In my last post I explained the potential of Banks investing their effort to build Lifestyle Apps and create an ecosystem that helps everyone. The question remains, will people move away from generic lifestyle apps and adopt the ones created by the banks? Please note I will be specific to Singapore market in some contextual examples.

What new redemption or benefits banks are offering to turn the users to their apps from their known ecosystems. Many apps have tried to create same space, GroupOn, Lazada, beehive, coupons.com. There have been topical and specialized services and the generics. Where will Banks’ focus remain.

The broad category where segmentation has helped the banks traditionally are the services lice movie tickets, food coupons at big fast food chains (McDonalds, KFC, Burger King) even at some gourmet cuisine restaurants at Sentosa or CBD. These rewards were mostly driven by the Credit Card redemption strategy to gain more customers by providing cash backs or redemption coupons.

As these credit cards will ultimately feed the same data mart a Bank is preserving it becomes easier for a bank to understand the patterns of a customer’s buying tendency and preferences. This brings us to the other side of the ecosystem the Partners.

Banks assist in whole lot of promotional drives and even partner with some of their preferred vendors to offer the rebates or discounts to gain market presence. These partners are always look out to identify the next sales cycle and tying this to specific social events is not new. Latest FIFA Soccer world cup is an example. Every such mega event need sponsors and companies who sponsor expect the sales turnaround to support their marketing spend and gain more moolah.

With these lifestyle apps if the customer insights are fused with the Partner vendor sales offers then it creates the perfect blend for improved sales cycles and it also provides an excellent delivery & distribution platform for future marketing campaigns. Rather than relying on Newspaper and TV ads which get lesser tangible results but more brand awareness, these lifestyle apps provide concrete sales closures.

Partners can evaluate and realize how much of these and which one of these apps are contributing to the actual sales numbers, thus making the process hassle-free and efficient. This new medium is a potent one and is likely to succeed for some time till a new delivery or distribution evolution comes along.