Profital establishes digital brochures in the Swiss advertising market

More than 80% of Swiss consumers obtain information online before making a purchase. However, most purchases are still made in brick-and-mortar stores. Since November 2017, the innovative solution from the Basel-based startup Profital has been offering retailers the opportunity to always reach consumers at the right time and in the right place, while at the same time strengthening their stores.Profital combines all the information for a successful shopping trip in a single app and on profital.ch. Consumers receive a compact overview of the currently valid brochures, catalogs and local promotions from stores in their area. "Retailers use Profital to reach a target group that tends to be younger and more urban and household-oriented," explains Raphael Thommen, Managing Director of Profital. "Advertisers particularly use Profital to target occasional shoppers and new customers they can't reach through existing channels."

High attention and impact measurement

Profital meets a real need on both the retailer and consumer side: The startup has already won over 60 retailers, including Media Markt, Lidl, Spar, Volg, Pfister, Jumbo, Lipo, Tchibo, Qualipet, C&A, and Ottos. With Profital, these increase their reach without wastage, because only read brochures are charged. As a pull channel, Profital explicitly attracts users who want proactive information. The average user spends more than a minute browsing the digital brochures. Particularly attractive for retailers: thanks to geotechnology, it is possible to measure the effect of the advertising media on sales in the stores. Profital also evaluates important insights on the most popular brochure pages or access locations. "The impact measurement and the diverse evaluations offer our partners new possibilities and are therefore of central importance," explains Raphael Thommen.

Consumers also appreciate the new way of communicating offers

Since its launch, the Profital app has been downloaded by around 400,000 users in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Consumers have digitally browsed brochures over 12 million times. Meanwhile, Profital records over 1.2 million consumer contacts per month in the early stages of the buying process. The popularity of Profital among consumers is also reflected in the app ratings: In its first year, the app has already received over 2,800 ratings with an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars. "We are very pleased with the launch of Profital. We are very satisfied with the launch of Profital. Our expectations have been significantly exceeded and the response from users has been overwhelming," says Raphael Thommen. Of course, we are also pleased with the continued ranking as one of the 15 most popular shopping apps in Switzerland since the launch and the nomination for the shortlist as "Best of Swiss App" in October 2018.

The future: dynamic prospecting

Profital is already working on new services and functions for retailers and consumers. The latest innovation: a dynamic framework that automatically generates mobile-optimized brochures based on a product feed and templates instead of a classic print brochure, and continuously updates them with current product data. "We are proud of what we have achieved, but at the same time we see many opportunities: there is demand on Profital for everything from high-priced furniture retailers to discounters. We want to take advantage of this and further expand Profital as an innovative channel for mobile advertising and an efficient tool for local offer communication" says Raphael Thommen.