Venuelabs Is Launching VenueRank, A “Klout For Storefronts”

Venuelabs, a company which got its start as Valuevine before a pivot in early 2011, is launching a new service called VenueRank this week at the Geo-Loco conference in San Francisco. VenueRank, simply put, operates somewhat like a “Klout for storefronts,” as it allows brands with multiple stores to compare those against each other or against their competitors using a single, at-a-glance score.

Although comparing VenueRank to Klout helps to wrap your mind around the product’s offering, it’s doing it a disserve. Klout is still in its early stages of development, and there’s too much emphasis on its ego-boosting side effects instead of its more practical use cases. Unlike Klout, VenueRank’s potential end users, in this case brands, don’t need any convincing of the service’s worth. The company has been working with approximately 500 brands during beta tests, and is now running VenueRank on 68,000 storefronts across 7 countries. Current customers include Ruby Tuesday, Jaguar, Aspen Dental, Little Caesar’s, Red Robin, Precision Tune Auto Care, Roto-Rooter, Interim Healthcare and many others.

To determine a store’s ranking (its “VenueRank”), the service looks at a number of factors, such as local community engagement, size, growth, reach and sentiment. These are determined through social media analysis, which includes things like Facebook and Foursquare check-ins, Facebook “likes,” online comments and tips, plus user reviews from sites like CitySearch, Yahoo Local, Bing Places and more.

The rankings are displayed on an online dashboard which also supports custom views and email alerts. Brands can compare different stores individually, groups of stores, or even their own stores against the competition. And when examining the analytics provided, brands can drill down into the data to see the exact details of who checked in and when, who liked it, who commented, what the reviews say, etc.

Venuelabs is partnered with Saepio, PlayNetwork, and has just added GroupM, WPP’s consolidated media investment management operation, which will integrate VenueRank’s local storefront analytics into its own offerings. It also has a number of agency partnerships in the works for next year.

At launch, VenueRank will be available on a subscription basis, where pricing is determined by the number of locations.

Since its pivot, Venuelabs has seen 30% month-over-month growth, it’s now reporting. The company is now a team of 10 (6 full-time), including CEO Neil Crist and CTO Pete Mannix. It’s currently lightly funded, with $450,000 raised from local angels.