Gratafy Launches a Platform for Merchant Partners with Gratafy Valet

SAN FRANCISCO, May 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Gratafy, an award-winning mobile gifting service, today announced that it has launched Gratafy Valet - a platform for merchants that offers a host of tools that restaurants and bars can use to engage and reward customers as well as add Gratafy's storefront to their own websites. Gratafy's core gifting product already helps hundreds of merchants connect with customers outside their four walls, enabling them to sell their signature items as gifts through Gratafy's website and mobile applications. This opens up a new revenue stream for restaurant operators to capture in addition to their traditional on-premise stream. With the introduction of Gratafy Valet, merchants can leverage the power of Gratafy's gift-giving service as a marketing tool, making it available to consumers through new channels, including merchants' websites, Facebook Pages, and email distribution lists.

Campaign Gifting
In an effort to provide a new way for restaurants and bars to reward and engage customers, Gratafy today introduced Campaign Gifting, a product that enables restaurants and bars to send gifts to their customers. For example, restaurants can send their most loyal customers a new appetizer to try or gift a dessert to patrons who haven't been in recently as an invitation to come back.

Setting up Campaigns is easy. Restaurant partners simply select the gift they want to send, identify the customers they want to target, and Gratafy takes care of the rest. Each Campaign features a photograph of the gift, a customized email template, and detailed performance analytics on customer engagement and ROI.

Several Gratafy partners have been piloting Campaign Gifting for monthly promotions as well as one-off celebrations and restaurant events. In these initial campaigns, they have experienced a return of more than 800% from the product, driven largely by the additional spend that takes place in-venue upon gift redemption. Today Gratafy is making the platform generally available to all of its merchant partners.

"We used Campaign Gifting in honor of our 12^th anniversary," said John Howie, owner of John Howie Steak and Seastar. "We don't like to discount our products. A Gratafy gift was the perfect way to bring customers in to thank them for their support over the years.  Gratafy's seamless end-to-end gifting technology made the entire process easy and we were able to drive over 1000% ROI on a single Gratafy gift campaign."

Gratafy Widgets
In addition to its mobile and web applications, Gratafy now offers a third channel through which consumers can purchase and send gifts: Gratafy Widgets. Merchants can embed Gratafy Widgets onto their websites or Facebook Pages, enabling visitors to send Gratafy gift items and digital gift certificates without ever having to leave the merchant's website or Facebook Page. The Gratafy Widget provides merchants with a unique opportunity to monetize their website or Facebook Page, by making them transactional.

Similar to the way that a restaurant can add OpenTable's reservation application to its site, a merchant can embed the Gratafy Widget using just a few lines of code. Gratafy's WidgetBuilder tool allows merchants to easily customize the look and feel of the widget to match their branding and add it directly to their own site in minutes.

Recipients redeem gifts using the three-digit code from the Gratafy app just as they would when a gift is purchased through Gratafy's web and mobile apps.

"Our merchant partners have been taking note of how simple Gratafy is to use when guests come in to redeem gifts. We have been overwhelmed with partners requesting the ability to leverage Gratafy with their own customer base, both to reward loyalty and bring customers back in who haven't visited recently," said Ryan Halper, co-founder and COO, Gratafy. "We're thrilled to make Gratafy available for merchants to use with their customers and provide a Gratafy Widget that they can add to their site."

Gratafy also today announced that it is launching in San Francisco. The service is now available in four cities nationwide with plans to continue its national rollout in the coming months.

About Gratafy
Gratafy (www.gratafy.com) is an award-winning mobile gifting service that lets consumers and merchants alike send menu items and digital gift certificates from restaurants and bars as gifts to friends, family and customers for instant gratification. Gratafy has formed partnerships with over 500 restaurant and bar locations in the U.S. Founded in 2011, Gratafy is a privately-held company based in Seattle. The Gratafy app is free and available for download in the App Store or on Google Play.

SOURCE Gratafy