Green Dot 2011 Annual Report Download - page 16

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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. In particular, we believe that our fee waiver
program, which eliminates monthly maintenance fees for customers who deposit $1,000 or more to the card or conduct
at least 30 transactions with the card during a monthly billing cycle, has had a significant impact on improving cardholder
retention within certain of our customer segments. Our GPR cards had an average card lifetime of approximately nine
months in each of 2010 and 2011. While the average card lifetime was flat from 2010 to 2011, due to a higher mix of
customers acquiring cards primarily for tax refunds, we experienced growth in the number of new GPR card activations
from repeat customers, or former GPR cardholders, over the same period. The percentage of new card activations
from repeat customers increased from 34% in 2010 to 43% in 2011.
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 products, consumer satisfaction and our
commitment to national television and other advertising and marketing support.
Customer Service
We provide customer service for all GPR card and gift card programs that we manage and for MoneyPak on a 24-
hour per day, 365-day per year basis, primarily through third-party service providers in Guatemala and the Philippines,
and also through our staff in the United States. All card activations, reloads, support and lost/stolen inquiries are
handled online and through various toll-free numbers at these locations. We also operate our own call center at our
headquarters for handling customer and corporate escalations. Customer service is provided in both English and
Spanish.
Competition
We operate in highly competitive and developing markets, which we expect to become increasingly competitive
in the future. In addition to the direct competitors described below, we compete for access to retail distribution channels
and for the attention of consumers at the retail level.
Prepaid Card Issuance and Program Management
We compete against the full spectrum of providers of GPR cards. We also compete with traditional providers of
financial services, such as banks that offer demand deposit accounts and card issuers that offer credit cards, private
label retail cards and gift cards. Many of these institutions are substantially larger and have greater resources, larger
and more diversified customer bases and greater brand recognition than we do. Many of these companies can also
leverage their extensive customer bases and adopt aggressive pricing policies to gain market share. Our primary
competitors in the prepaid card issuance and program management market are traditional credit, debit and prepaid
card account issuers and prepaid card program managers like American Express, First Data, NetSpend, AccountNow,
PreCash, UniRush, LLC, Western Union and MoneyGram. In addition, from time to time, new entrants, such as PayPal,
introduce prepaid card products that could increase competition in this market. Our Green Dot-branded cards also
compete with our co-branded GPR cards, such as the Walmart MoneyCard.