Restaurant.com, an online portal for dining coupons and gift certificates, has partnered with TrialPay, an online payment platform, on its new “purchasing incentives” platform. The TrialPay platform seeks to reduce shopping cart abandonment by offering consumers a free offer after completing a purchase.
For example, consumers can get a Restaurant.com gift certificate if they make a purchase from a select group of other TrialPay merchants. Restaurant.com certificates also can be used as an incentive to drive important actions for their other merchant partners, such as Kmart.com and 1800flowers.com.
Online certificates offer a viable alternative to free shipping and percent-off promos, and allow businesses to protect price points, said Tony Bombacino, CMO of Restaurant.com.
“Sometimes offering free shipping or a deep discount can be hard to stomach for an online retailer,” he said. “Especially if you are a newer business.”
In addition to providing incentives to other online retailers, Bombacino said customers who receive a free Restaurant.com gift certificate from making another purchase usually remember the site and come back to it.
“In a lot of cases it’s people who didn’t know of us, and remember our name now,” he said.
With more people using online coupons and gift certificates because of the economy, Bombacino believes this method of marketing will prove to be more successful to online retailers than offerings such as free shipping.
“When you create a compelling offer for a consumer, they usually come back for more,” he said.
