Loyalty Meets Marketplace: Is Payback Produkte Worth It for Sellers? #LTM170

But getting, like, the relevant offers to the right customers, this is probably something you need some patience.

You can't force that and you have to find the right way to do that.

But I'm quite confident.

Let's Talk Marketplace.

The Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Vana Vridichte.

Hello and welcome back to let's Talk Marketplace.

I'm Ingrid and today it's just me, because Valerie is already on a long trip to Thailand and I strongly suspect that marketplaces are not on her mind right now.

Can't imagine why.

Not even interesting new marketplaces.

And it's one of those we are talking about today.

And this one comes with an interesting twist because we will be talking about Payback Producte, the new marketplace feature of Payback.

If you're from Germany, I don't really have to explain what payback is, but for our listeners outside of Germany.

Quick introduction.

It's the biggest loyalty program in Germany.

You can collect points wherever you shop, at the drugstore, petrol station, online, wherever you want to, basically, and collect all these points and later on you can redeem them for products or for shopping discounts.

And if you've ever been paid for anything, basically in Germany, the chances are high that the cashier asked you, do you have payback?

And the numbers behind that are quite impressive.

35 Million customers, or if I may translate that statistically, every second German adult has a payback account.

So, yeah, that's quite huge.

So in that impressive reach and brand awareness, the company has now launched a marketplace, still in beta, but already looking for sellers.

And so the obvious question is, what's it in for you as a seller and what does it mean, beta?

How is it still under construction and why are they even doing this?

And yeah, I've got the right person to answer all this with me today because I'm being joined by Jasmine Stemik.

She has been building Payback's digital business business for the last 15 years, starting with a reward shop.

And now she's opening the app to sellers.

Yasmine, welcome to the show.

It's great to have you.

Hi, Ingrid, thanks for having me.

Right, so, Yasmine, before we dive in, then, talk about Payback Producte.

And you can tell me all the wrong things I said in the introduction.

Let's see, before we do that, we'd like to learn a bit more about yourself.

So our classic three questions.

First, who are you?

Yeah, I'm Yasmin.

I'm VP Digital Platform at Payback.

And our digital platform is the part of Payback or our payback app where we enable our customers to collect and redeem their points online.

So we are in the digital part.

This is my part within payback and yeah, I'm there to make this experience for our customers as seamless and as comfortable as it is and to find new opportunities.

And this is why we're talking today because we established Payback producte there.

I've always been like in the, in the online world, starting my career like, and one of the first ecom players in Germany.

A big mail order company doesn't exist anymore.

But this is why I learned the transition from like print to online.

And this is what fascinates me still in my career.

So multichannel is my passion.

Yeah.

Great.

So you know more about you.

So what would you say is your usp?

What do you do best in the marketplace space?

So we think like marketplace has always to be really, really customer centric and customer focusing.

And this is what I do and this is what payback here is about, creating value for our customers.

And this as I said to most seamless and easy.

And this is for me always the combination of like getting like an easy entry and a lot of benefits from what I can do there.

Okay.

And do you have maybe a fun fact about yourself that listeners might not know yet?

If you would ask my colleagues, they would all tell you the same stories.

I'm probably the biggest fan of David Hasselhoff in Germany.

There's some of those left.

Okay.

This is my guilty pleasure and probably a fun.

Shit.

Yep.

I think guilty pleasure fits quite well.

Saying this as someone who has been watching Knight Rider with big passion when I was younger.

Thank you for sharing this.

But I did show the show to my boys when they were 14, 12, 14 and they were like, why is he with a different woman in every episode?

That's just wrong.

It's like, wow,.

Good point.

Never thought of that before, but good point.

Okay.

Right.

Let's leave the guilty flashes behind.

Talk about business flashes.

Maybe to begin with, would you like to add anything to my introduction and payback?

No, I think you mentioned all the right things and I think the most important thing you mentioned is we have a big portfolio in our partner network from retail, over fuel, offline and online.

And I think this is the most thing you have to know about payback and its benefit.

We're trying to reach our customers in their everyday life, in each occasion.

So I think there's an option for everyone to benefit while they are shopping.

Doesn't matter when, where and what they're shopping.

Yeah, speaking on that, I just said about every second German has adult, German has a payback account.

I myself is one as well.

I haven't used it in a while because I can't find the card anymore.

I guess that is something that happens a lot.

So can you differentiate between active and maybe sort of sleeping accounts?

So what we see within our app, and I always talk about the app, sorry, I'm always focusing on the digital part.

And maybe this is the right answer to this.

Like, we have still, we have 35 million customers, active customers, like using payback and some of them using the card.

The plastic card is where we started and where our journey started.

But there are 80 million actively using our app.

So you don't need your plastic card like in your wallet anymore.

