We’re seeing three models in the new loyalty and engagement space: “punch cards” where merchants reward you based on how often you come back; “Frequent flyer” or diner points that give you a leg up on airline or hotel points for shopping; and the “universal currency” model that hands out points towards programs of your choosing from a broad number of participating merchants.

The latter is being pursued by Local Bonus, a one year old company headed by former banking consultant Derek Webster. The eight-person company is based in New York and has raised $500,000 in seed funding. It has launched in New York, Sacramento, Portland, Ore., Denver and Seattle and reports 800 merchant customers at this point. Sales are a combination of in-house and partnerships with existing sales orgs.

It is not exactly virgin territory. There is currently an intense amount of activity in the loyalty space– BIA/Kelsey counts 20+ companies. Banks and credit card companies are making the biggest bets and have some advantages, including the ability to broadly track transactions. But Webster questions whether they’ll stay committed given that it represents an untraditional market for them, and their various compliance issues. “They have very little engagement with just a low, single (digit) percentage of their customers engaged in their products,” he says.

Local Bonus’ winning differentiator, meanwhile, is its universal currency model, which Webster calls a “modern version of the Green Stamps.” Without universal points, “you never get an award anywhere,” he says.

“You get one stamp here, two punches there. In the end, you might have enough points for 1/10 of a frozen yogurt. ” Under Local Business’ scheme, consumers can easily add up points from many of the local merchants they go to. They can also get “wolf pack” bonuses if five or more members buy at a given location.

Webster adds that Local Bonus will be single-mindedly focused on providing a compelling value proposition to consumers and merchants alike: perpetual offers that any merchant can tap into without any opt-in required. “You just sign up once with any existing credit or debit card,” says Webster. “A lot of merchants want more help; make it fun and exciting to shop,” adds Webster – ideally, without having to hand out the massive discounts associated with the daily deals space.

Business to Consumer (B2C) companies have tried to invade the Business to Business (B2B) space in multiple instances; almost always with disasterous results. The logic for B2C companies is always there: move up the value chain with great big accounts that require no branding efforts. But they don’t work.

What are the secrets of B2B? That’s what our former Kelsey colleague Sean Geehan tackles in The Executive B2B Executive Playbook, which reached #1 on the Amazon business bestseller list in January. Since leaving Kelsey, Sean has built the Geehan Group, an 18 member firm that advises top B2B players in a variety of areas, including best practices for building advisory boards.

Sean recounts the worst thing a B2B company can do: hire a P&G executive. They’ll spend a fortune on new logos and advertising and entertaining end users, such as sales and marketing personnel. But they never get to the point of their B2B company – it’s all about the engagement, collaboration and advocacy of your customer decision makers: top executives.

It is really more of a symbiotic effort to achieve sustainable, predictable, profitable growth – the goal for any company. But in a B2B company’s case, “customers are your brand manager.” And typically, they’re more knowledgeable about what they need then the B2B company itself.

To be successful, you have to move up the special B2B value chain: beyond being a commodity supplier or reliable supplier or problem solver to the golden land of being a trusted advisor or business partner. You know you’ve made it if you pass Sean’s “phone call test”: when the admin openly shares the decision-maker’s schedule and availability with you.

I don’t normally read business best sellers and have little patience for football coach platitudes. But this book is full of insights, case studies and practical tests.

ILM East 2012 took place last week in Boston, and is now one for the history books. It was definitely a fun show that really showcased the fast moving local innovations that BIA/Kelsey focuses on.

There are many learnings we can focus on as takeaways, but in the interest of good reading, how about a Top 10 list?

