Donovan Woods:
And I’m Donovan Woods with the Fuels Institute and NACS. And I’m happy to be here, Carolyn.

Carolyn Schnare:
I’m happy to have you with me Donovan. Earlier this summer, remember we talked with our guest today and if you recall, we talked about balloons falling from the ceiling where every time I walked into the store, remember that one? I got to talk about my perfect day and I was really excited because everybody in the store remembers me. And, I’m still waiting.

Donovan Woods:
I don’t like to think about it too much, but I do recall. Yes. I’m glad. I’m glad that our guest is back with us though.

Carolyn Schnare:
Well, we’re very happy that you’re back with us. So on a more serious note, we talked with our guest on a previous episode, Aaron McLean, who is the Chief Marketing Officer at Stuzo. And that episode was called the Battle For the Share of Wallet. And, we talked with Aaron and he talked us through making customers happy and encouraging them to spend more. And how, when balloons fall from the ceiling, it makes Carolyn smile. But, we talked a little bit more about our competition for share wallet, heating up across retail channels, convenience, fuel, grocery, QSR, dollar category, Amazon, goPuff. I could go on and on and on, but at the end of that conversation, we ended up in the territory of business outcomes and performance, which is where I’d like to pick up today. Welcome back, Aaron!

Aaron McLean:
Thank you, Carolyn and Donovan. It’s great to be here. I always enjoy our conversations.

Carolyn Schnare:
Me too, it’s good to see you again. It’s been a couple months! So…and to see you, we actually can see each other and record so that’s why I’m saying that one out loud, but, you guys only have to hear us, at least. So…

Aaron McLean:
It’s almost like we’re in person. It’s almost as good. Not quite yet, but we’ll see you at the NACS Show, right?

Carolyn Schnare:
Yes, yes, yes. And next time we should do this together,.face-to-face. So at the end of the episode, that last one, and at the beginning of this one, I alluded to working with technology providers and having quality metrics and measures as a fundamental key to a program success. So actually last week’s episode to those listeners paying attention, we talked with several guests on the same premise, and there’s a reason you refer to your vendor as a partner, right? So Aaron, if you could take me through your view on how a retailer can partner successfully with technology suppliers, when you’re rolling out something complex or easy like loyalty and payments and customer experience technology, walk me through how that should work, how that can work best for a retailer.

Aaron McLean:
Well, Carolyn like you said, we agree. We believe that software product suppliers like us over here at Stuzo that we should be strategic partners with the retailers that we serve and not just another tool that the retailer needs to buy. We also believe that in order to be a true strategic partner, that suppliers need to be accountable for performance and outcomes. And the reason being is, our retailer partners need us now more than ever to align with them on doing the things that really matter. The things that will drive meaningful business outcomes at scale. But you know, of course being truly accountable by guaranteeing performance and outcomes, it can be risky business. I mean, you would have to be extremely confident in your ability to achieve those outcomes. The outcomes that really move the needle forward for the retailer. It would also require a mutual alignment and agreement on those targeted outcomes.

Donovan Woods:
Hmm. So Aaron, can you give me some examples of what you mean by that of where you work with retailers? You don’t have to name specific names of different companies for their privacy, as well as for your success and just kind of how you’ve moved them along to see that progress for their business.

Aaron McLean:
Sure, Donovan. So a couple of quick examples where we’ve created meaningful business outcomes for our customers. So for one of our partners, a large convenience and fuel retail operator with over 1,500 locations in the U.S. ,we’ve been using our loyalty management software product, which we call Activate – part of our Open Commerce product suite – to help them steer a greater share of customers fuel purchases to their brand. So let me explain. It’s back in 2019, 58% of this retailer’s fuel visits were coming from customers that only visited one time per month. So pretty significant percentage it’s almost 60% only coming in for fuel once a month. So then over a nine month period following that we helped the retailer move 16% of those one-visit-per-month customers to higher visit frequency. So specifically, two-time-per-month fuel customers increased from 17 to 19%. Three to five-time-per-month visitors increased from 18 to 25%. It’s a huge 7% gain. And six-time-per-month visitors increased from 7 to 14%. It’s another huge 7% gain. Now for another one of our retailer partners with over 200 sites here in the U.S., after they made the switch from their previous loyalty and payments vendor to Stuzo, within just the first 60 days of relaunching their program – again, powered by our unified Open Commerce product suite – their transactions per day went up by 80% active members went up by 243%. And member enrollment rates went up by 115%. These are the kinds of outcomes that are really moving the needle forward.

