Latest / Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360 / Loyalty360 Loyalty Live | Peter Vogel, vPromos
Transcript
- 0:04John Diether: Hello and welcome to another edition of Loyalty Live on Loyalty 360.
- 0:09John Diether: I'm John Diether.
- 0:10John Diether: In this series, we talk to the leaders in our industry about the technology, trends and best practices that drive unique experiences, engagement and, most importantly, customer loyalty.
- 0:23John Diether: Loyalty Live gives us deeper insight into the state of customer loyalty.
- 0:28John Diether: We use these sessions to drive pragmatic, evidence-based solutions to the challenges brands face and identify opportunities to advance the field.
- 0:39John Diether: Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Peter Vogel, Chief Revenue Officer at vPromos.
- 0:46John Diether: Peter, welcome to Loyalty Live.
- 0:50Peter Vogel: Thank you very much.
- 0:51Peter Vogel: Super excited to be on.
- 0:52Peter Vogel: I've been a fan of Mark and the organization for, I think, almost 10 years, when I first heard about it, so I'm excited to be on with you.
- 1:01John Diether: Awesome.
- 1:01John Diether: It's nice to meet a fan face to face.
- 1:04John Diether: Peter, can you tell us a little bit about your background and how that led to your current position at vPromos and what actually you do for the firm?
- 1:15Peter Vogel: Sure, so I'll start with my role there.
- 1:16Peter Vogel: So, as you mentioned, I'm the Chief Revenue Officer and they brought me on about six months ago and my primary responsibility is to bring up our enterprise kind of client roster.
- 1:28Peter Vogel: So I'm out there right now targeting all of tier one, tier two, restaurant and retail so the very biggest chains in the world with hundreds or thousands of locations.
- 1:37Peter Vogel: Those are our primary prospects and customers and they brought me on because in my background I have been a co-founder of several loyalty companies.
- 1:49Peter Vogel: I've been brought on by several companies to help them grow at a very early stage.
- 1:55Peter Vogel: One of the last companies I was a part of was one of the first card linked networks ever, called Empire, and that was back in around 2013, 14, 15.
- 2:04Peter Vogel: We built the first ever card linked network where, instead of just showing card linked offers to your own audience, we went out and partnered with people like RetailMeNot, Yelp, Coupons.
- 2:17Peter Vogel: com, Rewards Network a lot of the biggest kind of organizations out there with loyalty programs and we built that up.
- 2:27Peter Vogel: It got acquired by a company called Augeo, which renamed it FIGI, and then it got acquired by Chase.
- 2:33Peter Vogel: So that company that I helped co-found got acquired by Chase and we also worked with a lot of Fortune 500 brands at that company.
- 2:41Peter Vogel: So what I'm bringing to vPromos is the experience that I've had with a lot of these tier one and two clients and also in overall strategy of building up a company from really startup phase to exit.
- 2:57John Diether: Well, for folks who might not be familiar with vPromos, what exactly does the company do for your clients in order to support brand loyalty?
- 3:09Peter Vogel: Great question.
- 3:09Peter Vogel: So the thing that makes us most unique, you know.
- 3:13Peter Vogel: As you know, there's tons of loyalty companies out there who can run programs.
- 3:16Peter Vogel: One of the things we do, though, is we do all of our tracking through the terminal actually.
- 3:21Peter Vogel: So the payment terminals we work with, the Android payment terminals primarily.
- 3:26Peter Vogel: Some of the big makers are people like Pax, and in Genneco and Verifone, and what
- 3:32Peter Vogel: our program does.
- 3:33Peter Vogel: It's different is it doesn't rely on asking the member for their phone number every single time.
- 3:38Peter Vogel: You know typical loyalty program.
- 3:40Peter Vogel: You go in and they ask oh, are you a member with your phone number?
- 3:43Peter Vogel: Half the time they forget, half the time you forget you're in a program.
- 3:47Peter Vogel: So what our program does is it uses the terminal as a tool to enroll you.
- 3:52Peter Vogel: So when you stick your card in, the terminal will say hey, it looks like we don't recognize this credit card.
- 3:57Peter Vogel: Would you like to add this to your free loyalty program and start earning rewards?
