Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Kelly Passey, EVP of Business and Product Development at Access Development (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The answer you gave me is interesting in itself. But what I was originally asking you about the entrepreneurship audience is more about a loyalty program. For example, where the consumer is the entrepreneur, and you either have a small business and there is a bank or large vendor catering to that small business or entrepreneurship audience and bringing value. Do you have any customer like that? Amex Small Business would be a good example.

Kelly Passey: We are bringing a new product to market that is similar to what Amex does for other small business. We have branded it “thank-you perks.” Think about a small business owner today. She is very entrepreneurial and is running her business. What she typically doesn’t have a lot of time for is an agency to take care of all her mobile and social needs, her web and email solutions, to stay engaged with their customers. We have a brand new product, which we launched this year, called “Thank-you perks.” This takes all that weight off a business entrepreneur’s shoulders and enables them to manage their customer lists better and to email them with valuable offers on a regular basis to feature their brand and own deals on a regular basis. To do they need a mobile application, a web interface, a social media solution and local offers and deals.

Take the example of what we have done with Allstate. Now consider a local entrepreneur who owns a dental practice, a chiropractor practice or an art store. A dentist can only talk to his customers about getting their teeth whitened so many times. How are you going to stay engaged with them? If you are a chiropractor, you can only talk about getting your back aligned so many times. How are you going to stay engaged with your customers? Through this “thank-you perk,” we have now helped them create a way to stay in front of the customer – to have a reason to have a dialogue and present valuable offers on a regular basis through multiple channels like email, social, web, etc., and still feature their brand and themselves prominently.

SM: If you are trying to sell to small businesses, I imagine that this is not your sweet spot. You sell to enterprise customers, who pay you serious amounts of money to do what you do. How would selling to a vendor be helpful for you?

KP: That is a great question. If you think about our model, for 28 years we had the same company logo – a triangle. At all three points you have one merchant, the client organization and the member of the client organization. For 28 years we have in fact worked with the small business owners, with retailers and with merchants as a promotional advertising partner. We have consulted with them, gotten behind the counter with them, figured out what they wanted to do to drive afternoon or weekend traffic, or bigger ticket spend. We have taken offers and promotional discounts in from them to do just that. So we very much know and understand the small business community.

Now they come to us and say: “Hey Access, you guys have always been there to help drive sales through these offers and deals, but I really need help with my social media support. I need help, because I need a mobile application.” We have heard from our own merchants, who have given us offers for 28 years, that they need additional services – not unlike what an Intuit does, extending their partner platform and helping their small business merchants with more services outside of just QuickBooks. We are taking these services back in a program called “thank-you perks” to get back to those entrepreneurs or small businesses and help them take weight off their shoulders. It is probably hard to visualize this.

SM: It is not hard to visualize. I was just curious about why that would make a lot of sense business model wise – how is it profitable for you to cater to these small businesses? I understand that large companies driving their loyalty programs are willing to pay you huge amounts of money.

KP: The easiest way to answer that question is to realize that there are 25 million small businesses, merchants and retailers across North America. Even if you are a local Subway owner, you only get so much benefits by being a franchise owner; you still need to promote your local business to drive traffic.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Kelly Passey, EVP of Business and Product Development at Access Development
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