Magento Merchants Can Build Customer Loyalty through 500Friends

eBay's Magento unit announced a strategic partnership with 500friends, a "social loyalty solution" for online merchants. The joint venture gives Magento merchants access to 500friends' white-label social loyalty platform LoyaltyPlus, which offers "gamification" capabilities and offers a dashboard and analytics to accurately measure the impact of the loyalty program.

Magento merchants can use LoyaltyPlus to reward customers for activities such as writing reviews, referring friends, sharing products on Facebook or Twitter and for making frequent purchases, turning them into loyal customers and brand advocates.

Senior Director of Strategy and Partner Development for eBay's X.commerce Jeff King said, "Through the Industry Partner program Magento provides valuable technology solutions that extend the functionality of a merchant's store. The LoyaltyPlus solution is seeing rapid adoption across the retail segment and welcoming 500friends as a Magento Platinum Partner reaffirms our commitment to giving our merchants access to the best solutions available in the marketplace."

LoyaltyPlus is designed to increase key business metrics including average order value, purchase frequency, cost of acquisition and lifetime value.

eBay acquired Magento last year.