Peter Krasilovsky's

Local Onliner

May 23
2013

Lem Lloyd’s Move to FixYa: Q&A Sites as Content Marketing

People are getting excited about Content Marketing again this year, with Website, mobile and video editorial content, ratings and reviews, promotions and listings broadening the content farm/search ranking algorithms segment we saw several years go.

Q&A sites are a key component of the new content marketing, driving user generated content, participation and sticky usage. A big believer in them is former Yahoo and Knight Ridder/Digital Cities exec Lem Lloyd, who has just joined Q&A site FixYa as Chief Revenue Officer.

Lloyd notes that FixYa, a company with Israel and Bay Area offices, has 30 million unique visitors in the U.S. and abroad, drawing real scale around “passionate” subjects ranging from high end auto repair to Dyson vacuum cleaners. A search on “brakes” in the Chicago DMA, for instance, got 52,000 searches. “They are devoted to the brands, and making (their products) work,” he says, noting that the site has “some of the highest CPC and RPM” in the industry.

Lloyd argues that while the content is brand-centric, it is also intrinsically local. The site is ultimately focused on local intent, he says. The next steps are to use the site’s 17 million questions to build “a scalable marketplace,” in part by syndicating the content to media sites, he says. Some of that effort will spring from the site’s analytics, which reveal what people are looking for.

Categories: Local Search

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May 21
2013

Schedulicity Makes Case for ‘A-Comm’

The scheduling space is heating up, with a number of key vendors competing for SMB business, companies such as Groupon and Merchant Circle acquiring and integrating scheduling companies into core activities, and new companies such as MyTime attempting to aggregate all the players.

Bozeman, MT-based Schedulicity is one of the key players in the space, selling scheduling and related services for a range of $19.95 to $39.95 per month, depending on the number of users. The company has attracted “tens of thousands” of SMB accounts, booking 1.25 million appointments per month. This week we talked with CEO Joshua Spitzer was promoted to CEO. We talked to Spitzer this week about his vision for appointment- driven SMB commerce (or “A-Comm”)

Spitzer’s first major development is the revamp of Schedulicity.com. In its new guise, it is not only a portal where people book local services, but one that also focuses on customer analytics and consumer discovery of new services. The discovery effort is a major initiative and was launched in late March.

“We facilitate impulse purchasing of services,” says Spitzer. He notes that every person who books a service via Schedulicity is a potential user of the new portal, and is a strong potential customer of all.

“If they used us to book a hair appointment, they may use us for their next massage or to book an appointment in another industry vertical,” says Spitzer.

Meanwhile, Schedulicity’s development continues unabated, covering 60 verticals. Spitzer says the company remains focused on landing SMBs, which he says is always the hard part. A key part of its strategy is to work with third parties such as CosmoProf, a division of Beauty Systems Group, LLC for hair stylists.

“Developing a valuable supply of appointments is difficult,” says Spitzer. “For starters, you not only have to sell to service providers, you have to change the way they do business.” But the ROI is proven – especially if they use Schedulicity as a promotional engine to help drive new customers for unfilled times.

The company, in fact, has two promotional products that are the beginning of efforts to diversify revenue streams: “Pop Up Offers” allow the company to distribute last minute deals to replace cancellations, etc.; and “Deal Manager,” a self-serve product that enables merchants to run their own daily deal type promotions. Additional functionality will be introduced “later this summer.”

Categories: Verticals

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May 21
2013

GrubHub, Seamless Merge; Mobile Drives Food Ordering Growth


Photo: CNN

Online restaurant ordering and discovery giants GrubHub and Seamless have agreed to merge their operations, creating a single company. Chicago-based GrubHub currently serves more than 20,000 food ordering establishments in 500 cities, while New York-based Seamless serves more than 12,000 food ordering establishments in 400 U.S. cities plus London.

GrubHub CEO Matt Maloney, who co-founded the company in 2004, keeps the CEO job. Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky becomes president. Zabusky recently came on to spin off the operation from Aramark, the corporate catering giant.
The two companies had been going head-to-head in a number of their markets. Both share a vision of the food ordering business being rapidly transformed via smart phone.

We had an extensive discussion with Zabusky in March. At that time, he noted that Seamless had two million regular users and grossed $85 Million in topline revenues in 2012. It projects $100 million in top line revenue in 2013, with major growth seen in coming years.

