So many dot-com stocks are so pumped with hubris and hot air that I seldom talk about the group in my commentary, other than disparagingly. Nor would I deign to recommend the shares of any company, such as Twitter, whose profit model I don’t fully understand. Not so, Snipp Interactive, a Canadian-listed (CVE symbol: SPN) mobile-marketing firm worthy of your attention if for no other reason than that its core business is one that is easy to grasp. If you’ve ever applied for a product rebate, you’ll know how frustrating the process can be. First you fill out a form, clip out a bar-code label and some packaging material, and mail them to a rebate center. Then you wait for perhaps six to eight weeks or even longer, often to learn (as I have, more than once) that your effort has been rejected because you overlooked some small detail.
Enter Snipp, with a cloud-based solution with the potential to leverage the increasing use of mobile devices by shoppers. Snipp’s methods are so customer-friendly that the company has begun to get traction with such corporate giants as Walmart, Burger King, Guinness, Electronic Arts, ESPN and Lexus. (For a brief demonstration of Snipp’s services and methods click here, then follow the links that interest you.) A particularly appealing aspect of Snipp-powered promotions is that shoppers don’t need a special phone-based application to take advantage, only the ability to text and/or snap a photo.
Success Metrics in Real Time
As for Snipp’s growing list of clients, they can find out in real time who the customer is, what he or she is buying, and where — all without the need to set up promotions in advance with the vendor. Thus are Snipp’s corporate customers able to create a wide variety of mobile promotions, including sweepstakes competitions, coupons, text-to-win contests and loyalty programs. Even better is that they can track the results and measure the success of their marketing efforts in real time.
I learned about Snipp from a friend who asked me to sit in on a teleconference with the firm’s CEO and President, Atul Sabharwal. I was so impressed with his presentation that I called the firm back to ask whether I could help spread the word. (Full disclosure: I recently purchased, via a private placement, 100,000 shares @ 0.10 CDN and two-year warrants for an additional 50,000 shares. In addition, Snipp is paying me $10,000 for my help in publicizing the company. The stock currently trades for around 0.11-0.12 per share CDN. Total float is about 20 million shares, with average daily trading volume of around 20,000.) Snipp hopes to be listed in the U.S. by late spring, but I will initiate technical coverage if and when the company’s shares move above 0.15. In the meantime, I would encourage anyone interested in Snipp to track the firm’s news releases on their home page.