1- The new currencies are time, attention and clickstreams. Payments can be in pixels, Facebook mentions or points and rewards (Ted Leonsis, Vice Chair, Groupon)

2- Email is for ecommerce push; phones are for texting (Ted Leonsis, Vice Chair, Groupon)

3- Local is all about scale. And the only way to achieve scale in local is by aggregation (Jay Herratti, outgoing CEO, CityGridMedia)

4- Creating a closed loop is the path to a seamless user experience. American Express is… the acquirer, the issuer and the network. (Leslie Berland, SVP, American Express)

5- Daily deals are fun, but Big Data that combines different databases is critical for targeting users and winning loyalty (various)

6- Focus on engagement, not new customer acquisition. Loyal customers are worth 24 times more than new customers (Charlie Kim, CEO, NextJump)

7- Email fatigue is probably out there, but social media complements email, rather than kills it. They are both forms of permission marketing (Mark Schmulen, GM, Constant Contact)

8- Video is a great local medium, but offers limited inventory opportunities, and really can’t compete as a standalone with a major metro newspaper for advertising (Lisa DeSisto, VP, Advertising, The Boston Globe)

9- National brands can’t go local without a platform. Otherwise, you can’t get engagement and you’ll see high churn. (Pete Gombert, Founder and CEO, Ballihoo)

10- You can’t herd 6,000 cats and come up with a digital strategy (Adam Epstein, President, Ad Marketplace.)

IAC announced today that SeamlessWeb founder Jason Finger will take over as CEO of its CityGrid Media unit April 12. CItyGrid Media includes the CityGrid ad network and Citysearch, Urbanspoon, Insider Pages and BuzzLabs.

Finger was a founder of SeamlessWeb in 1999. The company grew to 21 U.S. cities plus London during his tenure. SeamlessWeb, now known as Seamless, was acquired by food services giant Aramark in 2006, with Finger leading the business while serving on Aramark’s executive leadership council.

He’s served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Bessemer Venture Partners since 2010, focusing on SaaS, local businesses and e-commerce. Seamless currently competes for food delivery and restaurant online services with GrubHub and others.

CityGrid Media’s longtime CEO Jay Herratti told us he will be helping during the transition. During his eight year tenure at the company, he proved to be a pivotal figure in the evolution of interactive local media. In addition to acquiring UrbanSpoon, which should leverage Finger’s experience at Seamless, Herratti dealt head-on with the issue of building enough local user volume to attract merchants – a serious issue in the fragmented local world.

Next week, at ILM East in Boston, Herratti will provide insights into the evolution of local during his tenure at CityGrid. “Wrapping up my time at CityGrid Media with a BIA/Kelsey keynote seems like the perfect opportunity to reflect on the future of local,” he told us.

“During my session, I will share my thoughts on where local is heading,” added Herratti. “There is so much activity in our space right now, the next year should be just as interesting as the last.”

Here’s what we’ve been waiting to announce: Google Offers’ head Nitin Mangtani will join our great list of keynoters at ILM East March 26-28 in Boston. We believe Mangtani’s appearance marks one of the first public debuts of Google Offers, which is playing a major role in Google’s vital local strategy, along with Google Places, Google Maps and Zagat ratings and reviews.

Previously announced ILM East keynoters include Groupon Vice Chair +++ Ted Leonsis; American Express SVP of Social Media Leslie Berland; CityGrid Media CEO Jay Herratti; New York Times Research Ops VP Michael Zimbalist; and New York Magazine Digital GM Michael Silberman.

Mangtani joins Google Channel Sales BizDev Head Christine Merritt at ILM East. Merritt will provide Google’s perspective on its emergence in the local ecosystem, and the most effective way to work with Google as a partner.

The next wave of Deals is, in general, a key focus for us at ILM East, along with mobile local media, social local media, video local media, hyperlocal and locally targeted national advertising.

In addition to the keynotes from Google Offers and Groupon, we have a special Day 1 session dedicated to the next wave of deals, featuring EverSave’s Jere Doyle; Find n Save’s Christopher Tippie; Closely’s Perry Evans; and Boomtime’s Bill Bice. That session will be followed by a broader view of deals and ecommerce, which featured NextJump’s Charlie Kim; Cartera’s Jim Douglass; and Bundle.com’s Jaidev Shergill.

