We first learned in January about a new merchants-funded rewards player readying to launch. That launch is now.
WRAP4, the name of the new service from Dave Bocks & Associates Marketing (DBAAM), is available for banks to white-label.
“We are officially ready to rock and roll,” Tom O’Rourke, director of loyalty and relationship marketing, tells Bank Innovation in an exclusive interview.
The new loyalty rewards program has the spirit of a daily deals company but relies on a bank’s business customers to offer exclusive details to its retail customers through a separate branded website. The “vast majority” of rewards will be for small businesses, something I have been personally pining for for months. Business types will range from entertainment to travel to retail and shopping, among other categories, and they are the ones determining the discounts and durations of their offers.
Though there will be multiple ways to redeem rewards depending on the merchant’s sophistication, consumers must swipe with a bank’s credit or debit card to score the deals, he says. Regardless of how, redemption will be instant, and the rewards will be best in market, says O’Rourke.
The merchant-funded rewards space has been revitalized for many months now, with banks discovering they can do better than the Groupons of the world since they know customers’ transactions most intimately.Though innovation programs keep popping up within the financial services space, O’Rourke says his program boasts a couple of unique things, including that consumers must opt-in to receive the deals they wish, which means they “design their own program,” he says. “It’s all about the emotional response with a customer and getting them to opt in.”
Consumers, for example, choose what categories they wish to receive deals on and select when and how they receive offer notifications.
Also unique to WRAP4, according to O’Rourke, is that it will provide an “institution with geographic exclusivity.” In other words, the bank across the street can’t offer its customers the same service in order to ensure the existing bank user is offering the “best deals” within a region.
“It’s a first come, first serve basis,” he says.
DBAAM plans to target the top three or four banks in a given state.
At the risk of sounding like an ostrich with its head in the sand, or like Hayley Mills in “Pollyanna” – (aside – how many of our members actually saw that movie?) I find it hard to believe that the underlying economy is as bad as everyone fears. Fear is, I suspect, the biggest problem of all. Chris Whalen is right that people just don’t know, but what is it that they don’t know? They don’t know many things, they fear that the situation could get worse because our eminent leaders in Congress haven’t a clue but they still have the power to “do something.” That prospect alone should inspire a tidal wave of fear. Businesses and consumers are sitting well back from the sidelines waiting until they can feel reasonably certain that they know which direction that Washington will take.
A few things that we don’t know:
–the true extent of the credit losses. Really, how bad are these subprime loans? Have they all gone into default? Have the institutions that are booking losses or adding to reserves examined every loan in those bundles or mortgages, separated wheat from chaff, and re-rated the loans accurately? How well do they know what’s been charged off? Or have they just been guessing, and is there a sizable potential for recoveries of those chargeoffs? If there is, will the government impede the work of recovery?
–who is actually responsible for performing that detailed grunt work?
–where are those loans anyway? Who has them on its books? Is ignorance about just who’s holding the bag fueling the fear and uncertainty?
–what overall course the government will take, and what industries/groups will get the goodies while others get turned down. But we do know that a Democrat-dominated adminstration will be taking power in January, and that cannot be good for working, productive people and businesses. So why should anybody be taking any risks or expending and entrepreneurial energy right now?
There are many other unknowns, and I don’t want to go on endlessly here. Let me say that I think that a sober, clear-eyed and nonpartisan evaluation of the economy, particularly of the banking industry, would show that things aren’t all THAT bad. If Congress would just shut up and get out of the way, we’d snap out of it.
Don’t think I’m optimistic, however. I’m not like Hayley Mills – there’s no reason to feel glad. I don’t trust that Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, Henry Waxman, and that whole crowd in Washington would ever do the right thing. Especially at a time like this. They are going to make it worse, whatever they do, and I believe that the vast majority of Americans feel that in their bones.
One final prediction – some day we will hear, from someone who had been on the inside at Fannie and Freddie, that the crowd running those monstrosities knew exactly what they were doing as far back as four or five years ago. They knew that they were building an unsustainable castle of cards, and they did their best to hide what was going on by clever structuring of the loan packages, concealing crummy loans beneath piles of acceptable ones. That’s one reason it will not be easy to find and dispose of the rotten loan, and it’s probably also a reason that they were able to keep the music playing for as long as it did. Just an old loan-review guy’s jaundiced view…
Appreciate the note, Kelly. I’ll be giving you a call next week.