How this CEO embraced blockchain technology to spur a new venture

The emergence of blockchain technology has inspired many entrepreneurs to create new businesses based on its never before seen level of security and processing power. Blockchain has made its way into most major industries in one way or another, and as more potential for the technology is discovered, more opportunities to build new business or revolutionize existing ones are popping up.

Take brand loyalty, for instance.

Loyalty marketing and rewards programs are nothing new; sub shop punch cards and airline miles have been around for decades. But the loyalty space was stagnating as the vast majority of points and rewards sat unused and forgotten in customer accounts, and no real loyalty was being fostered despite the investment in the programs.

Leonid Shangin, graduate of the prestigious Moscow State University and veteran of McKinsey, founded SailPlay in Moscow in 2013. SailPlay provided a B2C marketing automation platform, including features designed to handle the heavy lifting of email, loyalty marketing and even gamification. Major global brands like Sephora, Harley Davidson, Volkswagen and Papa Johns signed on with SailPlay to deliver a better customer experience with loyalty programs.

As that business grew and became the market leader in Russia and then moved to its first office in the US in 2015, Shangin was looking for new ways to enhance and expand the company’s offerings.

As cryptocurrencies made the mainstream and blockchain began rising to the top of industry buzz, Shangin recognized the potential for blockchain to give loyalty the boost it needed to become a real driver of revenue and customer relationships for brands. He then adopted blockchain and formed the SLP Network, a loyalty platform that enables brands to harness the security and processing capabilities of the technology.

The SLP platform provides a marketplace wherein loyalty points from disparate programs can be converted to a single token-based currency, combined and redeemed for better rewards.

For example, you have hotel points but not enough for a free night stay; Sephora points but not enough to get anything more than a tiny product sample; fuel card rewards but no more than is required to get a free soda from the gas station. How much loyalty are those three programs really inspiring in you?

But using the SLP platform, you can see the balances of all your loyalty programs in a single dashboard, convert them to tokens and then combine those tokens to be redeemed in the marketplace for something you actually need or want. The platform is powered by blockchain, which records chronological ledgers of transactions used to acquire points, verifies the balances of those points in real time, and securely converts them to tokens without the risk of theft or fraud. Further, blockchain requires no third party verification, so all those rules and restrictions go out the window and you can redeem points much faster and more easily.

Streamlining the process of acquiring, verifying and redeeming rewards resolves major inefficiencies in current methods of loyalty program operations and processing and makes loyalty programs a more engaging, meaningful and rewarding experience for both businesses and customers.

Now, SLP Network is poised to make its next big mark on the crypto-industry and is helping other companies use blockchain to build and revamp their businesses through strategic partnerships. Shangin and the leadership team of SLP Network got in on the ground floor of blockchain and have seen firsthand how it can transform how companies function and improve efficiency and the customer experience. That’s how you create real loyalty, and based on the current trajectory of SLP Network, you can bet the blockchain boom is just beginning.