Other recent adds to the program include The Boston Globe’s Lisa DeSisto, who joins Boston.com VP of Digital Products Jeff Moriarty as a presenter; and MIT Sloan Associate Professor Catherine Tucker, who gives the low down on the effectiveness of local social media.

Before the show, we’re making a special trip to The Boston Globe’s R&D Lab (Limited Space, RSVP required). Or come to Andrew Shotland’s SEO for the Enterprise session, which also features SEO Expert Will Scott and Advance Digital Media VP John Denny. We’re looking forward to a great show.

Venture Capital
•David Hornik, Principal, August Capital
•Scott Maxwell, Senior Managing Director, OpenView

Mobile Local Media
• Walt Doyle, CEO, Where
• Doug McDonald, Director, dotMobi
• John Valentine, VP, East Coast, SCVNGR/LevelUp

Hyperlocal
• Merrill Brown, Principal, MMB Media
• Josh Fenton, CEO, GoLocal24
• Zohar Yardeni, CEO, Main Street Connect

Social Local Media
• Geoff Cramer, CEO, Social Made Simple
• Adam Japko, President, Digital Sherpa
• Jeff Moriarty, VP, Digital Products, Boston.com
• Mark Schmulen, GM, Social Media, Constant Contact

Video
• Juan Delgado, Managing Director, Americas, Perform
• John McIntyre, CEO, Pixelfish
• Randa Minkarah, SVP, Revenue, Fisher Communications

Deals and Promotional Ecosystem
• Bill Bice, CEO, BoomTime
• Jere Doyle, President and CEO, EverSave
• Perry Evans, CEO, Closely
• Christopher Tippie, CEO, FindNSave

Transactions
• Charlie Kim, CEO, NextJump
• Jim Douglass, EVP, Retail Advertising, Cartera Commerce
• Jaidev Shergill, CEO, Bundle

National/Brands
•Adam Epstein, President, AdMarketplace
•Pete Gombert,CEO, Balihoo
• Steve Sherfy, Local & Mobile Search, GroupMSearch
• Karl Siebrecht, President and CEO, AdReady

Elections 2012
• Andy Slater, VP, Digital Agency Sales, Katz 360

SMB Marketing
• Dave Galvan, President, Schedulicity
• Maria Kermath, Director, AT&T Ad Solutions
• Randy Parker, President, SMBApps
• Darren Waddell, EVP, Reply.com

Sign up now (and hint: reserve your room earlier rather than later).

The giants of American commerce are now diving into the “local” space. American Express, MasterCard, Citibank are just some of the big brands diving into local via SMB and national retailer relationships. FirstData, which processes secure transactions for 7,000 financial and more than four million U.S. merchants – 50 percent of U.S. merchants — has now jumped in as well.

As we noted in a blog post earlier this week, First Data has announced a JV with CardSpring that will offer a smart commerce platform to local merchants via local online and mobile media publishers, such as city guides or Yellow Pages.

Sarah Owen, FirstData’s VP of Personalized Marketing and Loyalty, notes that it is an important extension for First Data. The new technology provides all kinds of promotional linkages to transactions (deals, coupons, gift cards, loyalty points etc.) That means that “financial institutions become publishers as well,” she says. “It’s all about digital receipts. That’s the social currency.”

Owen takes issue with the idea – ok, my idea –that the CardSpring platform may be seen as an alternative to electronic (mobile) wallets. “I absolutely see a need for a mobile wallet….to make lives easier,” she says. FirstData’s intentions are “to make mobile wallets more robust” and “proliferate faster” by providing a universal platform that doesn’t need any new hardware.

And she assures it would be easy to do. Some doubts were raised about consumers proactively going on the Web to sign up for Apps, but Owen says Apps could also be pushed out to people on their phones and tablets. It is a simple affirmation. Card Swipe technology is also in the works, but isn’t ready yet.

