FAN ENGAGEMENT & DIGITAL LOYALTY

Business Development

BACKGROUND / VISION

Years of management, experience and discussion with a business partner about customer loyalty systems and reward programs (e.g. Membership Rewards, Miles & More, Payback, etc.) at American Express as well as discussing the role and future importance of social media platforms in the context of engagement and digital loyalty, led to the vision:

(i) To extinguish social media platforms as intermediaries between senders (brands, sports clubs, celebrities) and their customers, fans or users and at the same time (ii) strengthen the direct relationship between sender and fan with an innovative digital loyalty system.

A direct sender-fan relationship would also have the desired effect that the fan relationship can be monetised by the sender and not by social media platforms. In addition, the digital loyalty system should also overcome the 3 biggest disadvantages of classic bonus systems.

STRATEGY / APPROACH

  1. Identification of the market potential and target group with focus on “white spots”:

These are essentially companies/brands, sports clubs and celebrities with a significant fan or consumer base that do not have an own engagement platform and/or effective loyalty system (e.g. the Formula 1).

  1. Development of a loyalty system that eliminates the major disadvantages of traditional customer loyalty programs:
    • The predominant need to collect points through a pure spending behaviour (“spend-centric”), i.e. to gain a significant point balance to materialise attractive rewards requires a high-frequent or high ticket spending behaviour. This often results in a relatively quick demotivation of users with a low spending behaviour and/or a low purchase frequency, as it takes too long for them to create a sufficient point balance for meaningful rewards. This is completely contrary to the purpose of a loyalty programme.
    • Overcome a purely card-based bonus programme, as this limits the number of behaviouristic touchpoints and contact opportunities mainly to the pure act of spending.
    • Use of a balance sheet-neutral programme currency. Since in most traditional reward programmes the “currency” issued (e.g. points or miles) is matched by a monetary value in form of rewards (“point value”), the points issued must be valued and deferred in the balance sheet. This slows rapid internationalisation, involves considerable efforts for accounting and financial controlling and hits the balance sheet with every unredeemed point.
  2. Development of a pitch concept – of a purely mobile, app-based fan engagement SaaS platform with a “virtual currency” as a loyalty mechanism that mainly rewards behaviour (“behaviour-centric”).
  3. Investor pitches (e.g. with Bernie Ecclestone for Formula 1) to check the attractiveness, plausibility, viability and saleability of the concept.
  4. Establishment of the start-up as co-founder.

FANSPACES

FanSpaces is the new generation of fan engagement systems. The pure mobile app solutions enable companies, sports clubs, celebrities and influencers to cost-effectively run their own personalized interaction platform based on state-of-the-art SaaS technology. FanSpaces activates, engages and rewards customers, fans or users to retain them in the long run. Key of this innovative app is its loyalty mechanism that enables to monetise the fan relationships.

FANSPACES – we turn your fans into loyal customers

  1. Company set-up.
  2. Conceptual and operational development of
    • Positioning, CI/branding, advertising media (online & offline), websites as well as online marketing, e-mail, social media and content systems and infrastructure.
    • the first app for Android/IOS as “proof of concept”:

MotorMiles is the benefits club for all who love cars, engines and speed. Race for points and get faster to price advantages, events and motorsport news.

MotorMiles.

Earn faster. Get benefits faster.

(preliminary) RESULTS

  • Successful launch and test phase of the proof of concept “MotorMiles” with exceptional KPIs
  • Building a Facebook community (6,000+) with very limited resources within 6 weeks to test conversions (Facebook to the app) for the proof of concept
  • First customers: 089 App, Green Bicycle Club, Genießer App (arko GmbH), Tabaluga (Peter Maffay)
  • Significant revenues