The company has had a strong foothold in the corporate market, providing food ordering and delivery to law firms, tech firms and investment houses. But its major effort has been focused on the consumer side, which has been experiencing year-over-year growth of 60 percent.

The company has 300 people in three major offices, as well as field based sales. While it is best known for its strong business in Manhattan, where it recently opened a 28,000 square foot facility, Zabusky notes that the company has a strong presence in 13 major U.S. markets. He added that Seamless had “a major national expansion strategy,” and was well-situated to execute it with a customer care center in Salt Lake City.

The key to growth, said Zabusky, was to keep selling new products and features to its food establishment partners. “We don’t make money unless they make more money.”

Zabusky noted that Seamless has been processing electronic order forms, and providing electronic terminals, along with table side ordering apps. Generally, its focus is to move restaurants away from fax machines, and away from phone calls and paper, which he says remains the segment’s biggest competition.

With Seamless, restaurants move up to a “multi-platform portal,” where they could “view, confirm and track orders,” he said. Restaurants also leverage Seamless and its vast network for discovery and retention. For instance, it offers different deals on different days to keep customers coming back. “It is very different than the daily deals space,” he said.

The industry’s transformation via mobile, however, is expecially key. Zabusky says it represents 40 percent of the total business, up from 10 percent a year ago. But for online food ordering, mobile doesn’t just represent a phone. The company’s best customers use the PC-based Web, phones and tablets, he says. “Thirty percent of the mobile volume comes from the iPad.”

After the merger is completed, major competitors for the combined company will include Living Social, which has recently bet big on online food ordering; Delivery.com, which claims a roster of almost 10,000 restaurants in 50 cities; and Eat24.com, which covers 20,000 restaurants in 1,000 cities across the country.

Categories: Deals, Mobile, Money, Shopping/Transactions, Social Media, Verticals

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May 17
2013

AnyPerk Expands Concept of Employer Driven Discount Clubs

We like the idea of using corporations as a distribution base for media and services. In the 1990s, The Family Education Network built a great newsletter business distributed in corporate lobbies. The concept’s been widely extended with the addition of email and the ability to more effectively target employees based on different criteria.

NextJump, for instance, has built a business providing discounts and deals sent out as part of employee communications. The deals are generally aggregated from other sources, but it can target the offers based on buying and browsing habits. It takes a commission from sales. The service is free to companies.

Now we’re also looking at San Francisco-based AnyPerk, which shifts the employer shopping model to a premium offering, charging $5 a month per employee. CEO and Founder Taro Fukuyama tells us that the 15-person company — a graduate of Y Combinator — now has 2,500 companies signed up, distributing perks from 250 different marketers. Investors include Andressen Horowitz, SV Angel and a number of individuals, as well as Japanese-based funds .

Fukuyama says that AnyPerk’s goal is to use its volume-buying capability to drive discounts of 5-50 percent. It proves its value as a consumer-centric service from the get-go, rather than serving the interests of merchants. “We do everything we can to save them more than $5 a month” he says.

Typically, customers will start with 15 percent monthly discounts on mobile phones and services and work their way up to other products, specifically monthly utility products such as gyms, video services or rent. There may be 20 things you pay for every month, he says.

Entertainment, especially, stands out. AnyPerk’s top products, in order, are fitness, entertainment, travel and cell phone. Among its perk providers are Verizon, AMC, Redbox, Regal Entertainment Group, Equinox, AT&T, Budget, Zipcar, T-Mobile and LA Fitness.

Fukuyama, a native of Japan, tells us that employer shopping services are common in his homeland, where there are four major companies. But the concept is still relatively new to the U.S.

Categories: Deals, Sales Channels, Shopping/Transactions

May 16
2013

Merchant Warehouse Moves Up Value Chain From Payments to ‘Engagement’

Payment processors and related companies work with most SMBs and are increasingly seen as a potential sales channel for reaching them with additional services. This week, we talked with one processor, Boston-based Merchant Warehouse, about its efforts to leverage its base of 75,000 business customers beyond terminal sales.

CEO Henry Helgeson told us the 15 year-old, 300 employee company got its start selling terminals, but has seen strong growth in new products such as integrated coupons that anchor its “Genius” customer engagement platform. A horde of companies have introduced coupons, for instance, but many businesses have no idea how to redeem them, given the constraints of their existing POS systems, he says. The rising use of mobile phones for payments and promotions has made it an especially big issue.