Owen also suggests that OfferWise fits in well with branded bank and credit card and deals services since it is “not consumer facing.” OfferWise, for instance, could be used by Google Wallet to “expand its functionality,” she says. “We have a robust redemption platform.”

Local businesses don’t have their own loyalty programs but can now benefit from tapping into bank programs. “Local is the key to our strategy,” says Jim Douglass, EVP at Cartera, a Lexington, Mass. company which manages loyalty programs for many top banks and credit card companies. Douglass sees five million SMBs potentially seeking to extend their customer relationship via various bank loyalty programs.

“In our portfolio,” Douglass notes, “we have cash back, miles cards, points cards. Consumers say: ‘This is the currency I want to collect. I want to go on a trip for free, or save points for services I want to get.”

For their part, SMBs not only get loyalty rewards, but they also get useful data. “We can show incremental shoppers, prove ROI for new shoppers; and move their behavior,” says Douglass. “We can tell retailers who has shopped, and not shopped.”

The biggest chunk of Cartera’s business still comes from national, large retailers. “We have a national team focusing on large retailers. There are 750 (retailers) doing $100 million in revenues,” he says. One of Cartera’s best white labeled relationships, for example, is with Cabelas, a Midwest outdoor sporting goods company. “They have a passionate base of card holders,” he says.

But the potential volume of local SMBs make them strategically important for Cartera’s next wave of growth. Douglass notes that the company is building partnerships with companies that have relationships with local retailers, such as Yellow Pages and merchant processors. With loyalty, Douglass notes that “we have a better mousetrap. We are a classic substitute.”

Cartera SVP Jim Douglass is speaking on The Shift to Interactive Local Commerce panel at ILM East, along with Charlie Kim of Next Jump and Jaidev Shergill of Bundle. Register here.

The Home Depot is set to significantly boost its home contractor leads network with today’s acquisition of RedBeacon. No price was announced for the acquisition, which puts Home Depot in the same boat as Sears, which has been quietly developing ServiceLive, its own contractor leads service.

RedBeacon, which takes a 10 percent commission for service jobs, was one of a number of socially driven leads companies that started in the 2008-2009 time frame. Others include Cox’s Kudzu, which has developed an intriguing partnership with Scripps’ HGTV; The Washington Post’s Service Alley; LikeList, HelpHive, and Thumbtack. The latter received $4.5 million in venture funding last week.

Last year, Red Beacon announced $7.4 million in funding from Mayfield and Venrock, but it hasn’t been easy sailing for the company. The service never landed media partnerships that it had been hoping for, and replaced its founder last year with new CEO Anthony Rodio. It has, however, managed to launch services in nine markets. Under Home Depot, one assumes it will take a national approach to contractor leads.

ILM East is coming back to Boston March 26-28 with a lineup of do-ers and innovators that are transforming and re-defining the local space.

Highlights include a featured keynote from industry legend Ted Leonsis (Groupon Vice Chair/Amex Board Member/Sports team owner/AOL mastermind), along with keynotes/interviews from Jason Calacanis, Leslie Berland, Jay Herratti, Michael Zimbalist and Michael Silberman.

Other highlights of the 2 ½ day event includes a pre-conference rundown on Local search run by Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide; a full plate of Top BIA/Kelsey research and forecasts; a special Venture Capital panel; and innovator panels on Social, Mobile, Deals, Video and Hyperlocal (the latter co-moderated with Merrill Brown.)