- 4:01Peter Vogel: Today?
- 4:03Peter Vogel: It creates a token.
- 4:03Peter Vogel: It does ask for a phone number at that point and you click yes, I want to join.
- 4:08Peter Vogel: And then it also asks you if you want to get text messages with special offers, bonuses, etc.
- 4:14Peter Vogel: So you're getting opted in TCPA compliantly at the terminal when you're enrolling, which is very unique, and then every time you come back, as long as you use that same card, the counterperson doesn't have to ask what your phone number.
- 4:28Peter Vogel: Are you in the program?
- 4:29Peter Vogel: The terminal recognizes you every single time, gives you rewards every single time and if you ever use a different card, it'll just say, hey, it looks like we don't have this card in file.
- 4:38Peter Vogel: Would you like to add it to your loyalty program account, and then you can have 10 cards on the same account if you want.
- 4:44Peter Vogel: Everything is automated.
- 4:46Peter Vogel: There's no reliance on the counterperson anymore, so it's fast, simple and seamless for the consumer.
- 4:52John Diether: Peter, can you tell us what the main challenges are that your loyalty software is looking to solve?
- 4:59Peter Vogel: Sure, the challenge is one getting people to enroll in your program first of all, and that relies on the counterperson saying every time hey, are you in our program yet Can I tell you about it?
- 5:08Peter Vogel: Or every time someone pays, the terminal will just say, hey, it looks like you're not in our program, would you like to join?
- 5:14Peter Vogel: So it increases enrollment.
- 5:16Peter Vogel: It also helps.
- 5:17Peter Vogel: Another problem programs have is missed transactions.
- 5:20Peter Vogel: So imagine all the time someone goes into a store or restaurant they don't even remember their private program.
- 5:26Peter Vogel: I mean, these days most of us are probably in like 20, 30 loyalty programs.
- 5:30Peter Vogel: You may not remember.
- 5:32Peter Vogel: You have to tell them your phone number and that transaction gets missed.
- 5:35Peter Vogel: So our technology eliminates that.
- 5:39Peter Vogel: And the last thing our technology does and this is like a key thing these days, especially for compliance If you text people without their permission and your business and you do that willfully, you can be fined up to $1,500 per text.
- 5:51Peter Vogel: So in a class action lawsuit you could be fined for millions of dollars if you have a savvy enough lawyer out there who realizes you know what a company is doing.
- 6:00Peter Vogel: So we a huge part of what we do is we make it so that a loyalty program gets people opted in at the terminal when they're joining.
- 6:10Peter Vogel: So we get it legally complyingly opted in and then from that point forward the brand has permission to text that person special offers, birthday offers, you know, maybe an item, specific special, anything they want to.
- 6:25Peter Vogel: And so they've essentially created a whole new communication mechanism which before this all those people were anonymous to them.
- 6:35Peter Vogel: They couldn't communicate with them, but now they essentially own that customer base so they can reach out to them anytime they want to.
- 6:41John Diether: Peter, something we always like to understand from our members is your definition of customer loyalty.
- 6:48John Diether: How do you see it from from your purview?
- 6:52John Diether: What is customer loyalty?
- 6:55John Diether: What does it mean to your organization?
- 6:59Peter Vogel: I mean we really look at the dollars and cents behind it because we're charging, you know, a fee for companies to use our product.
- 7:06Peter Vogel: So we always look at ROI and we always have to show, you know, mathematically, not just the warm and cushy of people love the program, but we like to show mathematically.
- 7:18Peter Vogel: I mean we're looking at things like how much does, what's the average order value of a member versus, what's the average order value of a nonmember, what's the average frequency of purchases for a member versus a nonmember?
- 7:29Peter Vogel: And then we can go in and see if we're really producing loyalty, if we're showing those people in the program, if we're changing their behavior, then we view that as kind of a sign of loyalty that we've made an impact on their purchasing behavior.
- 7:45Peter Vogel: Not just quantity but frequency.
- 7:49Peter Vogel: Of course we love to see people recommending the program and social media, things like that.
- 7:53Peter Vogel: That's just a little harder to quantify.
