For local businesses in Sarnia-Lambton

Your neighbours already want to spend money here. We just make it easy.

#local is a community platform that sends paying customers to local businesses - and pays you 100% of every gift card they spend with you. It costs you nothing to join. It has never cost anything to join.

Free. Takes about three minutes.

Marketing is the job nobody trained you for.

You didn't open your business to write captions. But here you are, boosting a post for forty dollars, watching it reach a few hundred people, and wondering whether any of them will ever walk through your door.

That's the deal most local businesses are stuck with. You rent attention. The moment you stop paying, it's gone. You have nothing to show for it except a receipt.

Meanwhile the people who would genuinely love your business - the ones who live fifteen minutes away and have never heard of you - are somewhere else entirely.

We built #local to fix that specific problem.

A community that pays to shop local.

Thousands of people in Sarnia-Lambton are on our list. Every week they get The Weekender - what's happening, what's new, who's got something worth going out for.

Some of them go further and become Insiders. An Insider pays $100 for the year. In return they get $50 in gift card credit to spend at local businesses, 50 credits toward local offers, automatic entry into our monthly sweepstakes, and a shot at the Million Dollar Vault.

Read that again: they pay us $100, and we hand $50 of it straight to local businesses. That's the model. We are, functionally, a machine for moving money from residents into local tills.

You're one of the tills.

You get a hundred dollars for a hundred dollars.

Here's the part people don't believe the first time.

When you become a Partner, you switch on gift cards. Your business is then listed in our gift card marketplace, in $10, $25 and $50 denominations. When an Insider spends their credit on your gift card, you receive the full face value. Fifty dollars claimed is fifty dollars paid to you.

No commission. No discount. No cap. We don't take a cut, and there's no limit to how many you can sell.

How it works, start to finish

1
They choose you. An Insider browses the marketplace and picks your business. They can split their credit however they like - $25 here, $25 there, or the full $50 with you.
2
You get an email. The moment they claim it, we let you know. You know they're coming before they arrive.
3
They show up with a QR code. Every Partner gets a unique code. The customer scans it on their phone and shows you the result: a big green check if it's valid, an error if it isn't. It can only be claimed once, so it can't be reused or double-dipped.
4
You hand over the goods. Same as any gift card.
5
You receive payment. At the end of each month we total every gift card claimed at your business and send payment ten days later.

We've been running gift card programs like this for years. The format has changed; the principle hasn't. Customers arrive knowing exactly how it works - we send them the instructions every single time.

Note: we also accept a paper backup. If someone turns up with proper documentation instead of a working QR code, you honour it and we sort it out on our end.

Getting them in once is easy. Getting them back is the business.

Every Insider also gets 50 credits to spend on Exclusive Offers - put up by local businesses.

An offer is whatever you want it to be. 10% off. $10 off a $100 purchase. A free coffee with a doughnut. A free massage for a first-time client. Sixty percent off something you're trying to move.

Two things make these different from a coupon:

Intent.

Nobody stumbles into your offer. They spend credit on it deliberately, which means they've already decided they want to come to you.

Scarcity.

Offers are priced in credits according to their value, and the credit pool is finite. An Insider can't take everything. They choose.

You set the terms - the value, the description, the limits, the expiry. You're notified when someone claims one, you validate it the same way you validate a gift card, and you serve them.

This is the return-visit engine. Use it that way.

Send us a customer, get fifty dollars back.

This is the one Partners get excited about.

Once you're set up, you get a sharing link - your own link, to post on social, put in your newsletter, print on a receipt, tape to the counter, mention at the till.

When one of your customers signs up as an Insider through your link, two things happen that don't happen otherwise.

One: their $50 gift card comes straight back to you.

Normally the Insider takes their $50 into the marketplace and spends it wherever they like. Not here. When they come in through your link, we automatically issue that $50 as a gift card to your business. You recruited them; you get the spend.

Two: they get something extra, from you.

You can attach a sign-up offer - a bonus available only through your link and not purchasable with credits by anyone else. Your customers get an offer nobody else can get. That's yours to design.

So the maths is simple. Every customer you send us becomes a $100 membership for the community, a $50 payment to you, and a customer walking back through your door with credit to spend.

You have an audience already. This is what it's worth.

And then there's everything you don't have to do.

Connect your Facebook page when you sign up and we take it from there.

We pull in what you're already posting and push it back out to the community. Your specials, your events, your new stock. It lands in The Weekender every Thursday and on our daily community page - what's on, what's new, who's got something going.

You don't file anything. You don't remember to send us anything. You post the way you already post, and thousands of local people see it.

That's not a bonus feature. That's the point of a community hub. You're in it by default, from the day you join, at no cost.

Your customers come out of this very well.

It matters that this is a good deal for the people you send our way. You're putting your name on it.

There's always something running. Monthly enter-and-wins. Daily spins for stretches of the year. Prizes that are, almost without exception, gift cards to local businesses - which means even the prizes come back to the community.

And then there's the Million Dollar Vault.

Every Insider chooses their Lucky Six - six numbers, theirs for the year. Those numbers ride along in various contests we run. And if they match the Vault, they win a million dollars in local gift cards.

Not cash to a stranger in another province. A million dollars, spent here.

So when you tell a customer to sign up through your link, you're handing them $50 to spend locally, a stack of local offers, entry into everything we run, and a real shot at a million dollars. You look good for sending them.

Three steps. About three minutes.

1
Claim your business.

Your name, your email, your website. If nobody's claimed you yet, it's yours.
2
Turn on gift cards.

One agreement, one checkbox. Your business goes live in the marketplace.
3
Share your link.

Post it tonight. Start earning on the customers you already have.

Questions, answered straight.

What's the catch? How is this free?: There isn't one. Insiders pay $100 a year for their membership - that's our revenue. Partners are what makes the membership worth buying, so charging you would be backwards.
Do I really get 100% of the gift card value?: Yes. Fifty dollars claimed, fifty dollars paid to you. We don't discount it and we don't take a commission.
Is there a limit on how many gift cards I can sell?: No.
When do I get paid?: We total your claims at month end and send payment ten days later.
What if I'm busy and forget how the QR thing works?: You won't have to remember. We email you when a card is claimed, and the customer gets the instructions every time. Scan, green check, done.
What if someone tries to use the same card twice?: They can't. Each claim is verified once and then it's spent.
How many people are actually on your list?: Thousands, across Sarnia-Lambton, and growing every week.
Do I have to create an offer?: No. You can add one later from your dashboard. Most Partners do it eventually, because it's how you get people back a second time.
Someone's already claimed my business.: It happens - often it's a co-owner or a manager. We'll show you a partially hidden version of the email on file. If you don't recognise it, email support@hashtaglocal.com and we'll sort it out.
Am I locked into anything?: No contract, no term, no fee. Switch gift cards off whenever you like.

You could be making money on this tonight.

It takes about three minutes, it costs nothing, and by the time you close up you could have a link out to your customers that pays you fifty dollars every time one of them joins.

Free. Takes about three minutes.

Step 1 of 5

You
Business
Gift cards
Offer
Done

First, who are you?

First things first - we'll set you up with a free #local account. You'll get The Weekender and can enter our monthly contests. No charge, and you can upgrade to a full Insider membership any time.

First name

Last name