The move to integrate promotions such as coupons and a wide range of payment types into payment solutions has also changed how Merchant Warehouse works with its customers, which range from alternative payment companies such as LevelUp to value added resellers. “We are moving from working with tech teams to working with marketing teams,” he says.

What has become increasingly understood is how complex it all is. Many businesses had hoped to have a single point of presence for payments, just as they similarly had hoped to have a single search engine and online point of contact in the 1997-98 time frame, he says.

And as it turned out they had to work with 50 search engines and points of contacts, they’re beginning to see they have got to plan on working with a wide range of payment solutions. “They want one closed loop wallet. But there will be many, many wallets,” says Helgeson. There are 200 entry points in the POS value chain, he notes.

Categories: Deals, Sales Channels

May 15
2013

Gib Olander’s Local Viewpoints Gets Business Feedback, Reviews


Former Localeze business develoment guy Gib Olander is back in the game, this time switching his focus from local business listings innovation to maximizing effective local business reviews. Think of a variation of “Net Promoter Scores” for local business.

Olander’s new company, Local Viewpoints has won seed funding from Wavetable Labs. It launched at the end of March, starting with four sales people hitting businesses up in hometown Chicago, as well as other markets.

The company basically sends out a short survey after customers shop a location, providing instant feedback to the location, analytics (time of day, products purchased) and most importantly, an online review . The surveys take about a minute to complete.

Seventy-five businesses are currently subscribing to the service, which is $299 a year. Business categories range from chiropractors to furniture stores to plumbers to high-end restaurants.

“We’re trying to bridge together all the forms of customer feedback” and measuring customer satisfaction, including online reviews and customer feedback, says Olander. The problems with other sources is that customer feedback simply isn’t being captured, he adds. Just six percent of consumers are willing to write reviews. With the world going mobile, and everyone being just seconds away from providing feedback, however, there really are no excuses.

Local Viewpoints, of course, is not the only company focused on driving up reviews via short response surveys. We’ve recently covered the efforts by SupportLocal to drive up local business recommendations via a fast-paced, 27-question local recommendations page.

Here’s an interesting InfoGraph that Local Viewpoints has put together about the Word of Mouth space.

Categories: Social Media

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Apr 28
2013

SpaFinder Last Minute: Scheduling as Promotion Opportunity

Is appointment scheduling poised to be a new anchor for service promotions? That vision –”look for an appointment, get a deal or upsell ” — has been articulated by a number of scheduling vendors, such as Agendize, FullSlate and Schedulicity. Most recently, RedBeacon founder Ethan Anderson has launched MyTime as a scheduling supermarket that allows shoppers to find discounted appointments at unfilled times.

Now comes Spafinder Last Minute, which provides same day and next day appointments. Started as “bTreated” by founder Josh Brenner, the company was acquired by SpaFinder last August. SpaFinder works with over 20,000 spa and wellness locations, and has recently spun off from the Booker platform service.

Now rebranded as “Last Minute,” it has initially launching in New York, where it has 50 merchants; Miami (25 merchants) and Chicago (25 merchants). Launches are expected this Summer and Fall in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco, Toronto and Dallas.

Local sales teams will be hired in some of the markets, with other markets served by telemarketing efforts. The service can be filtered by category, daypart and neighborhood.

Brenner tells us that he is especially looking to see merchant defections from deals companies such as Groupon. “They are burnt out” from the high commissions. he says. Last Minute enables healthy levels of discounts.

Customers get a “really good deal,” with minimum discounts set at 30 percent to 50 percent off, says Brenner. Some spa treatment with very high margins, such has medical specialties and laser hair removal have discounted as high as 80 percent. SpaFinder, for its part, takes “sustainable” commissions of 20-25 percent (although the reality is that this isn’t far off from what many deals companies will negotiate for desirable merchants).

Brenner says the appeal of Last Minute is that it fills in empty slots. And it doesn’t “tarnish” the merchant’s brand.

At this time of year — pre-summer –most spas are booking a lot of massages, adds Brenner. Gyms are also booking a lot of classes. Most of the site’s users have been women. While men might buy spa treatments for wives or girlfriends, appointments are almost always booked by the persona receiving the actual treatment.

Categories: Deals, Local Search, Shopping/Transactions

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