ECHO Energy is launching a new rewards program today (Nov.23rd) that goes a long way to benefit local businesses.

Development Manager with the City of Lacombe and Advisor for Echo Energy Guy Lapointe explains how it works.

“For lack of a better term, it’s like Airmiles. It’s essentially a loyalty rewards program, only it’s focused on local business. So people can collect points, or in this case they call them merits, they can save those points and then are able to actually purchase items after a little while. It’s a very cool program, it’s very innovative, it’s all app based, and we’re excited to see it take off here I Lacombe.”

Lapointe says merits earned are not based on dollars spent.

“Rather than having it dollar based, because you could imagine if you went somewhere and spent $10,000 on building equipment or something like that, we wouldn’t want to punish other local business for that, so it’s actually visit based. So when you make your first visit to a business, you earn 20 merits, and every visit you make afterwards you earn 5 merits.”

10 merits equal out to roughly a dollar, but it will be up to the discretion of business regarding what you can exchange those merits for.

Placemakers was first tried in Portland back in 2010, and has been used in Victoria as well.

Lapointe says Lacombe is the first real small market Placemakers has been tried in.

To download the Placemaker app, you can visit Lacombe.placemaker.com