Big Brands Tap Facebook Data For Local Gift Cards
Sephora, Gap, and H&M are U.S. launch partners for Wrapp, a new social commerce platform.
Sephora, Gap, and H&M are U.S. launch partners for Wrapp, a new social commerce platform.
Marketers are getting better at leveraging Facebook data, and Wrapp’s gift cards distribution system, which includes Sephora, Gap, H&M, and a dozen other U.S. launch partners, is clearly an example. Announced today, it lets retailers offer varying price points based on Zip code, gender, age, and other profile information that Facebook users knowingly or unknowingly give up.
Wrapp CEO Hjalmar Windladh told ClickZ today via email: “So, a retailer may let you give your women friends, age 25 to 35, who live in Los Angeles, a free $10 gift card, and your friends who are the same age and gender in New York, a $15 gift card.”
Sweden-based Wrapp’s social commerce application is designed to help merchants increase foot traffic. The gift cards marketing system can also be employed for e-commerce.
Typically, Facebook users will be alerted about their friends’ birthdays – information, once again, pulled from profiles on the social site – and then encouraged to buy the person a gift card from participating merchants. When the gift card is digitally received, it will post on the recipient’s Facebook news feed, where other friends will be able to add more money to the card.
To redeem the cards, consumers will have to download Wrapp’s mobile app onto their iPhone or Android. The app has been live in Sweden for five months and has around 165,000 users. The company says 1.4 million gift cards have been distributed in the northern European county; advertisers have included Gillette and Royal Caribbean Cruises. Wrapp claims that average orders have exceeded the gift cards’ original value by four to six times.
Red Hoffman of Greylock Partners financially backs the company, which has grown from 10 to 50 employees during the past year. Former Groupon and Spotify execs are on staff. Wrapp, which presumably takes a sales cut from retailers for distributing the gift cards, competes with other social commerce players like ShopIgniter and Payvment for Facebook marketing dollars.
The app also went live in the U.K. and Norway today, and Wrapp says there are plans for rollouts in Germany, France, and Japan. “We are committed to being local and global simultaneously,” Windladh said.