Instamonial makes social media referrals a snap

There is a strong trend in social media sharing towards visual content lately, and a new Toronto-based startup wants to help businesses take advantage of that with an iPhone app.

KnexxLocal is planning to launch its first app this week, Instamonial. Billed as the easiest way to get social media referrals, the app asks businesses to take a photo of its completed work and then e-mail them to your customers. Customers then get a thank you letter inviting them to view the photos and share the photos on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. There’s no need to login to see the photos, and the customer has control over whether they share the images or not. The customers’ reviews can also be posted to a section on the business’ own Web site.

The app also serves as a contact organizer for your customers. A “contact scanner” gleans details from a business card or even handwritten piece of paper. The contacts are actually transcribed by a service center worker, not automatically input using optical character recognition like some other business card reading apps.

Clearly Instamonial will work best for businesses that have very visual works they can share with customers. A contractor might share a photo of a finished backyard deck, for example, or a landscaper a photo of their completed garden work. But it could be interesting to see how different firms get creative in sharing their work with customers. No information on pricing is available yet.

The co-founders behind KnexxLocal are no strangers to the startup scence. Paul Chen founded FloNetwork Inc. in 1993, which was acquired by DoubleClick in 2001. He also served as CEO at Fortiva, prior to the e-mail archiving firm’s acquisition by Proofpoint. Praising Gaw is the other co-founder, also worked with Chen at both those firms and helped bring Q9 Networks from startup to a public offering.

Source | KnexxLocal