PlacePunch, which received seed funding from Shotput Ventures, allows businesses both big and small to run their own location-based marketing campaigns that integrate with Foursquare, Facebook Places, Twitter, Gowalla and other location-based social networks.
For example, a restaurant can create a loyalty program that counts customer check-in towards rewards and coupons. PlacePunch provides a good amount of the infrastructure, including branded sign-up pages, mobile coupon delivery and analytics, to run these programs. Marketers can also run personalized messaging programs through Twitter for customers that check into their venues. So if customers check-in to your coffee shop, you could set up an recurring Tweet welcoming them.
PlacePunch also provides a dashboard of reports and analytics to help businesses learn more about their customers and venues, including demographics, time of check-ins, and more. And the bootstrapped startup has signed on InterContinental Hotels Group as a client.
Of course, the location-based services themselves could start offering ways for businesses to interact with consumers but the plus of using a platform like PlacePunch is that you can tap into a number of services from the same dashboard.
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Authors: Leena Rao