- 7:55Peter Vogel: So it's we really like to look at a very mathematical ROI calculation that takes into account how much rewards have been given out and what did that cost the company.
- 8:06Peter Vogel: And also, what is the company paying for the management cost of the program, for the you know a company like ours what's that cost, and then what's the lift we drive?
- 8:16Peter Vogel: And we can equate that essentially to increase customer loyalty and X amount of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, etc.
- 8:26John Diether: Now, with the card linked programs, we've noticed that customer enrollment and onboarding can be difficult.
- 8:33John Diether: It presents its own challenges.
- 8:35John Diether: What kind of challenges do you see brands facing with the enrollment, the onboarding, and what are some best practices that they can do to overcome that?
- 8:48Peter Vogel: Well, the biggest problem with most loyalty programs and this is literally what we're trying to solve with our technology is you're reliant on usually it's a counterperson having to ask are you in the program?
- 9:01Peter Vogel: The best practices are always to train all your employees as extensively as possible so they understand what the loyalty program is and they're comfortable talking about it.
- 9:10Peter Vogel: That's one of the things we've heard in talking to counter people is they're often not even that clear on all the benefits of the program or don't feel comfortable answering questions, so they don't really want to bring it up.
- 9:22Peter Vogel: They also sometimes feel like they're being too salesy and they're just trying to serve the customer.
- 9:29Peter Vogel: It's a lot of education for staff, but the solution that we obviously recommend is by using our technology.
- 9:43Peter Vogel: They can eliminate that problem, because now the terminal is going to ask every single time would you like to join the loyalty program?
- 9:49Peter Vogel: Counter person can just be there to answer questions.
- 9:54Peter Vogel: Someone will say oh, what's your loyalty program?
- 9:56Peter Vogel: Like?
- 9:56Peter Vogel: The counterperson doesn't have to initiate it.
- 9:58Peter Vogel: They don't have to create a sale to get someone to join.
- 10:02Peter Vogel: They can just answer questions, which for a lot of people is more comfortable than trying to sell something to someone else.
- 10:09Peter Vogel: I think I'll leave it at that.
- 10:14Peter Vogel: The other biggest challenge is the actual payment terminal technology.
- 10:22Peter Vogel: That's something that we've been about 10 years ahead of this whole time, but we're very excited for next year because all of the big companies are upgrading out of these Android terminals, and that's where our technology works perfectly.
- 10:37Peter Vogel: It's already embedded with a lot of these huge payment terminals.
- 10:41Peter Vogel: It's a really exciting year for us that we can actually finally start selling to people who can use the technology.
- 10:48Peter Vogel: We've been trying to sell this to people who didn't have the right terminals yet, but we're finally to that place.
- 10:54Peter Vogel: Whereas it's happening this year, next year, 2025.
- 10:58John Diether: Thank you.
- 10:59John Diether: Switching over to compliance now.
- 11:01John Diether: We just published a study here at Loyalty 360 that said that 70% of brands feel that they're more focused on data and compliance and privacy over the past year and a half than they've been before.
- 11:19John Diether: What do you think specifically in the realm of the privacy that brands are facing right now?
- 11:29John Diether: What kind of challenges.
- 11:34Peter Vogel: To bring that back to the part of compliance that we're involved in, one of the biggest challenges brands have and we've heard this from a lot of them a lot of the brands don't the only way they can opt in people to get messages from them usually is on their website.
- 11:51Peter Vogel: You have to drive someone from a location a restaurant, a store, et cetera to go home and remember and then go onto the website and that's a big hurdle.
- 12:03Peter Vogel: You're going to lose whatever 90%, 95% of people.
- 12:06Peter Vogel: What that means is a lot of companies never get a sizable audience of people that they can text and they can never take advantage of that medium.
- 12:18Peter Vogel: Texting has become a huge thing now with I think the latest stat was 80% of people open every text they get, whereas something like 15% to 20% of people open emails.
- 12:29Peter Vogel: You can literally get four to five times as much exposure if you can build that text audience, that mobile audience.
- 12:37Peter Vogel: But you have to figure out a way to get them opted in.
