Postcards from Perkistan

Just a short one today.

Dan and I have been doing a number of pitches lately - The Incentive Show and a range of investor meetings.

In each pitch we give the example of how at Perkler we are working hard to connect loyalty information (the kind of stuff marketing managers invest a LOT of time and money in) to the point of purchase.

A classic ‘fail’ we highlight is the program that sends out the traditional Sale PostCard. Look, this kind of collateral looks great, has simple messaging but we always wonder what the take up is.

Our mantra is “Isn’t this material better off on people’s phones rather than their fridge?”. It’s what we are building our mobile platform for and it seems to make perfect sense to us.

Perkler ranting aside, yesterday when I got home I remembered that I had an outstanding Snowgum voucher. I love this program and they are really active. My Dad is in town and it’s his birthday next week so I thought I’d use my Snowgum points to get him a tshirt. So I went looking for the voucher.

I found it eventually - check out how that beautifully designed marketing collateral ends up! It’s there, on my fridge, somewhere

Snowgum nearly lost a sale because my fridge is messy - crazy!

I hope this makes our point about linking this material much close to the purchasing point so it doesn’t get lost in amongst a consumers ‘real’ life!

Jus

It’s been a very long time since our last post, which means we have been a bit slack but also means we have been up to our necks in work - which is a good thing.

Those following Dan or I on Twitter (@JustinBarrie and @BigHittingLama) would know that we’ve just been overseas for a market validation trip to the UK. 

As winners of the Australian Final of the Technium Challenge we were lucky enough to be taken over to Swansea to compete in the global final. A week long cultural tour introduced us to all that the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) are doing to support businesses (and encourage them to enter Wales as a base) and also gave us a look around a range of cities and towns like Cardiff and Aberystwyth.

We didn’t win the global final - we tell our families we can runner-up - but the experience was excellent.

The WAG have some very interesting support packages including running the 11 Technium Centres - incubators that allow companies an “easy-in easy-out” approach to setting up an office. The WAG also have a very vibrant Finance arm - Finance Wales and strong Angel Community - Xenos. All very interesting stuff.

The second half of our week was down in London. We had three days chocked full of meetings with interested investors, potential strategic partners and most interestingly some really high-quality retailers.

We learnt from brands like French Connection and the Arcadia Group (representing fantastic brands like Miss Selfridges, Dorothy Perkins and Top Shop that the idea of Perkler very much translates to the UK market. We were pleased that with very little adjustment it could become a very successful export market for us.

We also learnt that the expectations of retailers in the mobile space in particular seems to be significantly more advanced than here in Oz or even than in the US (where we were last year). Most of the meetings focused on how the Perkler mobile platform can be extended to really enhance loyalty offerings which was really exciting for us and our future product runway.

Overall I’d say that the UK retailers were very focused on loyalty stopping being a “met too” industry and really looking for ways to really reward loyal customers. Particularly interesting was their desire to link loyalty directly to ‘live’ performance of a particular physical retail location on any given day. Using the loyalty program to drive customers in when times are slow. Very very interesting notion.

On the investment front there seemed to be a fairly buoyant mood. The Australian Government should probably take note of some pretty good initiatives like the London Technology Fund which combine the best of private venture discipline with a softer government approach - we were very impressed. The WAG also had a range of funding options that were very attractive to the right business at the right time.

So the trip was extremely valuable for us in terms of understanding where to after Australia, but also in re-confirming that we need to focus on the Australian launch (only weeks away) and get it right here. And that’s exactly what we are doing.

Negotiations are fairly advanced with a couple of really good brands here at home, and Adam is working bloody hard to get the new version of the site up and ready for solid QA next week ahead of the launch.

For the launch itself we have appointed Magnum PR to lead off our campaign. We are really excited about working with the guys and know that a sustained campaign (combined with our product offering real value to consumers and retailers) will result in some great commercial partnerships and, most importantly, a big intake of members getting value from Perkler.

So back to work - but more regular posts now that we are back in Oz. Don’t forget to follow our community manager Graham on Twitter as well @perkler. 

Last thing to report is that whilst in London we were lucky enough to score Centre Court Wimbledon tickets on Ladies Quarter Final day. The seats were amazing and we ended up right next to the members. I can assure you all (because I know you’re wondering) Sir Cliff Richard’s tan is quite extraordinary!

Justin

Our Twitter account @perkler and my personal one @justinbarrie follows @mediapost a tweet of all of the news coming from MediaPost Publications.

An article recently caught my eye from Online Media Daily. Gavin O’Malley was writing about the ‘line between media channels becoming increasingly blurred’. He quotes a range of statistics released in a report by Ketchum Public Relations that showed 44% of online shoppers read reviews from other consumers as part of their decision making process when purchasing.

