Success story: 3.5 times more sales through CITYBON for City of Torhout
The CITYBON is a digital voucher that you purchase online, and spend at affiliated local merchants. Thus stimulating local economic revival. Through actions, local government can also distribute free vouchers or provide additional value and thus increase the purchasing power of residents. The CITYBON is fully digital and easy to use, both for consumers, member merchants and local government for which the overhead is minimal compared to traditional paper vouchers.
City of Torhout also went to work with CITYBON and achieved great results. Read below the experience of Ann Vanassche, local economy coordinator in Torhout.
The challenge
Beforehand, Torhout operated with a paper version of the Torhoutbon. As a result, residents had to purchase a voucher at the counter; this was hugely time-consuming. For both workers and residents themselves. In addition, merchants also had to come to the counter themselves with the receipts to receive their money.
The solution
The CITYBON provides a solution to all previous problems to make it easier for both the merchant, the resident and the city government . The process is as follows: A resident purchases a Torhout voucher online, with a few clicks from his or her seat. The recipient can use the voucher in 1 of the 160 participating stores.. Then the merchant scans in the voucher via the CITYBON app and the merchant receives the amount in his account within a few days.
“Nu hebben we een proces dat voor zowel de handelaar, de aankoper als voor het lokale bestuur, dat volledig contactloos en digitaal verloopt.” – Ann Vanassche
The results
City of Torhout has promoted the voucher in several ways. During the launch in the corona period, a support campaign of 10% on top of the purchase amount was linked. Now they mainly bet on holidays e.g. "No gift for Mother's Day yet? Remember our Torhout voucher".
"The marketing idea behind the support campaign during the launch was, on the one hand, to get people to buy a voucher to support local commerce, and on the other hand, residents now also know the way to the website." - Ann Vanassche
The results obtained by Stad Torhout are impressive. Thus, they came up with sales of as much as 600, 000 euros through the past three years, which is 3.5 times more compared to the paper Torhoutbon.
Like Torhout, Ichtegem, Ledegem, Staden, Zonnebeke and Sint-Genesius-Rode, do you also want to boost your local economy? Then contact us without obligation.