Donovan Woods:
Hmm. So it just like…to make sure I understand exactly what you just said because there were a lot of numbers, a lot of positive success. And, I do want to make sure I get this right, because your company is going as far as to say you’re guaranteeing success. And I mean, if I think about it, there’s a lot of companies out there that talk about that, that promise that, that say that, especially even in the tech industry and it kind of just drags on forever, you never really get to see that actual goal hit and you kind of change what the scope will be. And there’s some bumps in the road and retailer or customer myself isn’t as satisfied with that. And that kind of makes it not too cool or not a product I’m going to go back to or trust. So what makes you, for all our listeners out there, that are hearing your statistics and hearing these things, and they’re gigantic numbers. What makes you – and Stuzo specificallly – what makes you guys different from a retailer? Why do your numbers not sound like, “well, it worked for that company, but not for my company?”

Aaron McLean:
Wow, that’s a really good question. I liked the way you framed it too. What, what makes us different? And how can we guarantee our outcomes because you’re right, Donovan, we do. And we do offer a performance guarantee and that guarantee is empowered by what we call our Wallet Steering System. So let me explain what that means real quick. Our Wallet Steering System is powered by a combination of three things. It’s our Open Commerce software products, it’s our proprietary methodology, and it’s our professional services that come together to help drive greater share of wallets for our retailer partners. But more specifically, what do we mean by wallet steering? Because it’s kind of a new concept. So just I’ll break this apart real quick. So we all have wallets or, said differently, categories that we shop across all the retailers we do business with.

Aaron McLean:
We’ve got food wallet, fuel wallets, CPG, age-restricted items, and so on. So what our Open Commerce products suite does is it uses data in real time to help the retailer understand the loyalty program members wallet capacity. And that is,how much of any one of those wallets do they spend across all the retailers they do business with. Their total capacity. We also help them understand their specific share of wallet, maybe within the fuel wallet, it could be, or the food wallet, it could be 25% of that wallet, maybe 50% 75%, and then build an understanding of that incremental wallet opportunity. And that is how much is being spent with a competitor that they could go after and try to acquire. We then build journeys that automatically guide the customer along a path that leads to an increase in the retailer’s share of wallet and doing it profitably. So that’s what our Wallet Steering System does and it’s how we back up our performance guarantee.

Carolyn Schnare:
So it’s almost like, you know, as I try to teach my kids the value of a dollar, you try to kind of really figure out from the customer’s perspective. And they don’t know you’re thinking like this, but you’re really just kind of saying ‘oh, okay, normally I would have spent X on coffee, but I always go to this store that’s by my office building or something. But since I’m not going to my office, you know, maybe I have this extra money to spend.’ So it’s, does it encourage upselling to the retailers, like things like that so that they…well not to the retailers, to the customers, maybe through the different platforms, like ‘you can get your coffee here, it’s really great!’ You know, something like that?

Aaron McLean:
So Carolyn the…well, why don’t we use a quick example? So, I love buying egg and biscuit breakfast sandwiches, you know, it’s like my thing, and I usually buy them at Wawa. But I don’t always. Sometimes I buy them from competitors of Wawa. So my breakfast sandwich wallet is actually distributed across multiple different retailers. So now maybe 50% of my breakfast sandwiches, I’m buying with Wawa and then the others because they’re with competitive retailers. So now imagine if Wawa actually knew that they had 50% of my breakfast sandwiches and they knew that they could intelligently go after getting that other 50%, of steering that wallet of that purchase behavior back to their brand and they could do it profitably, meaning the investment. They go into the incentives, the offers, the promotions that they use through their loyalty program to get me to bring more of my wallet over to them, would result in a profitable outcome. That’s what we call wallet steering. And that’s one of the core things that makes us so unique and different and so powerful and is behind what drives our performance guarantee.