You can do everything you need to within the app.

And I think this is for us, a huge engagement driver to get our customers active and engaged within the ecosystem because it's pretty easy.

And it's like you go shopping, you pay at the cashier, you can show your app and do this.

And this is how we're trying to get everyone engaged.

And if you can't find your plastic card, maybe the app would be an option.

Would be an option, yeah.

How do you define active?

Active is like doing an active transaction with us.

And a transaction for us could be like collecting moment, like collecting points while you buy something or redeeming moment, like redeeming your points could happen like at one of our partners or redeeming in the reward shop.

This is activity for us.

And active is per month or per year.

Or.

Per year.

Per.

Year.

As you said in your intro, are active customers per year?

Okay, great.

Okay, then I guess let's talk about the marketplace because payback has been around for a while and it is, as I just said, quite successful.

So why did you think about building your own marketplace now?

Good question.

So actually, like we as Paywick, we've seen us as a kind of e commerce market already in the past because in our app we offer a portfolio of over 700 online shops, like from retail partners like Amazon, ebay, Auto or Travel, Mobility, Energy, Telco.

And it's not like a marketplace with like a checkout, but a marketplace where you can find a lot of products and jump out to those partners.

And what we did was not like a replacement or a change of the situation, but we wanted to add a real product level into that and an integrated checkout.

So what we did was we enabled our customers and payback.

Producte does now allow that our customers discover and search between thousands of real products, purchase them and do all, all this, including the checkout within our app and on one device.

So what we try to make is like just enhancing our shopping experience, make it for the customer more seamless, easier, more comfortable, reduce friction in this process and offer them an additional opportunity for their shopping journey within payback.

So for us, it was just like, I would say, next level or the next natural step in enhancing this experience within our.

App.

I think we have to focus on that a bit because, yes, customers come to your app not just to redeem points, but also to actively shop.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct.

So if you as a customer open our app, you have multiple options, why you should do that, you could do that, and why customers are using this.

So there are some basic service function within our app, like seeing how many points you collected.

You could activate your coupons, you can redeem your points, but you can also, and you could also in the past, start your shopping experience like choosing one shop, jump out to the shop and collect points.

And.

Now you have the opportunity to do the same within the app with our product marketplace.

Yeah, makes sense from the app point of view.

Let's switch it around and see if it makes sense for the seller as well.

So what do you bring to the marketplace business, which has not been covered by a lot of lots of other platforms that are active in Germany already?

Definitely there are a lot of marketplaces, successful marketplaces.

And what we see is that we think we have an additional value because we could offer our sellers our reach.

You told that we have 18 millions using our app and allow those sellers to get visibility in this ecosystem, in the payback ecosystem.

And in combination, we have with our loyalty system, with the points, a loyalty tool that makes our customers not only attracted by an offer, but be active, engaged and coming back.

So we try to make like this a rewarding experience to not have one time customers, but have them active in our ecosystem.

So the combination for me of reach, visibility and this loyalty aspect is quite unique in this sense.

So does this mean for the sellers that they have to take off some of their margin for the points as well?

Not really, because we are working as I would say, kind of a standard marketplace.

And the thing with the points is that maybe first of all, to explain this, our customers collect points with every transaction.

So for every purchase you do, you get 1 point per €2 you spend.

This is our base point and this is funded by payback because this is our standard tool that we are using and we can or we do additional promotions or coupons to create extra points for our customers whenever it makes sense in alignment with our sellers.

And this is usually to, I would say create more attention maybe on categories on brands or for seasonal events and usually on a pretty customer centric base.

So it's not a one fits all.

This is our marketing platform, what we're doing there and why are we doing this and not asking the seller to spend their margin in this?

Because we want to create value for the customers and as I said, we want to keep them engaged in our system.

And this is why we try to make this rewarding because the more relevant offers and the better connection our customers have with the platform.

This is our chance to create value.

And value is for everyone involved.

It's for the customer because they get great offers.

It's for the sellers because they have a stable connection to the customers.

And it's for us as a platform to keep this active and running.

So to stress that that is not a one off subvention in a way that you are giving to attract more sellers to the marketplaces.

It's basically built into your system.

This is built into your system.

This is the core of what we are doing.

Yeah, okay, Right.

So if I'm a seller, seller is listening right now.

How do I know whether I'm a good fit for you?

Is that are you looking for specific assortments, specific categories, specific kind of seller?

What are you looking for?

All of that.

So actually we're looking for sellers and for us it's important.

But this is kind of, I would say like a standard answer you get.

We want to have attractive offers of good quality.

We want to have competitive prices.

This is important for us and for our customers as well.

And we want to work together with sellif on a stable, on a good quality base when it comes to operations and processes.

