Local-Commerce Profile: Q&A With Access Development

This continues our series of profiles of local-commerce companies. The purpose of these Q&A interviews is to give merchants, marketers and others in the industry a glimpse at what some companies out there are doing. These profiles are also meant to offer different perspectives on the future of the local-commerce industry.

This week we’re profiling Access Development, a private-label merchant network that aims to help businesses foster loyalty and get new customers through various programs.

Read on to find out how the company got its start in 1984, the importance of a “behind the counter” perspective and its words of advice to marketers, merchants and consumers.

Please introduce yourself.
Dave Bona, VP of partnership marketing: Title translation: it’s my job to deliver all “merchant-level” product development needs for Access. In my 10 years at Access, I have spoken with thousands of merchants, spanning local mom-and-pops to major national brands. I absolutely love the industry and am a deal junkie myself. I also enjoy working out and spending time with my family and friends.

How would you describe Access Development in one sentence?
Access brings new customers to over 300,000 merchants, increased value to organizations and unique perks members by serving up the nation’s largest private discount network.

Tell us about how the company got its start and how the name was chosen.

Our company was founded in 1984 by Larry Maxfield, who still serves as our CEO. He had a hard drive full of vacation-industry contacts, a borrowed car and $30,000 (also borrowed). The name of the company comes from the original concept behind what we do: We develop access for our clients, merchants and members to what they want. The clients want engagement and loyalty from their members, the merchants want more revenue and the members want to save. So when it comes to what we do, the Access Development name is literal, even nearly 30 years later. (We actually blogged about the name topic.)

How does Access Development differentiate itself from the other types of deal platforms out there?
Access has always kept the merchant’s best interest in mind. We train our people to be able to place themselves “behind the counter,” so they understand what the merchant experiences from day to day. If the value isn’t there for the merchant, we walk away. Our belief is that the company that owns the merchant relationships at the end of the day will be the one left standing, so we invest in our merchants to ensure their business succeeds while also passing value on to the consumer. We’ve tried to build our network in tandem with consumer spending, which is still largely in-store and close to home for the most part. Our network has deals within 10-20 miles for 99.6 percent of the population, and that is a constant differentiator for us from other networks.

What are Access Development’s most popular types of deals?
Restaurants usually see the most usage. We do see some shifts to retail shopping over the holidays and travel bookings a few months prior to summer vacations.

Do certain types of deals work better for specific types of businesses and products/services?
Absolutely. Access employees go through extensive “offer talk” training to learn how to structure deals that are strong enough to change customer behavior, while still driving profitable business to the participating merchants. For example, a popular business may want to structure an offer that increases the average transaction size, while businesses that need new customers may want to do something more aggressive at a lower price point.

How has Access Development been able to build relationships with its stable of local and national merchants?
Banks, teachers associations, motor clubs and other organizations provide Access’ local and national merchant offers to their members. Access facilitates these relationships so that merchants can choose us as the channel partner that handles their cross-promotions through organizations. Ultimately, the merchant reaches customers that in a way they can’t do on their own by having another trusted affinity partner endorse their brand. Additionally, Access works with the merchant’s best interests in mind, giving them flexibility on offer, redemption channel, number of uses, etc. We also operate a mobile “show your phone” network of 125,000+ merchant locations, as well as a registered card-based cash-back network, so we offer a lot of options to the merchants.

What is Access Development’s biggest challenge going forward?
Merchants have so many needs that are not being met in today’s marketplace. We constantly get the voice of the merchant through our sales and account management efforts. Our biggest challenge is determining how to use this data to evolve our platform and develop new solutions that will ease the merchant’s pain and drive profits. We consider our merchant partnerships Access’ greatest asset and want to make sure that what we introduce to them clearly works and further solidifies our relationship.

What words of advice does Access Development have for local merchants looking to run a deal or promotion?
Explore your options. There are a lot of deal providers out there, and each one has different terms. You may find ways to run a promotion without having to split your profits with the deal supplier by promoting via member benefit programs, school fundraisers, local associations, etc. You can also run your own deal through Facebook and still have it reach thousands of people, which we’re helping a lot of companies accomplish with our Friend2Customer