"When people build software or apps for local businesses, they don't shift the power to the local business," Alignable CEO Eric Groves told the Boston Globe. " They try and retain it. And that doesn't work."
Alignable is a Waltham-based startup that seizes the buying power from Boston's suburbs and Cape Cod to help market local businesses online.
The startup's motivation is a familiar one. Over the past few years, there have been a ton of Internet marketing sites targeting consumers with deals on retail items and services. Groupon, LivingSocial, and Guilt Group all occupy this space, and do so with some success, providing people with bargains in their cities and helping the cities' merchants bring in new business. But what these sites fail to do, Alignable CEO Eric Grove's says, is secure a reliable customer base. "What they found was that people might drive 20 miles in order to get a $30 massage, but those people wouldn't turn into loyal customers," Grove told the Boston Globe. "But on the other hand there are all these locally-minded people who live near them who aren't deal-seekers. They prefer to buy locally."
The challenge, then, is how local businesses should specifically engage with the close-by customers.
The solution, according to Alignable, involves a web-based platform that allows businesses market to each others' customers. Alignable simplifies promotion to the local customer pool by making it possible for a town's businesses to access each others' respective email lists and social media followings. Groves shared, "It's about connecting local merchants with each other, and then helping them acquire new customers." The site also has community events and special offerings pages to foster these ties between businesses and local consumers.
Alignable is now building out analytics to gather data about the most effective programs in order to present the info to its users.
Groves, the former senior executive of Constant Contact, the Waltham e-mail marketing company, began Alignable in 2013 with co-founder Dr. Venkat Krishnamurthy, who had previously co-founded the transparent teeth-straightening system Invaslign. While an unlikely duo, the startup's creators have thought up a brilliant model that promises to boost businesses beyond Boston's city limits. Investors seem to think so as well. Alignable has raised over $1 million in seed funding from Boston Seed Capital, Longworth Venture Partners, NetView Ventures, and CrunchFund.
Alignable currently has eight employees working from Matrix Partners' office in Waltham.
