Green Dot 2015 Annual Report Download - page 10

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technology as part of the tax preparation process. When our processing technology is utilized, a fee is paid by the
consumer that is shared, subject to various terms of each particular distribution agreement, between the distribution
partners and us.
Sales and Marketing
The primary objectives of our sales and marketing efforts are 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 increased
usage 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 and other 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 brands and image, building market adoption and awareness of our products, improving customer retention, and
increasing card usage. To achieve these objectives, we highlight to consumers the core benefits of our products and
services and how the use of our products can solve their fundamental money management needs.
Marketing to Business Partners
We use a variety of marketing strategies to engage with our business partners, including retail distributors, tax
preparation partners, and network acceptance members.
When marketing our prepaid financial services to potential new retail distributors, we highlight several key benefits,
including our leading national brand, our in-store presence and merchandising expertise, our cash reload network, the
profitability of our products to them and our commitment to support our brand through national marketing efforts. In
addition, we communicate the peripheral benefits of our products, such as their ability to generate additional foot traffic
and sales in their stores and higher average purchase amounts per transaction. We engage in similar strategies when
marketing to our tax preparation partners.
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 of our products to them, consumer satisfaction owing to the
consistency in the user experience and our ongoing support of our network's offerings through national marketing to
consumers and retail partners.
Customer Service
We provide customer service through numerous technologies and channels for all of the products provided by our
company to consumers. We utilize both in-house and third-party call centers, as well as Interactive Voice Response
systems, web-based support and email support in our customer service efforts.
Seasonality
In the industries for prepaid financial services and tax refund processing, companies commonly experience
seasonal fluctuations in revenue. For example, in recent years, our results of operations for the first half of each year
have been favorably affected by large numbers of taxpayers electing to receive their tax refunds via direct deposit on
our cards, which caused our operating revenues to be typically higher in the first halves of those years than they were
in the corresponding second halves of those years. Additionally, our tax refund processing services business is highly
seasonal as it generates the substantial majority of its revenue in the first quarter, and substantially all of its revenue
in the first half of each calendar year. We expect our revenue to continue to fluctuate based on seasonal factors that
affect the prepaid financial services and tax refund processing industries as a whole.
Competition
Our core businesses include the offering of prepaid cards, checking accounts and financial transaction processing
services to a wide range of consumers through broad, national distribution channels. Consequently, we compete
against companies across the retail banking, financial services, and transaction processing services industries. In
addition to the direct competitors described below, we compete for access to retail distribution channels, allocation of
shelf space within those retail distributors, and for the attention of consumers at the retail level and online. Furthermore,
many of our competitors are entities substantially larger in size, more highly diversified in revenue and substantially
more established in age with significantly more broadly known brand awareness than ours. As such, many of our