Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim wants you to earn and burn his company’s WOWPoints, a loyalty reward currency that can be used to pay for real merchandise. WOWPoints are redeemable for thousands of offers on Next Jump’s OO.com at a rate of one penny per point. Since it launched WOWPoints two years ago, more than 1.6 billion have been burned. Currently, people are burning WOWPoints at the rate of 100 million a month, which translates to $1 million worth of discounts every month across thousands of products not only on OO.com, but also on corporate rewards sites which Next Jump operates.
Next Jump is making it easer to earn points with a concept called Family Points, which lets families pool their points together to encourage even bigger purchases. That could come in handy for travel discounts. The points can be applied to any offer across the various marketplaces Next Jump operates, including daily deals from LivingSocial. But the points aren’t really about daily deals, they are more about loyalty.
A daily deal is usually an attempt to acquire new customers by offering a huge discount. Points can also be seen as discounts, but at a smaller scale. Instead of a 50 percent discount, WOWPoints typically amount to a 2 to 3 percent discount, sometimes as high as 10 percent. Kim believes there is aplace for daily deals, but that the vast majority of deals should be smaller rewards for loyalty. “Profits come with loyal customers and it is the hardest thing to build,” he notes.
The idea behind WOWPoints is a loyalty reward system that works across merchants. As Next Jump adds new ways to earn points, more people are using them. The points drive the purchase loop and the company hopes will make them loyal to OO.com or other Next Jump properties. For more background on Next Jump, read this post.