Carolyn Schnare:
Gotcha. Thank you. That’s a good explanation. And you had said before, too, that there’s all the backend, all the programming, all the algorithms, all the smart programming, all the big words that just don’t…that for me as a non-technologist are out there going ‘okay, I know that’s operating on the backend.’ But when it comes down to it, someone, some people, it comes down to people I think sometimes, too. How do you go in and explain what’s happening to retailers? Is there a force of employees behind you that are just able just get that retailer’s trust and then help them guide them along the way?

Aaron McLean:
Oh yeah, definitely. It’s much more than just our products that power, what we do. I mean, we’ve got 140 people and growing over here at Stuzo, a customer success team that is devoted to working with our retailer partners to align on the outcomes that they’re trying to achieve and then focus on the things that really matter to drive those outcomes. So yeah, a big part of what we do is our people and how we partner together with retailers we work with

Donovan Woods:
Very nice, very nice. And, you know, Aaron, before I ask my next question that I had in mind, you talk about your team and you talk about the culture and how that plays a role in terms of how your product actually affects retailers. Is there a certain attitude that you guys have, and I’m thinking just strictly from a culture standpoint here at NACS and Fuels Institute, how do you get them motivated to do something like that?

Aaron McLean:
Oh that’s a great question. One of our greatest advantages at Stuzo, it really is our team and our culture and our culture of caring our team and how they care about their teammates professionally and personally, and how much they care really tremendously about driving outcomes for our customers. You know, Donovan we’ve been told by our customers time, and again, that we care more, that we’re better to work with, and we go the extra mile, that we don’t stop until the job is done and that we meet our commitments. And speaking of commitments, those need to start with targeted outcomes. So when we work on solution design with our retailer partners, we start by aligning on the business outcomes that we want to drive and there are a lot of times when the debate over that can get pretty heated.

Aaron McLean:
So, often a retailer will ask us, for example, for a feature to be added into their loyalty program, but that feature might have to get cut because we know that while we could build it – we have an incredible team, we could build anything – that we shouldn’t. And we talk a lot about could versus should. At Stuzo and with our customers, it’s really a cultural element of caring and having the discipline to say no to the things that we know will not drive outcomes at scale for our retailer partners. And it comes down to what I mentioned before, and that is aligning first on targeted business outcomes, and then using those targeted outcomes as our litmus test. So whenever a new idea emerges, we have to look at that idea hard and honestly ask, will this help us acquire more members to the retailers’ programs at scale? Will this help us acquire more of the right kind of data and enable us to activate that data, to drive meaningful outcomes, more visits, more gallons, bigger baskets, and increased share of wallet and increased customer lifetime value at scale? And if the answer to those questions is no, then it becomes pretty clear that that’s something we should not be doing.

Donovan Woods:
And you know, if you could share that part, if we could change the name of this session to just, “if you’re a team leader, listen to these words” that I think in any industry, any company, any group, wherever you work, even in any family, if you’re a family head, the idea of ‘before you do something, see if there’s value behind it or what the outcome is.’ I think that’s a great way to do things, but now kind of just changing gears just for a little bit, those who are listening, being who you really want to target here are convenience retailers, right? So when they hear this, they’ve probably never heard something like this before, specifically, that you’re adding into your description of your performance, you’re adding in your culture of your company as part of what you’re all about. How are you really expecting the industry to respond to what you offer?

Aaron McLean:
Well, you’re absolutely right Donovan. It represents a cultural shift. It’s also a mindset shift. And in, in our case with our performance guarantee, it’s even a legal shift in how retailers work with their technology partners. So we’re seeking to change the dynamics of the industry. We think that accountability will align technology suppliers as true strategic partners with the retailers. Honestly, we hope to see this trend continue because the net outcome, it’s a positive for the entire industry. So we think the retailers…how are they going to react? Well, we think the retailers that will react best to this paradigm shift will be the ones that are philosophically aligned with us. The ones that already believe performance and outcomes matter significantly more than the total number of features that a supplier’s product offers or all the different things that they could do. Another way to say that just clearly and succinctly is business outcomes trump features, period. So with those retailers that believe that philosophically, together, we will drive significantly more value.

