By Riley Kaminer
Loyalty and rewards programs abound – everywhere from your local coffee shop to international apparel stores are trying to keep their customers happy by assigning points to purchases.
But in a web3 world, a group of Miami entrepreneurs began to think of a different way that brands can bring value to their customers. Jared Mintzlaff is one of those entrepreneurs. “Existing rewards programs are often very transactional,” Mintzlaff told Refresh Miami.
“They’re very inauthentic and they look at the customer as an end product as opposed to something that can be valuable to the brand – not just from what they spend, but who they are, who they talk to, and their social media presence,” he continued. “And so what we saw is that loyalty programs today don’t really foster true loyalty.”
Enter local startup Nifty Bridge, which Mintzlaff founded and leads as CEO. “What we aim to do is create true connections by using a totally different method of building loyalty.” This requires a mentality shift: moving from thinking about customers as owners, not just members.
“The idea is that you can give your brand ownership and stake into your company, you can attach perks and benefits to that ownership that the customer then can have for their lifetime,” said Mintzlaff. “And by doing that you’re treating your customer like a superstar and you’re building a fan for life.”
Nifty Bridge has developed a Shopify app that enables anyone with a Shopify store to launch a program in just a few clicks. Customers who join these programs are given a unique asset (image NFT) representing their ownership. This asset is then used to give users access to various utility benefits and owner-only product launches.
One example: a golf brand can require that customers be part of their program in order to purchase certain products. These customers can also be given access to perks like a few free hours a week at Topgolf.
Eventually, Nifty Bridge – which was founded two years ago – hopes to enable users to trade and sell their ownerships. They also plan to expand their network of partners and connect different communities within the Nifty Bridge ecosystem.
Mintzlaff joined Nifty Bridge as part of an acquisition of a different company that raised $2 million. So far, the team has used these funds to operate Nifty Bridge – but Mintzlaff signaled that the company will raise an additional round later this year. Already they have 120 installs across more than 40 live merchant pages and a cumulative 20,000 users, plus a 10-person team.
“Our priority is showing real utility and providing an amazing experience to customers,” COO and Head of Partnerships Bennett Thompson said. One way they have done this is by enabling users to sign in using Web 2.0 friendly services like Gmail rather than having to use their crypto wallet (although that is also an option).
“Candidly, I’m really excited to bring innovation to this space and show people that NFTs are more than just images,” added Mintzlaff. “They’re very powerful pieces of technology.”
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