BBC News interviews Taggo

Fans are more valuable than normal credit card customers

Banks across Asia compete with each other to convince retailers to give special deals to the bank's cardholders. Lack of differentiation leads to situations like this, where four different banks managed to get the same 10% discount for their cardholders.



Taggo has found a way to get bigger benefits and discounts for a bank's cardholders, with very little cost or effort.

The following picture was recently taken at Cafe Le Caire, one of the retailers trying out Taggo. OCBC credit card holders get 5% off at Cafe Le Caire Singapore. BUT... Fans of Cafe Le Caire that present their ez-link transit card get 20% off. Why? Because fans are more valuable, thanks to the automatic wall post designed to attract friends of Cafe Le Caire customers.



At another restaurant, Paulaner Brauhaus, Citibank cardholders get 15% off, but fans get 20%.



These early examples of Taggo deployments make it clear that fan recognition could generate lots of value for card brands. If OCBC were using Taggo for their promotion, then Cafe Le Caire would be offering a 20% discount to OCBC cardholders that are fans of Cafe Le Caire. If Citibank were using Taggo, their cardholders would get 20% off at Paulaner once they become fans of Paulaner's Facebook Page.

I've been linking marketing and loyalty techniques to the payment transaction for almost two decades now. I am obsessed with inventing fresh new concepts that are innovative enough to merit solid patent protection (for me that's the first basic test, otherwise, I'm not interested). This is the funnest and most exciting development I've been involved with in a long time. At my prior venture (Welcome Real-time, a company I founded in 1996) I searched for years for a simple, attractive way to enhance payment transactions without all the traditional overhead of CRM systems, complicated earning and redemption processes, heavily customized enterprise software integrated into a bank's credit card processing systems, etc.

Taggo passes these tests. We're in for a fun ride.

Viral marketing success story at a restaurant in Singapore

A couple weeks ago, the Indonesian Panggang restaurant at NUS began using Taggo to offer a 10% discount to fans when they use their contactless transit card. Their goal was to attract new customers and friends of customers. Within one week, the number of fans doubled, from 276 to 550. Within two weeks, the number grew to 639 fans, an increase of 139% in a very short time. Growth is still continuing at a rapid pace.

Better yet, an average of 50 fans now tap each day for the discount, causing their friends to discover the restaurant as well. Indonesian Panggang's viral marketing advertisement reaches approximately 7,500 students each day (50 taps X average of 150 friends per Facebook user). In comparison, the restaurant has had a total of 12 Foursquare check-ins. That's total ever. Versus 50 taps each day with Taggo. Geolocation might be cool and trendy, but the numbers are just not there. Good old fashioned payment is potentially much more viral.

This is what the fan's friends see on their Facebook wall:


Indonesian Panggang was getting an average of 8 new fans per day prior to launching Taggo. A launch burst occurred over the first 3 days, then settled at an average of 20 new fans per day.