P.2 How did WisePass evolve the past couple years?
WisePass has been evolving the past few years from a lifestyle startup with a subscription service starting from 300$ a month in Vietnam in 2016 to a regional startup that expanded in 2017 after its seed funding to Thailand and the Philippines in 2018.
With the pandemic in 2020, what happened to the startup and how did it adapt to such a business context?
In this article, we will focus on the way WisePass changed the way it operates. The answers are collected from an interview with the founder and CEO of WisePass, Lam Tran. This is a long interview and will be broken down into 3 different articles. Here's part 2.
The way I have approached the business since 2019 is to transition from a premium and rigid service towards a more affordable and flexible service.
Pricing
Before
Price Range
The price range of WisePass in 2016 started from 300$ a month. We opened up a new plan and priced it later at 700$ a month. For Vietnam, this is super-premium pricing and that was designed towards rich kids, foreigners and ex-pats.
The nightlife people would definitely see the value as the spend for a single night would already be 300$ for a group going out clubbing on a Friday or Saturday night in Ho Chi Minh City. That's actually how we designed the membership initially. 300$ a month to party every night.
Target Audience and Market Size
Our target audience was really specific initially and focused on the nightlife. We were looking to acquire a small and engaged user base in the nightlife. The issue we faced eventually as we grew up was the market size as you wouldn't find 1 million people in Vietnam spending 300$ every month to sell a membership to party. That's when we realized that we had to go beyond the use case of drinking.
After
Price range
The price range of WisePass went all the way down to 10$ a month. Thanks to the fact that we could make a deal with our first brand the Singha group. It allowed us to operate differently with no cost for each redemption and pass all the savings back to the subscriber. With a price drop of 30x the positioning changed and i wasn't a super premium service anymore as we allowed people to become a subscriber for just 10$ a month.
Target Audience and Market Size
With the introduction of the 10$ membership, our target audience has increased drastically. The market size for beer drinkers in Vietnam can be counted by the millions and the audience is now much more Vietnamese. Other brands have also jumped in that price point and we're not focused only on the nightlife people.
That has led our communication and focus on becoming Vietnamese first whenever we post on social media or when we run some events. In each market we're going now local and we focus on understanding better the needs of the consumers the brand is looking to target.
The redemption system
Before
How our redemption system used to work?
When we started the 300$ membership, everything was simple. You subscribe and get to scan once a day. You can pick whatever item you want but you have to choose the item you want and scan to redeem it for free.
Consumer behavior was focused on cost per scan
The problem is when we set the architecture, consumers would think about the value and the scans they could get to calculate what would be the best items to redeem. They forgot to enjoy and started to focus on the value mostly.
After
How our redemption system is working now?
With PASS, we introduced a pricing for each item sponsored by the brand. Consumers get to see on the app how many PASS each item cost to redeem and can make the decision to go for it or not. It introduces more flexibility for brands as an item can change in pricing over time as a brand will have a specific sponsorship budget and won't be able to feed our network unlimited.
This additional flexibility offered to brands gave them more peace of mind on the way they sponsor products, services or events as they will have to take a look at the redemptions and ensure the sponsorship can last long enough and can reach a specific amount of consumers.
Consumer behavior is more focused on PASS
With the introduction of PASS, consumers tend to think more about how many PASS they have and what they can get. We introduce in the coming quarter a way for consumers to make their membership more powerful with our referral program so they can gain 1 additional PASS per day everyday. Bottom line, the more PASS per day a subscriber has, the more powerful the subscriber is.
At the end of the day, WisePass is more focused on enabling the brands to reach the right target audience and drive interactions up between them and the consumers through our redemption system.
Use Cases
Before
Venues Access
Since 2016, the access of WisePass started with a bottle service. To put it simply, if you were a subscriber, you could enjoy a free bottle every night in some venues we were partnering with. The game then was all about increasing venue access.
Rapidly, we went on adding more access over the years with restaurants, coffee shops, movie theaters, gyms and so on. That access got stronger and over the years. However, with COVID-19 venues have shut down one after the other and we needed to adapt.
Type of access
In the past, the access was rigid as you could do only one thing. If you were a subscriber, you could redeem anything accessible on the app and enjoy the item for free. That was pretty much it. To keep our consumers excited, it was always about how to add more verticals.
After
Brand Access
The access keeps expanding differently as we focus less on venues but brands to enrich our value proposition to the consumers. As we keep onboarding more brands, we'll have more venues as well but the stability a brand brings compared to a venue is much better.
As we follow the brands, we give them more back control and the consumers as well. They're more empowered in the platform and can make decisions. At the end, WisePass focuses on how to get brands connected with consumers, not venues.
Type of access
The use case for WisePass is not limited to the redemption of some free items only but also the following :
Access to WisePass events sponsored by brands
Unique promotion for WisePass members from brands
Rewards from brands for subscribers who completed a mission