We started this journey at the moment with categories Electronics, furniture, furniture, home and garden, fashion and accessories and sports.

And this is for the moment the range of our assortment.

And we invite all, I would say sellers, retailers, manufacturers, brands working in these categories.

And we have a limitation or what we are doing at the moment.

We are looking for sellers with a legal entity in Germany and operating like shipment from a warehouse in the eu.

This is the framework we're working in at the moment.

Yeah, we are happy to increase our assortment.

We have for the moment talking about Today around about 80 sellers live with around about 30,000 unique products.

And this is like constantly growing but still at the very beginning.

So there's space and potential for everyone, beginning with great visibility.

So everyone interested is welcome.

Come and talk to us.

We are happy to increase this range.

If you're looking at what users are doing on your app right now with producte, which categories are they most interested in?

Or is that a different way that they find products on your platform?

Actually, it's for us a bit too early to, I would say rank and chat because it's still a pretty early phase.

So we are not like on the same level in all those categories.

We're still kind of like trying out new entry points and what to show and what to highlight and what we are doing.

So I would say we have probably like comparing those categories at the moment.

I would say like the largest assortment, more in the, in the furniture or home and garden assortment.

But it would be not the right time to say this is what our customers want or this is like the best offer, whatever.

Because everything is growing and for me just seeing what's in there, what's coming, what's coming, coming nets, what do we have in the pipe and where do we want to go?

I would say this is still like just creating assortments, testing and see what's the best fit for the upcoming months.

Sounds to me like you're looking specifically for retailers that are willing to try something new and maybe creating it together with you.

Definitely.

Say if those apply tomorrow, what happens next?

How long does it take for onboarding?

What is the onboarding process like anyway?

And how long until maybe the first order comes in?

Good question.

So first of all, I would say is especially for sellers who are already in this business, it's probably the standard way.

You start with verification processes.

KYC Technical Onboarding.

We're working together with Miracle as a platform and then in the end the product listing onboarding there we have aggregators and middleware partners as well to support these processes.

I would say this is.

Is pretty standard.

But talking about timing, how long does it take?

I always have to say it depends.

It depends usually on the, I would say like the setup, the status of like providing information, providing good product data quality to us.

So it really depends on the seller's experience.

And if all required documents, information and processes are done in time, if everything is quite perfect, I would say it's kind of a standard and easy process.

Still, I would say it would take at least four to six weeks if everything is in place to get your products live within our platform.

When I still had a conference that I was putting together I always put a little money bank in the front of my stage and told people whenever they said it depends or in German as kommdorof an, they would have to put in a euro pay for that.

But in your case I do understand because it's early days.

Of course.

Yeah.

You should be a rich person.

Yeah.

So sadly, many people just didn't pay.

But no.

Business.

But.

No, not really.

But can you give us maybe a few examples of.

I mean you have been now the early beta is still early days.

You opened up in the beginning mid of September basically for that.

But it has been, there has been a history before that for a few months.

Do you already have a few sellers online that are already working?

We have sellers online that are working.

I still, I wouldn't do like a ranking or saying like this is, this is something I want to highlight because it would probably just not be the right thing to highlight one over the other.

Okay.

You went live as an early beta and it showed in the beginning.

A few people have looked at it, found a few rough edges.

There were some problems to checkout, for example.

And there's also the fact that the marketplace is still hiding between the productive fields and it's not really obvious that there is a marketplace there.

So what would you say if people sort of accuse you of not being too serious about this?

Ooh.

Okay.

So first of all, that was our plan.

We really wanted to launch better and we wanted to launch in the early days because.

Because for us it's a huge benefit like in launching something.

And we are fully aware that this is not like the end or this is not the perfect solution, but testing and improving something which is like life and there are end to end processes and there's real feedback like on real.

How do they have access to our marketplace?

How is the customer journey within the shopping experience?

How is quality and delivery in after sales service?

So we now have the chance to get this full view on what's working well, what needs to be improved and what are the priorities.

And so I know it's especially for the teams, for example, it's not that motivating every day if you get feedback like, ooh, this is not working or this could be done better.

But we are aware of that.

And that's like, that was a decision we made and it's pretty good for us.

And in your question you already mentioned two, I would say like three focus areas we are working on at the moment.

And so the first thing, and this is kind of a no brainer, we want to increase our assortment.

So we need more sellers online.

We need more assortment like products and offers from our sellers to make this like a great assortment for the customers to have the choice to find like attractive offers, good deals, whatever.

So this is like I would say one of the focus areas.

The other aspect you mentioned is super important as well.

How does it feel shopping within these payback product marketplace and there are ways of improvement along the customer journey like we call it, like my colleague call this the customer love section.

We have to make this more comfortable.