As a result lots of small (and some huge) social communities have sprung up around specific consumer interest points. Interestingly a larger number of these people are now also broadening their reading to related blogs rather than just the comments and recommendations on a specific page.

None of this sounds entirely new - and frankly I don’t really see how this is different to how people shop offline either. I do tend to get recommendations from friends before I buy something big.

It’s more the dramatic increase in numbers and realisation that it is happening online that are interesting. In fact I remember reading something from the NRF around Christmas time about sites that have recommendations and reviews maintaining or improving their Christmas sales while others fell away.

And it’s exactly what we’ve been aware of and building on here at Perkler. When we say we are an online loyalty COMMUNITY, I can see some people reel and sigh “another 2.0″. But in the mission of simplifying loyalty programs, giving consumers power to manage and learn about everything they are entitled to - there seems little other option!

Our community features include rating and commenting. We’ve also built in functions where you can see other people’s virtual wallets (if they allow it) and we think that facilitates a really nice informal recommendation process.

But another exciting development is to start bringing content about brands from blogs and twitter directly into our space. We are working hard on this and think the blurring of media that Gavin O’Malley talks about will be there for all to see in our community.

People suggesting, rating and recommending programs to others. Feeds of anything people say about brands and programs on other social networks built in. A great consumer resource, and one that is responsive to how people are actually starting to shop.

Snappy title I know…

Dan has just downloaded some snaps from our US trip and one in particular pretty much sums up why we are doing this. At the ANZATech Summit we had a series of panel discussions, one of which featured experts on leadership. One of the panellists was Susan Hailey - an accomplished marketing, business development and more recently talent and recruiting expert.

Susan had some great advice for all of the companies present and was also a really great person. Her hidden talent though was that she is PERKS MAD.

Over 100 Rewards Cards - categorised and ready to go!

As you can see from the photo, even Dan was surprised when Susan proudly displayed her manual card management system. 

She immediately won the job of Perkler Dream Customer and she’ll be the first one to be invited to join when we open up the US version of the site.

The overwhelming take-away from seeing Susan’s highly organised card wallet - there are millions of people who don’t do this and are looking for a neat solution to do it for them!

With our search engine “The Perkolator” you can search online across all of your cards based on your likes and location.

Thanks Susan for the ‘market validation’!

Justin

Okay, a week since we got back now so I’m going to wrap up the US trip in this post so that we can concentrate on bringing you lots of news on perks perks and more perks!

After the day or rehearsals it was pretty much non-stop for the rest of the week.

Tuesday involved the big moment - our five minute pitch in front of a room of interested investors, service providers and others. We stuck to the time limit and did a pretty energetic four minutes that we were both happy with. Came off stage buzzing and was immediately handed a card (before I’d even removed my mike). This was a shock but a lesson that for the next four days Dan and I were ‘on’ at all times.

All of the companies at the ANZATech Gateway did a really good job (we thought each of them had really unique offerings and are keen to keep in touch with them all).

The Plug and Play - our home for three days!

Did lots of networking around the ANZATech morning, then went downstairs in the Plug and Play to join in the international extreme pitch and demo. 

Before we pitched there was a keynote by Dan’l Lewin from Microsoft, speaking about the Microsoft structure and approach to working with emerging businesses. I thought it sounded very interesting and it’s something we should definitely follow up.

Did our two-minute pitch along with 45 companies from a host of nations. Again, we did well but we were also blown away by some of the other amazing businesses - very enlightening.

The two minute pitches were followed by a demo pit and we had our fair share of people come past, including Jonathan Teo from Benchmark Capital who gave us some great feedback (lesson - even people who may not be interested in you specifically in the Valley are still interesting to talk to).

Back into the conference for an eye-opening keynote from TIm Draper from DFJ. The speech ended with a song and Dan and I (who knew we had a meeting with Tim in two days time) started wondering if we’d need to lead off our pitch with a little Bon Jovi! Inspirational stuff from Tim, as it was from Marcus at the Broth - one of our Australian Alumni who won the extreme pitching section of the day.

We then proceeded to meet lots of people at the drinks after the Plug and Play day as we did the following day when ANZATech put on a fantastic day of specialist panels. No pitching, but lots of interesting people from employment, immigration and IP lawyers, through to PR experts like Brian Solis, through to CEO’s and Venture guys. An all round great day, followed by a great unwind back at the Wild Palms!

Thursday was a BIG day for us. First up we met with Bill Reichert from Garage Ventures. A real thrill and a tough session as Bill pushed us hard to answer some probing questions. Next on to see one of my good friends in the US Darrel Rhea at Cheskin. Darrel gave us a few hours to sit relax and prepare for the meetings to come. It was great to catch up with him and hear about how his company is working through the current economic situation.

Next onto Tim Draper, who along with Dean Riskas, took time to meet with us. The meeting was very good and we really explored the current state of Perkler and the potential for the future. An energising and very positive meeting for us.