KEYNOTES/KEYNOTE DISCUSSIONS
• Ted Leonsis: Owner, Monumental Sports (Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards;) The Vice Chair of Groupon;, Board member of Amex, former Vice Chair of AOL; Author, The Business of Happiness
• Jason Calacanis: CEO, Mahalo; Investor. Calacanis’ career has been at the cutting edge of local and social media and reflects all the big trends, from his development of The Silicon Alley Reporter to Weblogs (AOL), Mahalo, and the creation of TechCrunch50 and Launch.
• Leslie Berland, Vice President, Social Strategy, American Express. Berland’s a major deal maker deeply involved in Amex’s mega FourSquare and Facebook deals.
• Jay Herratti, CEO, CityGrid Media. Herratti always gets top rankings at our events. He runs IAC’s super quad of the CityGrid Media Network, Citysearch, UrbanSpoon and InsiderPages.
• Michael Zimbalist, VP, Research Operations, New York Times Co. Zimbalist leads the NYT’s 12 person research unit. He’s deeply immersed in cutting edge social, mobile, tablet and video efforts.
• Michael Silberman, GM, New York Magazine Silberman is the mastermind of NYMag’s development of a super set of verticals catering to the “New York state of mind.”).

FEATURED SPEAKERS
• Bill Bice, CEO, SpaBoom
• Merrill Brown, co-founder. MSNBC.com, Court TV
• Jim Douglass, EVP, Cartera Commerce
• Jere Doyle, CEO, EverSave
• Walt Doyle, CEO, Where
• Adam Japko, CEO, Digital Sherpa
• Maria Kermath, Dir.,, New Tech & Sales Apps, AT&T Advertising Sales
• Mark Josephson, SVP, AOL Local
• Charlie Kim, CEO, Next Jump
• John McIntyre, CEO, Pixelfish
• Randa Minkarah, SVP, Revenue, Fisher Communications
• Randy Parker, President, SMB Apps
• Mark Schmulen, GM, Social Media, Constant Contact
• Andrew Shotland, Publisher, Local SEO Guide
• Andy Slater, VP, Digital Agency Sales, Katz 360
• Christopher Tippie, CEO, FindNSave
• Darren Waddell, EVP, Product and Corporate Marketing, Reply.com

Join hundreds of senior level local executives at ILM East for the local community’s best networking and insights. You can register here for earlier bird rates.

Internet Pioneer Ted Leonsis

Companies are beginning to focus on loyalty programs for existing customers, rather than simply using deal a day to acquire new customers. Closely and WildFire App are both pursuing loyalty programs.

A loyalty startup that we like is “Punchcard,” which launches today. The brainchild of MerchEngines founder Andy Steuer, Punchcard is a smartphone app that provides a virtual facsimile of the loyalty cards that customers are familiar with from their favorite coffee or ice cream shop (Get 10 purchase stamps or punches, get one free).

Punchcard has gotten $1 million in seed funding from IdeaLab, and has hired five people, including local business development executive Dawn Padungian (Local.com, Charter Cable.)

Consumers sign up for Punchcard on a store-by-store basis, and receive a virtual punch after snapping a photo of their receipt. They can sign in via Facebook Connect.The service is currently available for iPhone users, and an Android version will launch in January.

Steuer tells us that the card’s virtual nature gives it real flexibility in terms of incentives, or what he terms “offer triggers.” After their 10th purchase, for instance, customers can get cash or credit. The amount would be based on their average spending. That’s the standard offer. Since it is all electronic, however, merchants could opt to provide rewards after a certain number of purchases in a given month, or after a certain amount is spent, etc.

The company will also be in a good position to leverage behavioral data, and make nearby recommendations. It doesn’t have to worry about email fatigue issues since all its communications are via the app, rather than email, notes Steuer.

To rev up the market, Punchcard is seeding the market in Southern California with a pre-populated list of 147,000 merchants. During the trial period, it will pay the credit for the merchant’s 11th sale (up to $30.). The company’s actual revenue model, however, is based on monthly fees ranging from $29 to $129. At launch, 40 companies are already paying.

If Punchcard is successful in winning five percent more local users, research from The Center for Retail Management shows that can translate to 60-100 percent gain in revenue, adds Steuer.