How This Canadian Company Is Shaking up the Loyalty Landscape

JAMIE LINCOLN, MEDIA PLANET (JUNE 2018)

Focused on creating personalized experience, Drop is changing the way loyalty and rewards programs work with consumers and merchants.

While loyalty programs have become big business in North America, merchants continue to search for innovative ways to engage new and existing shoppers. Toronto-based Drop, a mobile app that entered the loyalty and rewards market in late 2016, set out to create a personalized and engaging rewards experience and has helped redefine the loyalty market in the process.

Despite traditional loyalty programs being designed and marketed as ways to reward frequent shoppers for their loyalty, it’s typically difficult for members to actually earn and redeem meaningful rewards — so difficult, in fact, that many members become disengaged with merchant programs altogether.

One program, many merchants

Drop sought to solve the “too hard to earn, too hard to redeem” problem for consumers by creating a platform that rewards its members for their everyday spending. Its mobile app uses banking APIs to securely read credit and debit card transactions, after which points are passed onto members whenever they spend with a partnered merchant such as Starbucks, Uber, and Walmart, to name a few. This process results in multiple opportunities for Drop’s members to earn points and redeem rewards to member favourites, all within the app.

Since it’s launch,1.5 million people in the U.S. and Canada have signed up for Drop — the majority of whom are ages 18-34 and within the highly sought-after millennial demographic. For most Drop members, their motivation to use the app has been the ability to bundle their purchasing power across many merchants and discover new and exciting brands through the platform.

Leveraging data and analytics

While the consumer appeal of Drop is apparent, Drop’s CEO Derrick Fung says the app offers rewards for merchants that partner with the company as well. “At Drop, merchants come to us to try and accomplish various goals they aren’t fulfilling in-house, whether it’s acquiring new customers or driving existing customers to spend more frequently or more per visit.”

After fundraising $21 million USD earlier this year in a Series A investment round, Drop has focused on building a truly personalized program. By leveraging consumer transaction and location data points, Drop aims to continuously improve the level of individualized experience for its members and partners alike.