The mythical address - two meetings in a week!

The following day we were lucky enough to head back to Sandhill Road to meet up with Warren Hogarth at Sequoia. This was a great meeting and we whilst obviously happy to say that we ’saw Sequoia’ more importantly the contact with and advice from Warren was spot on. To say we were pretty excited as we drove the Rental Mini Bus back to Sunnyvale was an understatement!

After catching up with Coach Marder again back in San Fran, Friday finished with a really positive meeting with our first potential US client - childrenswear giant Gymboree. These guys have 700 outlets and release 26 lines a year (a new line of products every 2 weeks!). Explored the Perkler idea with their Manager of Direct Marketing Mark Laven. He was open to the Perkler approach and we are keeping in touch.

So, investors, clients, new friends, Wendy’s too late at night and a fantastically run conference by Viki and whole team at ANZATech. What a week!

Day 1 of the ANZATech Gateway Summit was set aside to get used to the room where we would be pitching on the following day but also provided the first opportunity for us to meet the coach ANZATech had given us in person.

The companies who came to the Valley with Anzatech

Our coach - a top bloke called Steven Marder - got to the room to catch up with us and really just make sure we stuck to message and didn’t try too hard.

As the representative of Perkler doing the speaking I was nervous but Dan and I agreed to put a little energy into the presentation by having Dan enter the stage to show off his rewards cards. This put me at ease because I could interact with him and helped make our point even more.

Marder’s advice was spot on though during the rehearsal I went for 7 minutes instead of five. He and Dan talked me back from the edge of “try to fit too much in” land and we felt well placed for the live pitch the following day.

Biggest lesson - with five minutes you actually want to leave people wanting to know more. Establish the need, wow them with the product and potential and make them come running to see you (that’s all in theory!).

Other lesson for the day and the first real Silicon Valley cultural insight was an impromptu meeting Steven set up for us with a mate and colleague of his Gregory Wilson. Greg is a consulting CFO and Steven asked him to come by and put us through our paces. It forced us to formally address our infrastructure and business approach, as well as revenue model with an external expert the first time.

It also showed us that we need to be able to pitch and keep it short and interesting at any time and place. 

The experience was a great one - within a few days we would be even better at it, but Greg liked the look of us and didn’t laugh in our face so we were very pleased with the outcome.

After a day of rehearsals it was off to St Johns Grill for some dinner and a bit of Monday Night Football, then home to bed early. 

We made sure we didn’t have any late night Wendy’s like we did the night before - the sugar load kept us awake until 2am. My subsequent snoring kept Dan awake a lot longer but that’s a story I’d rather forget!

Hi all,

Dan and I have just returned from a whirlwind trip to the big smoke, the biggest smoke in our sandpit - Silicon Valley. We embarked on the trip with ANZA Technology Network, a fantastic group of people who promote and support Australian and NZ companies in the US.

Justin on Lombard St

We went hoping to get a sense of what people thought of the Perkler idea and we got a WHOLE LOT more. I’ll provide some reflections on each day we were there in separate parts, with photographic evidence when required!

First things first. When two blokes have a big week ahead of them, what do they do? Take the weekend off to clear the head and get to know the culture. That’s exactly what Dan and I did.

Getting off the 13 hour flight from Sydney (18 hours when you count when we left Canberra), we got a cab into the wonderful city of San Francisco, checked in at Villa Florence and headed out to sightsee.

Dan sitting on the dock of the Bay

San Fran is a great town, we got a real feel for the place. Highlights included a very long walk to Fisherman’s Wharf and back - perfect to stretch the legs after economy seating; taking the wrong turn and seeing the wrong part of town which was sad but reality is a good thing; hitting Banana Republic for some serious shopping for us and our wives; eating hot dogs and pretzels like they were going out of fashion. We were blown away by Unions Square and as retail community people we got very excited about the scope of brands and programs we could see right before our eyes.

Macys

The day finished with a trip to a fantastic Mexican restaurant http://www.mamacitasf.com/ . Somewhere after the fantastic food, enormous banana split and ride home in a white stretch limo driven by a crazy Russian - we hit the hay!

Next day was a standout for a couple of reasons. Fantastic experience attending the NY Jets v Oakland Raiders game in Oakland. Raider Nation is a crazy place but we felt welcomed and had a fantastic time up high in the bleachers. The second reason the day was great was that we checked in at the hotel in Sunnyvale and met the other Aussie companies who were along for the ride -and what a ride it was, more to soon!

Just a quick one from Dan and Justin in California. We are over here for the week learning about the biggest perk market in the world!

Longer post later but suffice to say our trip to Union Square in San Fran proved there is a need to navigate these enormous retails jungles with a handy little perkolator.

USA has been very good to us and everyone has been in great hands in the beta with Adam. We’ll tell you more soon.

Justin