- 12:39Peter Vogel: We think doing it right at the terminal when they're joining is the smartest, most efficient way to do it, because you're most excited about the program right when you join.
- 12:49Peter Vogel: It has all upside.
- 12:51Peter Vogel: You're joining because you see the ability to start getting free stuff, you're going to take advantage of whatever you can at that moment.
- 12:58Peter Vogel: We think that's the way to make sure you're compliant and you get a large enough audience to text.
- 13:05Peter Vogel: Because what's happening now?
- 13:06Peter Vogel: Most people just don't have an audience to text because they can't get them opted in.
- 13:11Peter Vogel: They're afraid to text them, which is smart because it can be pretty hefty, fine.
- 13:15Peter Vogel: But that's one of the biggest issues we see these loyalty programs facing.
- 13:21John Diether: Now, you had mentioned earlier ROI when it comes to loyalty programs.
- 13:28John Diether: How do they calculate ROI?
- 13:31John Diether: What are some ways that you suggest some metrics, some KPIs that can be measured to evaluate the program?
- 13:40Peter Vogel: So most depending on how the loyalty program is set up.
- 13:44Peter Vogel: We're lucky with some of our big partners.
- 13:46Peter Vogel: We have the ability to all the transactions flow through, whether they're members or not members, through our platform essentially.
- 13:55Peter Vogel: So we see at thousands and you know 6,000 plus locations right now.
- 14:00Peter Vogel: We see all of the spending that happens from nonmembers and all the spending from members.
- 14:04Peter Vogel: So it's very easy for us to see what's the average order size.
- 14:07Peter Vogel: So if the average member is spending, you know, $85 and the average nonmember spending $50, then we can see that you're looking at $35 out of $50.
- 14:18Peter Vogel: That's about a 60% lift.
- 14:20Peter Vogel: So you're getting a 60% lift on every purchase from a member and you can essentially calculate that out to see what that lift equates to.
- 14:29Peter Vogel: And let's just do some simple math and say, say the lift equates to a million dollars, and then you can look and see during that same time.
- 14:37Peter Vogel: And when I say lift, it's the actual difference between what is spent by members and nonmembers.
- 14:42Peter Vogel: So it's not just the member spend, it's the incremental spend.
- 14:47Peter Vogel: So you look at that, say there's a million dollars incremental spend.
- 14:50Peter Vogel: Then you can look at maybe the company has spent $75,000 on rewards and then maybe they're paying a company, you know, $25,000 during that time period for management, so it's $100,000.
- 15:06Peter Vogel: So we would look at that and say we've essentially created a 10X ROI.
- 15:11Peter Vogel: If they're getting 10X what it costs them to run the program, and both the management and the rewards are giving out.
- 15:18Peter Vogel: So that's something that we feel confident in that they can take to their finance team and their C level and show them hey, this isn't just like a feel good, everyone has a loyalty program, so we have to do it.
- 15:30Peter Vogel: It actually does something right.
- 15:32Peter Vogel: We can actually show you financially the lift and how much it costs us to build that lift and therefore calculate the ROI.
- 15:41John Diether: Thank you.
- 15:41John Diether: You know another thing that we've noticed with loyalty programs, especially for restaurants and retailers, that many of the programs are starting to look similar, or at least consumers perceive them as working the same way.
- 16:00John Diether: How do you recommend that a let's say, your retailer restaurant to make your program stand out?
- 16:09John Diether: How can you make it unique, Again a backdrop of thousands of other programs?
- 16:17Peter Vogel: You know, I know this is kind of a key word that people throw around a lot, but I think it really does matter.
- 16:22Peter Vogel: Personalization Everyone has loyalty programs where you spend X, you get Y, you save up certain points and you get something.
- 16:32Peter Vogel: If you have a type of product where you can give someone an upgrade or a service that's very compelling to them like airplanes or hotels, travel programs are best at this just because you have the longest experience with someone, so like an upgrade like that really matters.
- 16:51Peter Vogel: That's not as easy for Chick-fil-A to get an upgrade.
- 16:58Peter Vogel: You can give someone more points back.
