Social Loyalty Solution 500friends Secures $4.5m

In the US, 500friends - which provides an analytics, rewards, and gamification platform for e-commerce retailers - has closed a $4.5m Series A round of funding, which it plans to use to further develop its platform and grow its sales and marketing teams.

Launched in 2010, San Francisco-based 500friends has developed a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform which provides retailers with tools and analytics to recognize and reward the customer behaviours that are relevant to their brand, including writing reviews, referring friends, sharing products on Facebook or Twitter, and frequent purchasing.

Through the company's LoyaltyPlus analytics platform, retailers are provided with a comprehensive picture of how their customers are engaging with the brand. Resulting data can be used to create more relevant shopping experiences with increased marketing performance metrics.

The firm's funding has been led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from Intel Capital (which earlier this week invested $21m in eye tracking technology firm Tobii), along with several members of the company's executive team.

500friends CEO Justin Yoshimura comments: 'Social loyalty has disrupted how retailers have traditionally conducted business. In as little as two to four weeks' time, retailers can deploy LoyaltyPlus and tap the powers of social media, loyalty marketing and robust analytics as key components of their overall customer acquisition and retention strategies.'

Web site: www.500friends.com .