It should be easy to do that.

Less friction.

And this is the second part and the third one and this is for me especially super important to get not only better visibility within the payback app at the moment it's like the easiest way to get there is enter our service section and you can jump in and we are working on or we already have plans to create better visibility.

That's the one side and for me it's more the better integration because it shouldn't feel like go to services and click on something.

It will be like an essential part within our payback app with personalization in it to create relevant offers and relevant context for the customers to jump in and and those three streams are ongoing and what we do on the way there is like using this feedback we generate from customers, from sellers, from colleagues, from outside to find priority in what we are doing and yeah get there step by step.

But that's the journey for the next month.

Is there a timeline for that?

So when would you like to get out of beta?

Honestly we don't have a timing so there's no plan and like beta is only for three months or six months.

I think it won't be better anymore if we feel like it doesn't feel like better.

And as everywhere we want to be as quick as possible but we won't deliver quality.

So for us it's a journey and I think it's a journey for the next year to establish payback producte for us within the app but for sellers as well to be like a relevant channel for them.

So yeah.

It will stay in the air app.

That's the plan.

Currently it's the plan.

So it was like a decision to say this is this product, the product Pepic product is designed to be like an integrated part within our app because we see this is the touch point for our customers where they create their shopping experience where they find everything they need to collect points, to redeem points.

They find promotions, they find coupons, they are there on regular base and this is for us, the right place to integrate this feature.

And we're fully focused on making this a good experience for everyone.

I'm not going to say today there will never, ever be a web version of this, but it's not in our focus today.

I see.

Right.

Maybe as this is a new marketplace, we have to look at longevity in a way.

How long will you be around?

Because I've been around for quite a while in the marketplace space.

And marketplaces come and go, of course, and we have a lot of marketplaces already as we established.

So you have a special and unique point with the whole loyalty program behind it.

But still, what would you say?

What's your way to prove to all the naysayers that you will be around next year or two years or three years from now?

Yeah.

First of all, I think I will add the term longevity to our strategic papers from now on.

I think this is a good headline, so we'll copy this.

For us, starting this journey was a strategic decision and a strategic investment.

So we truly believe in this and we truly want this to be successful and we want this to be like integrated and relevant part of our shopping experience within the app.

So this is our goal to scale this business and to scale this marketplace.

And I believe longevity is not just a goal, but we will reach this because of the three topics.

I told you, we're increasing this now, like getting relevant in terms of assortment journey and then enable our customers to make the most out of their payback experience.

And this is like the combination of shopping, of saving and the loyalty aspect because we are there to create this rewarding experience for every customer.

So I think it's a huge benefit having the combination of those three.

And this is our usp.

So maybe let's have a talk in a year and see where we are.

Yeah, we definitely should.

What would you say are your main challenges on the way to next year?

Good question.

So I think there's a challenge in each of those three columns and I think it's always starting a new business.

It's always like, how should I say, creating some light for what you are doing.

So this like, as I said, the awareness within our customer base, the awareness within the app, and not only awareness, but getting the relevant offers to the right customers.

This is probably something you need some patience.

You can't force that and you have to find the right way to do that.

But I'm quite confident because we increased the payback portfolio of what we are doing from offline to online, from online retail to other segments in the past years.

I wouldn't say payback customers use it, but maybe they are already waiting for where can I get more and more out of my shopping money to benefit from payback?

So I'm confident.

Okay.

Right.

So I guess if some of our listeners are willing to get on this adventure with you and start, what should they do next Monday morning?

Maybe just check out the product within our app to get a feeling and better understanding of what we're doing.

As you said, for the moment, go to our services section within the app, open Payback Producte and search something, get inspired or choose something you wanted to buy online anyway and you could feel it or see how easy it is to buy something, collect points within one app and have this payback experience.

And what I have to do this afternoon is I have to buy an advent calendar for my little niece, which I saw on Payback Producte as well.

So I think everyone has something in mind which need to be done or bought.

And yeah, just get the real experience.

And if you're interested, we're happy to get in touch and yeah, talk to us.

Thanks for the reminder.

Advent calendar.

Yeah, noting that down.

It's already the time of the year.

It.

Is.

Okay.

Yasmin, thank you very much for these insights into a new and definitely interesting opportunity for retailers as of now.

Just for those of you who have a German entity, um, maybe that will change in the future.

But at the moment that's what you need and also a logistics address in the eu, but that goes without saying, I guess, on this channel.

So it was great to have you and get some insights on that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And if you all enjoyed this episode, please follow.

Subscribe to let's Talk Marketplace on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, wherever you're listening, you know the deal.

And I'll be very happy to welcome you again for next episode.

Episode.

Thanks for now and bye bye.

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The Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Valerie Dichtel.