Do you eat out frequently or shop offline? If you do, then you should consider joining Plink, a unique rewards program that facilitates you to earn virtual currency for your offline purchases. The concept is simple, you register a credit or debit card with Plink, select the restaurant where you want to eat from the available offers on Plink and then shop at the over 25000 restaurants and offline retailers promoting their products with Plink, and each time you purchase something from them Plink lets you earn Facebook Credits.

For example, dine at Taco Bell for a minimum  $10 and you receive 12 Facebook Credits. You can use the credits to buy virtual goods to advance or level-up in popular Facebook games such as CityVille or The Sims Social.We had a chance to interview Peter Vogel, Co-founder at Plink and get his take on creating a Start-Up which is a game changer in the industry.

Check out Peter's interview below:

Peter could you introduce yourself to our readers?

I’m Peter Vogel, co-founder of Plink. My experience includes more than a decade of executive-level, online sales and marketing experience, specializing in performance-based marketing, media buying and monetization of social media. Previously, I co-founded Memolink.com and led the company’s sales team from 1997 through the mid 2000’s establishing relationships with Fortune 500 advertisers when performance based advertising was still in its infancy.











































What is the concept behind plink? What was the inspiration behind the concept? 

Plink is the first-ever Facebook Credits-based loyalty program that rewards members with Facebook Credits for dining and shopping at their favorite restaurants and offline retailers. Plink was started to help restaurants and offline retailers reach and motivate their customers online, specifically in social media environments like Facebook. More than 50 percent of purchases are still made offline and Plink's online-to-offline (O2O™) platform provides a mechanism for retailers and restaurants to motivate online consumers, track them and then reward them for their offline purchasing behavior.

The inspiration for Plink was conceived due to our online advertising experience over the past decade, which included the opportunity of presenting clients’ advertising offers in Facebook games. This included utilizing the Facebook platform to reward a Facebook game player with Facebook Credits for purchasing a good or service online.


Is plink available only for the North American consumers, since the chains that have offers for your members seem to be broadly based in the US?

Peter: Right now, we are U.S. focused. However, we recognize that 70 percent of Facebook users reside outside the U.S. It is likely that Plink’s first international foray will be into Canada and England. Both countries have significant Facebook users. Also, many of Plink’s U.S. partner restaurants and retailers already operate in Canada and England.  Expansion into continental Europe and Latin America also present huge opportunities for Plink.































Being a start-up what were some of the difficulties that you faced from the point that you conceived this idea to having plink up and running?

One of the first challenges was convincing huge restaurant brands to take a chance with Plink before we even had a web site to show them.  We are also introducing a new pay-for-performance model to the offline world that most restaurants and offline retailers are not familiar with. Our partners pay us a percentage of the total sales we drive to the stores and restaurants, so it’s totally risk free for someone to test. If Plink doesn’t drive sales, they don’t have to pay us. But on the other hand, most have never done a campaign set-up that way, so we’re trying to change the way the industry thinks about how advertising should be paid for. That’s a big challenge.


You have close to 5K Likes on your Facebook page. How did you promote the concept initially? 

Peter: While we officially launched late last month, we have been test advertising on Facebook, primarily focused in social games and targeting based on social games. This effort is driving awareness and new members and we’ve incorporated messaging to our Facebook page, which has grown nicely.


What sort of user base does plink cater to? How many new members are you managing to add monthly, on an average?

Peter: We’re focused initially on social gamers, an audience of 60 million players in the U.S. today. However, Facebook is constantly adding new ways to spend Facebook Credits, including downloading music, watching movies or TV episodes to name a few. As Facebook Credits grow, we see the opportunity to attract Facebook users outside of gamers. We don’t disclose new member numbers, at least, yet, as we only launched late last month. I can tell you the interest in Plink has been strong and beyond our forecasts, but it is early.


You have mentioned in the FAQ that “They pay us each time one of our registered members dines at their restaurant and we share that reward with you.” Is there any possibility that you will support actual credits to a member who will then be able to make real world purchases using the credits, something like a cash-back if you will?  

Facebook Credits is in its infancy. The scenario you paint is interesting and something to keep an eye on, but, right now, we’re focused on motivating Plink members to dine out and shop offline at partner restaurants and retailers to earn Facebook Credits and drive loyalty. Also, right now Facebook does not allow Credits to be used to make real-world purchases, so we’re currently limited by Facebook’s existing guidelines


Why is there a limit of only one card per person? Is this because of a technical issue that you encountered? Please elaborate on this.

Peter: It’s not a technical issue, but a financial one. We pay a fee to monitor card usage on a per card basis, so if we allow more than one card, it would be significantly more expensive per member. In addition, we haven’t yet had a big demand for users to add a second card. If we do, we’ll into it, but for now, one card per person seems to be working.


What are your future expansion plans for plink? Do you plan to add/update the chains and financial institutions that work with you across the world?

Offline retailers and hospitality providers, among others are also a focus. Whether a consumer dines, shops or books – transactions of any kind – offline, we would love to expose them to the opportunity to build loyalty through earning Facebook Credits. Our #1 goal is to grow our member base and to add as many restaurants and retail partners as quickly as we can. We know that Plink is more attractive and rewarding to both current members and new members if we offer them tons of ways  to earn Facebook Credits. We’d like our members to have an option to make a purchase with a Plink partner in almost every offline vertical - gas, groceries, automotive, travel, apparel, etc – you can imagine there are almost endless categories of offline purchases our members could make. Plink’s ultimate goal would be to influence every offline purchase our members make.


What is the top advice that you would like to offer for budding start-ups?

The hardest part of building a start-up is staying focused on your core business and focusing on what value that core business provides to your customers.  What problem are you solving and is what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis directly solving that problem. If not, you need to re-focus and you need to figure out what is the problem that your start-up can solve better than anyone else.


Thank you Peter for taking the time for this interview, we wish Plink and you the very best in the future. 

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