- 17:01Peter Vogel: You can give them maybe first access or to special items in the menu, but it's not quite the same.
- 17:07Peter Vogel: But you can do personalization where if you and most it depends on the program we do see skew level data through our program so we can make very specific suggestions that someone gets a free something if they buy something because we know they bought that the last three times and give people benefits tied to things they already have shown interested in and you know they like and that's going to make them more excited and want to take advantage of it than just a generic offer.
- 17:43Peter Vogel: I mean if you're giving them something that you know they already like and you can track that through the loyalty program.
- 17:48Peter Vogel: So some levels of personalization.
- 17:51Peter Vogel: And there's companies that do it, like AMEX, do it in a much bigger way where they give people like gourmet cooking classes if they know they're interested in that, or you can opt in to get information about seeing famous singers backstage or things like that.
- 18:08Peter Vogel: It's hard for a lot of sale like a QSR brand to do something like that, but you can still do a lot of personalization and I think that can set someone apart.
- 18:21John Diether: Now, in terms of the technology which I know you're very familiar with, what do you predict is going to be the next big thing with technology, the next opportunity for brands?
- 18:31John Diether: Where we headed and what excites?
- 18:34Peter Vogel: you about that?
- 18:35Peter Vogel: Well, what I said earlier is one of the reasons I joined this company six months ago is, after doing some research, I realized that the payments industry is kind of at an inflection point where a lot of people have these older payment terminals and all they're good for is putting your card through.
- 18:54Peter Vogel: That's all they do.
- 18:56Peter Vogel: All the new terminals just like you have Android on your phone, you have an operating system like that.
- 19:00Peter Vogel: All the new terminals are smart terminals, which means they have access to lots and lots of different features and apps that are just kind of like available to those terminals.
- 19:11Peter Vogel: So those terminals, they've moved so far beyond just being a place to pay.
- 19:15Peter Vogel: Now they can manage gift cards for you straight through the terminal.
- 19:19Peter Vogel: You can institute loyalty programs, you could accept cryptocurrency if you wanted to, you could set up a buy now, pay later program and have some way to determine someone's credit worthiness, and all that can just happen right at the terminal.
- 19:32Peter Vogel: You don't need any extra technology, and I always say we're at this inflection point that 2024 and 25 are going to be the years that all of these big, big chains like the McDonald's, the Walgreens, et cetera, are going to be upgrading to these new smart terminals and that's going to allow them to embrace technologies like ours, other technologies there's lots of things popping up that can make someone's payment process easier.
- 20:03John Diether: Well going forward, let's say in 2024,.
- 20:05John Diether: Is there anything that vPromos is specifically concentrating on?
- 20:12John Diether: What do you think is going to be the main focus in the loyalty arena for your company in the year ahead?
- 20:21Peter Vogel: We're making a really big push to get out there, targeting a lot more QSR and retail.
- 20:27Peter Vogel: So we're going to a lot of the big events.
- 20:29Peter Vogel: I'll be at the Loyalty3 60 event in a couple of weeks.
- 20:34Peter Vogel: Next year we're going to the QSR Evolution, there's another one called CRMC which does a big retail conference, and there's a handful of others.
- 20:44Peter Vogel: But we're going to be going out there.
- 20:46Peter Vogel: We've never really done much thought leadership.
- 20:50Peter Vogel: We had never really gone to many conferences.
- 20:52Peter Vogel: We've never gotten our name out there.
- 20:53Peter Vogel: So 2024 is the year where we want to make vPromos a known brand in the industry and educate the whole industry about what we do, what our technology is, and then, as the industry is maturing and adopting all these Android terminals, we want to be at the forefront of people's minds.
- 21:14Peter Vogel: So 2024 for us is all about exposure, building our brand and thought leadership.
- 21:24John Diether: Excellent.
- 21:24John Diether: Now we've reached the rapid fire question.
- 21:27John Diether: Think of it as the lightning round of our interview.
- 21:32John Diether: Most people think it's one of the more popular features.
- 21:36John Diether: I'm just going to give you some rapid fire questions to answer with.
- 21:40John Diether: The first thing that comes to mind Are there wrong answers?
