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We are very excited to have Catherine Tabor as our guest on The Bella Buzz podcast this week.  Catherine is the CEO of Sparkfly and has recently launched her latest venture called SparkQuest.

Desiree and Catherine are working together in an altruistic capacity. Sparkquest is the title sponsor for Chocolate! A Benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.  The benefit takes place on Thursday, June 23rd in Atlanta, and features chocolate tastings from the finest pastry chefs in the city.

SparkQuest is a location based application that matches meaningful deals from merchants with customers.  The concept was born out of Catherine’s business of managing the employee discount program for Coca-Cola, which itself connects merchants with customers in a very meaningful way.  This missing component, according to Catherine, was the ability for merchants to track the effectiveness of program redemption while customers/employees were not getting targeted offers based upon behavior.  Catherine went in search of a technology that would integrate with Point Of Sale (P.O.S) providers to capture that data.  After significant effort, integration was able to occur using a swipe card transaction.

Today, with the development of mobile applications, this form of discounting behavior has seen rapid adoption across a much broader customer base, than simply an employee incentive program solution.

Using SparkQuest, the merchants are better able to target offers based upon customers actually conducting transactions rather than the ubiquitous “check-in” incentives.  Data is pointing to some fatigue in this market because of a lack of truly relevant offers to the individual (Groupon) or a lack of incentives and easily recognizable rewards for further patronage (Foursquare).  The SparkQuest model allows the merchant to offer sequentially aligned, targeted offers designed to garner repeat customer traffic in search of better and relevant deals.  Catherine uses the term “Quests.”

The process for redeeming these rewards is very simple.  After downloading the application and registering, a user can search for venues with offers nearby and, upon completing the transaction at the register, generate a four digit code through the application.  This code is entered into the point of sale system generating the discount and filling the databases with great user behavior information to help the company target better offers and provide merchants with real information about the success of their campaign.

The application provides some social functionality to hone in on the offers that a customer is really interested in.  By following a brand within the application, offers will be pushed to the customer as they occur so that they are always aware.

Merchants are becoming big advocates for SparkQuest as they find promoting the program helps them build their own loyalty program. These campaigns are beneficial for generating repeat traffic even after the initial new customer acquisition subsides.  It is not just “tire kickers” with deep discounts flooding the merchant and then moving on to the next offer. This is actually helping them gain new customers. Merchants are currently paying an affordable monthly fee for using the service.

A secondary model that is developing for SparkQuest is a transactional model for consumer packaged goods companies, looking to develop location based incentive programs.  This has been an illusive opportunity for these brands, but by having integration with the POS systems at large retailers, this could be a very significant opportunity for Catherine and her team.

We have a very interesting discussion around the development of mobile platform applications to supersede the current web app access for SparkQuest.  In reality, there is no functionality difference that happens when wrapping a package around the app for download on the device, but Catherine believes that from a discovery and user experience perspective it’s a must.  Also, due to the numerous iterations and launch cycles from a startup application combined with the 3 week approval process for the iTunes store, it simply made sense to release the first versions as a web app.

Catherine personally has a great story as a self described, “27 year old Southern female with no business background.” That didn’t make the best case for seeking out and landing venture capital to launch a business. The early struggles getting things off the ground forced her to bootstrap the business, make it profitable to survive an economic downturn and gain the necessary experience to revisit funding options. With a changing environment and opportunities in the mobile space she was able to close on a $2.5 million dollar round of funding.

For more information about Catherine and what is happening at SparkQuest, please visit the site at SparkQuest.com. You can also see her social networking connections at her About.me page.

We would like to thank Catherine for taking the time from her busy schedule to talk with us on The Bella Buzz, and we look forward to her future successes with this very exciting opportunity!

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The Bella Buzz is sponsored by Constant Contact. Connect, Inform, Grow.  Constant Contact’s leading email marketing, online survey and event marketing tools help all types of small businesses.

Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

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