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Shopkick Grows Product Portfolio, Ranks; Pushes into Greater Shopper Personalization with Mobile Video ProgramShopkick (News - Alert), a leading location-based shopping companion app that makes in-store shopping more rewarding, personal, and enjoyable, has introduced new features and products to its expanding portfolio, as well as added top notch talent to its ranks, cementing its leadership position in the retail personalization space. The new in-app features offer consumers the opportunity to earn even more loyalty points by scanning their receipts, and by viewing branded videos. Both new features have already shown measurable success for top Fortune 500 brands participating in the initial trials. New Products and Features The new product - shopkick Video - is launching at a time when the demand for video on mobile has grown exponentially as a tool to reach consumers. With the native shopping app, shopkick's users are already in a shopping mindset, thus driving significantly higher engagement and downstream purchase impact. Shopkick Video has a 90% average completion rate, compared to 68.3% industry standard for mobile video (2016 IAB). Shopkick Video also provides added benefit to users by granting them 'Kicks,' or reward points, for viewing video content to boost increased purchase funnel activity and impact in-store buying. Similarly, shopkick's new 'Receipt Scanning' feature provides additional value to both consumer and advertisers by quickly and easily rewarding shoppers. This builds on top of shopkick's in-store panel of millions of millennial shoppers who can be influenced in real-time to add items to their basket, and are also a source of real-time research for the CPG companies who can benefit from these deep insights. With the addition of these new features, shopkick is furthering its ability to reach mobile consumers in the moments that matter by providing Brand and Retail partners with complete visibility into a consumer's decision. It offers incentives to the shopper from discovery to sale, with visibility and metrics that validate consumer awareness, brand and product engagement, unit sales, and ROI. "We believe that content and advertising need to be delivered in the right context to consumers to crate immediate value," said shopkick Chief Operating Officer, Alexis Rask. "Shoppers want to be rewarded for their existing purchase behavior and marketers want to capture these micro-moments as they happen. Our technology and innovative approach allows us to serve as the platform of choice for top brands and retailers." New Talent Joins Ranks In addition to the rollout of these new features, shopkick has announced two strategic hires, welcoming Kari King as Vice President of National Brand Sales and Diane Sweet as Vice President of Retail Success. King joins shopkick from Mode Media Corporation, where she was responsible for driving advertising revenue across the U.S. and Canada with a focus on product strategy. Sweet brings an expertise in mobile payments from PayPal (News - Alert), where she served as General Manager of Specialty Retail & Canada business for North America. "Both Kari and Diane's experience signifies an expansion of shopkick's marketing and commerce expertise and continued evolution of our successful organization. We're thrilled to welcome them to our team as we further advance our strong bench of diverse leaders," said Rask. As shopkick continues to expand, the company also made the 'acquihire' of Theneeds, a content discovery platform founded in 2013, whose software combines content sources, machine learning, and community to deliver personalized content tailored to users' interests and consumption behaviors. Theneeds' founding team has joined shopkick full-time to support the company as it continues to grow its personalization technology, and seeks to reinvent the shopping experience by transforming any store into a personalized store. "With the addition of the team from Theneeds, we have brought on experts who can deliver the most valuable and contextually relevant content to our users, while offering marketers personalized, end-to-end solutions that dramatically differ from what any programmatic offering can support," said Rask. "At shopkick, we strongly believe that the right content delivered in the right context drives commerce, and we are investing heavily in our data to bring best in class offerings to our partners." Shopkick is available for free on the iPhone (News - Alert) from the App Store and for Android (News - Alert) from Google Play. About shopkick, Inc. The shopkick app is the #1 mobile shopping companion that helps users save money and get rewarded. At home or at stores, shopkick users find the best deals and trending products, all while earning rewards for everyday actions like store visits, product scans and purchases. Ranked by Nielsen as the most widely and often used real-world shopping app, shopkick counts some of the world's most recognizable brands as partners, including American Eagle Outfitters, Best Buy, JCPenney, Macy's, MasterCard, The Sports Authority, VISA, Procter & Gamble, Mondelez, Revlon, Unilever, Pepsi, Kraft, HP and more. The Redwood City-based company was initially funded by Kleiner Perkins' iFund, Greylock Partners and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn (News - Alert) and investor in Facebook. In October 2014, shopkick was acquired by SK Planet, the South Korea-based mobile and commerce leader, and together they are on a mission to build the #1 online-to-offline commerce company in the world.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160525005233/en/ |