Carolyn Schnare:
I was going to say that…I mean it’s just, like I said, in the beginning we talked about, is it’s partnership. I mean, it’s trust. It’s trust that you, Aaron and team, know what you’re doing because you’ve been doing this a lot. And it’s hard when, I can imagine, when you…let’s say a CEO who’s been doing this for 50 years, wants to know that what they’re doing as best. We want to offer this, I dunno, product, let’s say milk, for this. But you’re like, well, no, actually our metrics say this. Trust me, trust me that I know what’s best for you. I know that this is your baby. And you want to do the same thing with your baby that you’ve always done and just help it grow a little. You’re like, no, I want you to grow a lot. And here’s the metrics we set. And so having those KPIs or SMART goals or whatever you want to call them to say, here’s our benchmark. Here’s how we’re going to get here. This is how we’re going to do it. Trust me. I think it’s a big foundation of trust. And it sounds like, that’s what you’re guaranteeing is that you’re there, you’re their partner, trust me.

Aaron McLean:
And in addition to that, that we care more. And it’s not just the words that it’s how we demonstrate that every single day and how we work with our retailer partners. And when you add those things all up, like you said, Carolyn, that’s when we become true strategic partners with the retailer, not just another one of their vendors.

Donovan Woods:
You know, Aaron and I like it to Carolyn. That was fair. It’s very nice. I don’t want to step over that right there, but, beyond your performance guarantee, I guess the next question is what’s coming next for Stuzo. What are you guys working on for the future.

Aaron McLean:
Sure. So we talked about for a long time at Stuzo, we’ve been working on our culture of team chemistry and caring. I’m really excited to announce actually that we just recently received for the second year in a row, a great honor by the Philadelphia Inquirer as being named a Top Workplace last year.

Carolyn Schnare:
Woo hoo! Balloons from the ceiling!

Aaron McLean:
I know thank you! Balloons from everywhere. It’s such a great honor for us. We’re so proud of what we’ve achieved. You know, last year was the first year that we applied to be even considered to be a Top Workplace. And we were ranked number six overall in greater Philadelphia in our category, which we were just thrilled about. Now this year we applied again, we moved up two spots to number four in our category, which is just like…just so thrilled about that. In addition to that, if we could get even better, the Inquirer also gave us a special award of a Company That Operates by Strong Values. You know, it’s our people and our culture of caring. This is really what is empowering our success at Stuzo and the success of our retailer partners. We want to be known in the industry as the loyalty, payments and customer experience products company that performs better and cares the most about our retailer partners and their business outcomes. And the reality is, that’s a never-ending journey.

Carolyn Schnare:
And it sounds like you’ve got ’employee experience’ that you can add to that list too, because they seem to be really enjoying it.

Aaron McLean:
You nailed it Carolyn. And the reality is our employees, our team, our culture is what drives everything. And it’s one of the most important things for us to be investing in today. And it’s really evergreen.

Carolyn Schnare:
So that…I don’t even have a good question/answer for that. That’s just really cool. Because you have to care about everybody you’re…you gotta love what you do, right? You gotta love who you do it with, whether it’s employees or even, the retail partners that you’re working with. So it sounds like you got it coming from every angle now. So Aaron, where can our listeners find more about some of the things we talked about today? Find you?

Aaron McLean:
We’d love to talk more with anyone that’s excited about business outcomes and excited about aligning to performance and putting a…drawing a hard line in the sand and saying, ‘we have to, the time is no.’, So drop us a line at [email protected], visit us online STUZO.com. And, we’d be happy to hear from you.

Carolyn Schnare:
That’s cool. So thank you for that, Aaron and I mentioned before, but if you didn’t get chance to listen to last week’s episode, it’s called Category Close-up: Customer-Facing Technology. So, spot-on a lot of the same stuff we talked here, but we padded it with some research and some, some NACS experts as well. So it’s really a good one-two, if you haven’t listened to that, go back and get that. Also before I go, I want to take a real quick minute, I wanted to wish my co-host Donovan the very best in his newest chapter in life, Donovan. This is his last show with us. And – I’m almost going to tear up here – but I’ve really enjoyed working with you buddy and you keep in touch. Follow him on LinkedIn and find out where he’s going next. So thank you for that. And it’s always been a pleasure with working with you, Aaron, always a pleasure seeing you again, and to the listeners. Thank you for being you. And thank you for listening to Convenience Matters.

Convenience Matters Outro:
Convenience Matters is brought to you by NACS and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.

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