Lightrail: Grow faster with account credits, gift cards, and promos

Lightrail

Maker

Hey everyone, I'm one of the founders of Lightrail. Here's a bit of background: - Businesses use account credits and gift cards with promotional value (points, promos, offers, referral) as a tool for growth (customer acquisition and retention) - Problem is that this is hard and expensive to built well. It isn't something you can cut corners on. That because (1) credit/gift value and promotional value gets complicated because of evolving requirements marketing/growth teams; (2) all this 'value' has security, fraud, and reporting requirements; and (3) this 'value' need to be integrated with other tools and work with partners. So, we built Lightrail for modern companies. Lightrail lets marketing and growth teams use account credits, gift cards, and promos without significant or ongoing involvement from product/dev teams. Finance teams get what they need. And, we make it easy to work with other tools and partners. I'd love to hear from you if you'd like to know more. - Leif

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8yr ago

Matthew Boogaard

Hey @leif What's behind the name Lightrail? I was emailing Matt a month or two ago. I love the idea of Lightrail and Giftbit and I'd like to get on board (see what I did there?) at a later date once we've got more $ to play with. I see gift card balances as a significantly higher "value" to a customer than a discount coupon for the same amount. I think it'd also make a future loyalty across online/instore much easier to implement. Do you plan to integrate with Apple/Android wallet? Do you plan on evolving into something like Urban Airship's mobile wallet product?

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8yr ago

Leif Baradoy

Lightrail

Maker

@boogsau We settled on Lightrail as a name because it connotes the idea of fast payment rails. Also, lightail transit are built to quickly connect people to places. We thought the name had a good blend of payment, tech, and the idea of connection. We'd love to get you on board! Mobile wallet integration is def on our track. Standards for offers, gift cards and other value are being defined, which will make it easier to work with wallets. Urban Airship does great work so we may harness their platform to our backend.

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8yr ago

KELLI DAWN

@leif @boogsau Question 🙋 Does your app use any of the coupons or discounts that may be avaliable?

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8yr ago

Leif Baradoy

Lightrail

Maker

@krazyskibunnie2 I don't think I understand you question. Lightrail is not a wallet. We power stored and promotional value (including unique coupons and targeted offers) for companies.

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8yr ago

KELLI DAWN

@leif OK.. I was looking for a friend who wanted to know if there was a place you could put a coupon and it would distribute to companies!

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8yr ago

Justin Winter

Yes! This is a major problem for ecom retailers. My prior startup was on both Shopify and Symphony Commerce. Always was difficult to try and do store credit type stuff, higher perceived value then a code, the accounting was always a pain because it is, depending on where you are/how you run your books, not revenue you can book, but an outstanding liability. For online retailers where gifting and seasonal buying periods are big, we made major pushes towards gift cards since we could see from our numbers that a lot of the value went unused so it was extra margin per sale. Huge leverage opportunity. Would be great if you had ecom platform specific landing pages w/screenshots/docs. If retailers clearly knew that every $100 in gift card sales was 2x net for them as opposed to $100 in product sales, the marketing teams can begin aggressively a/b'ing ux testing to direct towards gift cards as the better option for gifting, feature it in marketing emails etc.

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8yr ago

Leif Baradoy

Lightrail

Maker

@jcwinter Hey Justin. Thank you. We're updating our site to better tell the product story. Painting the clearer story of the economics is critical. A trend we see is marketplaces and brands using gift cards as a gateway to more customer data—to improve engagement. Lightrail lets growth teams incentivize people to register their gift cards and get bonus account credit. Stored value and promotional value need to be a part of the modern marketer's toolset. That's why we're so excited about Lightrail.

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8yr ago

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