Mogl raises $8 million to expand beyond restaurants

It’s been four years since Mogl launched its mobile app rewards program that allows San Diego restaurants to tailor real-time discounts during slow periods to lure in customers.

Now the 70 employee San Diego company is attempting to pivot the technology foundation behind its Mogl mobile restaurant app into other industries nationwide – gas stations, health-conscious grocery stores, clothing stores, spas – in a way that lets retailers track whether a online offers result in a brick and mortar sales.

Mogl this month closed an $8 million funding round to expand its technology beyond restaurants – boosting its total amount of equity and debt financing raised to $35 million.

Aequitas Capital, a private equity firm based in Lake Oswego, Ore., led the round. Existing investors Sigma West, Avalon Ventures, Correlation Ventures and Sysco Ventures also participated.

“We launched basically a sister business,” said Mogl CEO Jon Carder. “We are getting this technology out to other companies, online companies primarily, to solve a problem that is kind of the Holy Grail of the Internet, which is tracking online to offline commerce.”

The new business unit is called Mogl Network. Its backbone is access to data from Visa, MasterCard and American Express that gives Mogl the ability to track in under a minute when a customer who receives an offer actually spends money at the merchant. About a year ago, Mogl achieved the real-time data access to these three credit card companies. It has filed a patent related to its technique.

“Ninety-three percent of commerce is still offline,” said Carder. “And there is no easy way to track if you are sending somebody into a physical offline location (with an online offer) if they are actually spending money and how much they are spending. With our technology, it’s actually pretty easy.”

This isn’t the only technology providing online offers to shoppers. Most major merchants have their own in-house email or online marketing programs. In-store Bluetooth beacons are emerging that can ship offers to a consumer’s smartphone while they’re inside the retailer.

“It’s certainly a good step, but I feel the reality is there is no single Holy Grail in e-commerce right now,” said Steven Osinski, an advertising professor at San Diego State University. “It’s a ground war, and it’s going to take marketing and resources” to stand out.

With Mogl Network, Carder aims to create a group of participating companies – search engines, social networks, coupon websites, digital wallets, bank websites – that would share offers across the technology platform. Consumers would get the offers based on location, search query and other information tracked by websites, apps and search engines.

“Mogl has cracked the code on how to boost offline retail business by connecting offline shoppers to online card-linked offers, then instantaneously tracking the success of those offers,” said William Ruh, a managing principal of Aequitas Capital, in a statement. “Mogl seamlessly connects consumers to great deals without the hassle of coupons, loyalty cards or punch cards.”

Revenue from an offer that is redeemed would be shared, said Carder. Merchants typically provide 10 percent of the transaction amount.

“You can contribute merchants into the program who are participating, you can also contribute consumers,” he said. “Depending on what you contribute, we all share the revenue together.”

Carder said about 30 firms are signed up to beta test of the technology.

Meanwhile, the Mogl mobile app rewards program for restaurants will continue, with about 400 local eateries participating in San Diego. The company expects to expand into Houston and Dallas in the near future.