Green Dot 2010 Annual Report Download - page 16

make cross-sales. We have also integrated Green PlaNET with our website, www.greentdot.com, to
provide a full range of interactive services, including online card sales, full activation and person-
alization services, electronic funds transfers, and access to account histories and management
services.
Sales and Marketing
The primary objective of our sales and marketing efforts is to educate consumers on the utility of our
products and services in order to generate demand, and to instruct consumers on where they may
purchase our products and services. We also seek to educate existing customers on the use of our
products and services to encourage use and retention of our products. We accomplish these objectives
through various types of consumer-oriented marketing and advertising and by expanding our group of
retail distributors to gain access to additional customers.
Marketing to Consumers
We market our products to a broad group of consumers, ranging from never-banked to fully-banked
consumers. We are focusing our current sales and marketing efforts on acquisition of long-term users of
our products, enhancing our brand and image, building market awareness of our products, improving
cardholder retention and increasing card usage. To achieve these objectives, we highlight to consumers
the core benefits of our products, which we believe are affordability, access to funds, utility, convenience,
transparency and security.
Our marketing campaigns involve creating a compelling in-store presence and conducting television
advertising, retailer promotions such as newspaper inserts and circulars, online advertisements, and co-
op advertising with select retail distributors. We focus on raising brand awareness while educating our
customers.
We also design, and provide to our retail distributors for use in their stores, innovative packaging and
in-store displays that we believe generate consumer interest and differentiate our products from other card
products on their racks. Our packaging and displays help ensure that our products are promoted in a
consistent, visual manner that is designed to invite consumers to browse and learn about our products,
and thus to increase our sales opportunities.
We employ a number of strategies to improve cardholder retention and increase card usage. These
strategies are based on research we conduct on an ongoing basis to understand consumer behavior and
improve consumer loyalty and satisfaction. For example, we use our points of contact with customers (e.g.,
our website, email, interactive voice response system, or IVR, and mobile applications) to educate our
customers and promote new card features. We also provide incentives for behaviors, such as cash
reloading, establishing payroll direct deposit and making frequent purchases with our cards, that we
believe increase cardholder retention.
Marketing to Retail Distributors
When marketing to potential new retail distributors, we highlight the key benefits of our products,
including our national brand, our in-store presence and merchandising expertise, our cash reload network,
the profitability to them of our products and our commitment to national television and other advertising. In
addition, we communicate the peripheral benefits of our products, such as their ability to generate
additional foot traffic and sales in their stores.
Marketing to Our Network Acceptance Members
We market our reload network to a broad range of banks, third-party processors, program managers
and others that have uses for our reload network’s cash transfer technology. When marketing to potential
network acceptance members, we highlight the key benefits of our cash loading network, including the
breadth of our distribution capabilities, our leadership position in the industry, the profitability to them of our
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