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Paylode Announces New Round of Funding for Partnership Loyalty Platform

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By: Wise Marketer Staff |

Posted on March 12, 2024

Paylode is a Miami, FL based company on a mission to help brands create powerful and engaging moments for their customers. Building partnerships into the customer loyalty construct is acknowledged as an innovative way to create unmatched value for consumers, and the partnership model is most likely one of the next-gen “best practices” that many brands will seek to adopt.

The need to add value to loyalty program consumer value propositions is clear. Uncertain economic times have shifted consumer expectations for loyalty program earnings from long term savings to equity that can be used on a daily basis. With that, the value that consumers want to earn from any loyalty program is on the rise. The customary 1-3 percent rebate level just does not get the job done.

Paylode intends to alter the historical loyalty program calculus by enabling partnerships at scale and helping brands build lasting relationships with their customers by helping them save money on things that matter when they need it most.

After speaking with more than 350 business leaders, Paylode learned that partnership programs are difficult to launch and manage. The founders wanted to help companies build partnership programs more efficiently and with quicker time to market. The result is a “no-code” platform that enables any company to quickly launch, manage, and monetize a highly effective perks program.

Paylode was founded by Mikhail Naumov, a serial entrepreneur, who previously co-founded DigitalGenius, which built the first practical applications of AI/ML in customer service with backing from Salesforce Ventures and partnerships with NVIDIA, Salesforce, Zendesk, Accenture, and others.

Today, Paylode announced it has raised $5.5M in seed funding from Susa Ventures, Vinyl Capital, Struck Capital, Day One Ventures and others to build the next generation of digital customer engagement tools. The company has made significant progress prior to this announcement as it has enrolled 50+ clients and 1,000+ brands into its embeddable perks ecosystem during a beta phase of development, while saving time and money for over a million consumers through pre-negotiated deals.

The official press release follows and you can learn more here.

Paylode Launches Perks Platform to Help Businesses Save Money for Their Customers in Tightening Economy

With 1000+ brands already on Paylode, the company is helping businesses increase lifetime value and retain their customers, while helping over a million consumers save time and money on things they want and need every day.

Miami, Florida — Paylode, the new way for companies to launch, manage, and monetize amazing perks programs for their customers, announced it has raised a total of $5.5M in seed funding from Susa Ventures, Vinyl Capital, Struck Capital, Day One Ventures and others, to build the next generation of digital customer engagement tools. While in beta, the company enrolled 50+ clients and 1,000+ brands into its embeddable perks ecosystem, while saving time and money for over a million consumers through pre-negotiated deals.

With inflation making everything more expensive, consumers are feeling the pain of a volatile economy. Companies have an opportunity to build lasting relationships with their customers by helping them save money on things that matter when they need it most. Meanwhile, 68% of customers don’t return if they feel neglected by a brand. Businesses need better ways to grow their reach, engage customers more deeply, and retain them for long-term repeat purchases.

That’s where Paylode comes in – the Perks-as-a-Service platform enables any company to quickly launch, manage and monetize its own curated perks programs, in order to maximize the lifetime value of their customers, while helping them save money. Building an in-house perks program can cost companies between $350,000 - $500,000 per year. Whereas with Paylode, you can launch in a fraction of the time and without hiring new employees, by mix and matching from a suite of helpful features:

  • The Partner Perks Marketplace: Choose from thousands of pre-vetted consumer brands that provide top offers and discounts from the most popular household brands, local shops, and niche retailers. 
  • Perks Program Builder: A no-code, drag & drop solution to curate perks programs for your customers and prospects - plugged right into your company’s website, user portal or mobile app.
  • Engagement Campaigns: Ability to embed valuable partner offers directly into your company’s existing marketing channels like emails and notifications.
  • Perk Flows: Embed complementary partner offers in any digital experience including booking flows, checkout pages, confirmations, “thank you” pages, digital receipts and more. 
  • Paylode Boost: Create incentivization campaigns to influence specific valuable customer actions.
  • Paylode Control Center: Unlock valuable information about your customers’ interests and habits with analytics that show top performing perks across your customer base. 

Paylode was founded by Mikhail Naumov, a serial entrepreneur, who previously co-founded DigitalGenius, which built the first practical applications of AI/ML in customer service with backing from Salesforce Ventures and partnerships with NVIDIA, Salesforce, Zendesk, Accenture, and others.

“After working with global airlines and ecommerce brands I couldn’t believe how difficult it was for companies to launch their own partnerships and perks programs. After speaking with a hundred CXOs and partnership leaders, we saw an urgent need for an off-the-shelf SaaS tool that can do the heavy lifting, while enabling companies to stay focused on their core business. So, we built Paylode – a modern platform to power wonderful perks programs for companies and their customers.” said Mikhail Naumov. “Credit cards and airlines have enjoyed these benefits for decades through their in-house points and perks programs, and we built a practical way for any company to quickly launch curated and valuable perks programs of their own.” 

Companies using Paylode are consumer-focused businesses with 10K+ users. They include major hotel brands with thousands of locations, residential housing operators managing millions of apartment rentals, consumer mobile apps, and top-tier insurance companies.

“Every single company right now is figuring out how to retain their customers while driving down costs, especially in this economic environment,” said Leo Polovets, Founding Partner at Susa Ventures. “Paylode’s approach to perks programs not only addresses the rising challenges of customer acquisition costs but also provides a seamless solution for businesses to drive deeper engagement and unlock additional revenue streams.” 

For more information, please visit https://paylode.com/ 

About Paylode

Paylode is the fastest way for companies to launch, manage, and monetize amazing perks programs that maximize engagement and loyalty with customers while saving them money. Paylode’s perks marketplace includes thousands of pre-negotiated and pre-vetted offers, enabling companies to customize and curate their own private-labeled perks programs in less than 15 minutes. It also provides tools to offer relevant perks during the checkout process, deploy email campaigns to create micro-engagement moments, and give deals or freebies to motivate specific customer actions.

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For more information, contact: Jenny Chao, Day One Ventures

(408)655-8162

jenny@dayoneventures.com