hello,

i am looking for web merchants willing to try out a new type of loyalty program extending the concept of 'cash back' (direct discount offered to the customer).

in brief, the idea is to allow a web merchant to credit the account of its customers with small money in order for the customers to buy products on third party merchant websites.

of course the erwarded customer could buy products on the merchant website having issued the discounts but in some cases this is not an appropriate strategy, for instance if you sell office furnitures it is not appropriate to reward the secretary ordering the products with a discount for a new chair, because it would be obviously more rewarding for her to get cash she can spend at a beauty shop.

the loyalty program i am introducing is actually linking the interests of such different merchant websites. on one hand i am looking for web merchants willing to offer discounts to their customers, and on the other hand i am looking for web merchants willing to offer their products as goods to be purchased by the rewarded clients.

in terms of costs, the merchant willing to reward its customers buys in advance the products sold by the other merchant. however, that's only the general idea. in practice, the system's design allows the second merchant to issue 'exclusive money', i.e. money that can be exclusively spent at its merchant website. thus, for the rewarding merchant it is more about acquiring this 'exclusive money' and to reward its customers with this 'exclusive money'. in other words, there is no products to buy in advance, it is about setting a deal between the merchants (how much do you pay to get the 'exclusive money' of the other merchant) and to let all the participants do their job: the rewarding merchant distributes its rewards under the form of 'exclusive money', the second merchants makes its products available to this 'exclusive money', and the customers choose whatever product he likes to cash back its rewards.

in terms of technology, there is a specialized platform dealing with everything and it is just a matter of allowing the servers of both merchants to communicate with this platform via PHP scripting.

does that sounds interesting?
do you have comments / questions?
do you want to give it a try?

pls. let me know.

This is a very interesting concept. I would like to speak to you more about how your early feedback is going since I too am looking at some of the same sort of prospects. If your interested lets have a quick chat.

i posted a bit everywhere but nothing interesting apart from people saying they do not clearly understand what i am offering or that they do not believe it will pay off. obviously, i am not a talented writer despite i pretend to have a brilliant business model.

how is going the word of mouth?

I am in agreement, and at least it is something we also are hearing, I do not know if that helps !!!

People saying "they do not clearly understand." We too have been getting that sort of feedback.

I think that is because we are dealing with promotions and people have not given enough credit to their own creativity. The writing of course is important but they have to own their projects and be serious about doing them.
I think the motivation should be for us to show them how we can support such ideas.

Do let me know a bit more... seems like we are in the same boat, you can call if you want.

Thanks

if i cannot properly present a money making promotional model in a forum then i'd better to look first for the right audience, at least there will be more opportunities. i know them, these guys are affiliators busy with clients acquisition for merchants. as they are in touch with tons of merchants, they can promote effectively, especially since the model is designed to generate new revenues for them. regarding the service performed by the technology platform, it is dedicated to merchants. two key benefits for merchants: more loyal clients and more new clients. and guess what get the consumers? cash back!

ok, you'll say that each group is getting what it wants, but who's gonna pay? nobody is requested to pay actually, because the model is performance based and you only have to cease a part of what your are getting as an extra.

what do you think? would you give support to such an idea?

Well... thats a good plan that you have put forward.

I have been pretty successful in getting feedback & interest so far, which is nice.

I think your on to something, and approaching the affiliate marketers would seem to be easier. Since they know what it means to reward individuals for conversions.

Why not right?

i believe that a project should ideally evolve with the input of the end-users, the sales force (in my case prescriptors such as affiliates marketeers), and the developers.

i went to a real world ecommerce event and i've got much more contacts than in forums.

have you got any experience in launching new services? up to you, what are the important elements that will favour the easy adoption of the new service?

I believe what you're proposing is very similar to Live Search Cash Back program (which used to be Jellyfish).

http://search.live.com/cashback/cashBackForAdvertisers

if the benefit for the consumer is the same, the model differs.

Live Search Cash Back relies on a merchants community and gathers consumers with the power of attraction of the search engine. Other similar models are designed as prices comparators to attract consumers. And yet another variant is based on a consumers community (kind of buyers club).

What these similar models have in common is the fact that they rely on an entry point (search engine, prices comparator portal, buyers club portal) to connect consumers to merchants. Additionally, they use the same revenue scheme than the one used in affiliation programs, just that they cut off part of their commission fee in favour of the consumer.

The model I use has no such entry point limitation because it is based on an e-wallet platform, thus allowing direct cashback allocation by the merchant to any customer at purchase time, no matter the link consumers are coming from.

Additionally, the revenu scheme of the affiliation models usually delays the movement of money and the consumer is getting its cashback after a while when the merchant paid the affiliate and that the affiliate paid the consumer, this last payment being usually released when the user accumulated a minimum amount of cash.

In brief, the benefits of an e-wallet based cashback system is that it does not impose any entry point and that it performs all the money transactions in real time, for any amount, any currency, any juridictions.

However, it does not show any kind of visible structure such as a portal full of consumers and merchants, thus also showing a much lower credibility level to merchants.

Actually, affiliation networks have the required merchants base and the cashback program has a built-in revenues system to pay them a commission fee.

But there is still something lacking to convince affiliation platforms despite it enforces their business profitability at almost no effort, not mentioning the fact that the other model (portal based) tends to replace/ruin affiliation networks on the long run.

I am convinced that an e-wallet cashback based model offers much more opportunities, including that cash can be issued as virtual money (no need to dispose of the real money to run a cashback campaign), that merchants can increase sales volume setting partnerships (issuing money exclusively redeemable at a partner merchant websites, thus enlarging the choice of the "rewards" for the consumers), and that consumers can exchange such exclusive cash (and this creates new clients for merchants).

Any suggestion to better communicate to affiliation networks?
Which kind of argument would they welcome?
Or which kind of community could sell the cashback program to merchants?

Thanks for your contribution.