- 21:43John Diether: No, at least I want you to know yeah, it's not a personality test.
- 21:50John Diether: What is your favorite word?
- 21:52John Diether: Peter: Opportunity.
- 21:56John Diether: John: What about your least favorite word?
- 22:04Peter Vogel: Can't as in like we can't do that.
- 22:09John Diether: Got it.
- 22:09John Diether: What excites you?
- 22:13Peter Vogel: Well, I just went through the whole explanation of next year.
- 22:16Peter Vogel: For us, we're very excited about 2024.
- 22:18Peter Vogel: We think this.
- 22:19Peter Vogel: You know, vPromos has been around since 2009 and our technology has literally been 10 years ahead of its time this whole time.
- 22:28Peter Vogel: So we're finally like we feel like we can compete in the marketplace and have a product everyone can use now.
- 22:35John Diether: And what do you on the flip side?
- 22:36John Diether: What do you find tiresome?
- 22:42Peter Vogel: Negativity or the lack of solution, finding people who critique everything versus coming up with solutions to solve those problems.
- 22:55John Diether: And what famous person, living or dead, would you like to invite to dinner?
- 23:01Peter Vogel: Well, I'm a long time reader and writer, so I think I'm going to have to say Ernest Hemingway, just based on his wild, crazy life.
- 23:12John Diether: What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
- 23:22Peter Vogel: You know I've always been fascinated by standup comedy.
- 23:24Peter Vogel: There's probably a reason I'm not a standup comic, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't want to be that, and I've actually even.
- 23:32Peter Vogel: There's some things you can do locally in everyone's area where you can join clubs and kind of learn standup comedy, and I've always been intrigued to do that because I feel like it's such a hard thing to do that it's like it's intriguing to me that it's so hard to get up there and make people laugh.
- 23:49John Diether: Okay, so what profession would you avoid?
- 23:53Peter Vogel: Finally.
- 23:53Peter Vogel: So this is the exact opposite.
- 23:55Peter Vogel: I think, yeah, it's not this sounds mean, but probably dentist.
- 23:59Peter Vogel: Just because I don't like going to the dentist very much and I couldn't imagine having to drill out people's mouths all the time.
- 24:09Peter Vogel: That seems kind of horrifying to me.
- 24:12John Diether: And who inspired you to become the person you are today.
- 24:20Peter Vogel: Well, it's probably cliche, but probably my mom was always.
- 24:24Peter Vogel: She was a university professor, then ended up going back to law school when I went to college and got her law degree and kind of started a whole second career and has just always been a very educated, well-read person and I got my love of books and my mom always had a huge library, so I was lucky enough to be able to have access to lots and lots of books and always see other people around me reading, which I think reading is still a big hobby for me, so I think that's that's an important was an important part of my kind of intellectual development.
- 25:00John Diether: And what do you typically think about at the end of the day?
- 25:06Peter Vogel: You know I'd love to say I think about everything I'm grateful for every night, but that's I think that's something that I want to do.
- 25:12Peter Vogel: I think more realistically, like most other people.
- 25:17Peter Vogel: All the meetings and calls I know are happening in the next, you know, next day kind of run through my head and you know it's hard not to think of that as you're kind of planning for the day falling asleep.
- 25:32John Diether: And how do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
- 25:41Peter Vogel: Let's see.
- 25:41Peter Vogel: I'd probably want to be remembered as a kind of a kind, thoughtful person that was very generous.
- 25:51John Diether: Well, thank you for being a good sport on all those, peter, and thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.
- 25:57John Diether: It was great hearing your perspective on customer loyalty and we look forward to staying in touch, learning more about what VPromos is doing over the next year.
- 26:10Peter Vogel: Awesome.
- 26:11Peter Vogel: Well, thank you very much for having me and I'm psyched to see you all on your team in Denver, here at the Loyalty 360 conference coming up.
- 26:20John Diether: Yes, certainly.
- 26:20John Diether: See you then, and we'll be back soon with another edition of Loyalty Live for Loyalty 360.
- 26:28John Diether: I'm John Diether.
- 26:28John Diether: Thank you for watching.
- 26:29John Diether: Thank you for watching.