visits they created and the total revenue brought in via Rewards21’s dashboard.
With its increased business focus and pay-for-performance marketing model, Rewards21 has seen a new wave of growth. The company recently closed a $900,000 funding round that saw Corporate Imaging Concepts founder and CEO Brian Abrams join the board.
“We’re very fortunate to have Brian joining our board,” Chessick said. “He’s a very successful entrepreneur and an experienced investor and board member. He’s already added tremendous value to the team.”
According to Chessick, the funds from the round will be used primarily to grow its remote sales team, and to add more features to the platform. Chessick would not comment on the company’s current headcount or how many people the company plans to hire, although he did say the sales team would grow “aggressively.” Rewards21 has raised a total of $3.6 million in funding.
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