Ticket Monster helps businesses reach customers

Many small businesses are struggling because they lack competitiveness, but a marketing app could help them keep their doors open by ensuring customers keep coming back.

Ticket Monster, one of Korea’s leading social commerce companies, released its upgraded TMon Plus app in January. The service helps self-employed owners of small and medium businesses manage customers and announce promotions.

TMon Plus saves membership points for customers after they input their phone number when they pay at a store.

Sohn Eun-mi, who runs a small bakery in Daegu, North Gyeongsang, said she started using TMon Plus at her store in July.

“I just ask customers to insert their phone numbers into the card payment machine, so I can send them discount promotions and event messages,” Sohn said.

“Once the customers insert their phone numbers, they can receive membership points automatically every time they make purchases at my store.

“For me, it is useful since I can check the revisiting rate of customers and conduct active marketing promotions, such as sending mobile coupons whenever I launch a new product or to attract those who have not visited the store in a while.”

Sohn said that 3,000 visitors to her bakery Albento have subscribed to TMon Plus and the revisiting rate of those customers is at 45 percent.

Unlike large franchises, small shops don’t have the labor and capital to develop their own membership system and usually rely on paper coupons, flyers and stamp cards to bring in customers.

But TMon Plus said it provides an effective alternative to traditional marketing and customer management systems for small businesses.

The upgraded version of TMon Plus makes tailoring promotions to individual customers more efficient. It tracks points and data such as the number of times a customer has visited, the products that he or she frequently purchases and the accumulated amount spent at the store.

Based on that data, the customers are categorized as loyal customers, big-purchase customers or weekend customers and are issued promotions based on their group.

“Through a target-specific analysis, I can operate the store more strategically and effectively,” said Sohn.

In TMon, if a business owner clicks the “making weekend customers” button on the app, it makes a list of people who frequently visit the store on weekends and sends them a message detailing discounts. Store owners can check the effectiveness of their promotions by viewing graphs.

About 1,000 small and medium businesses have subscribed to the 50,000-won-per-month service (about $46) since its launch, including franchise restaurants Nolbu and Bongchu Chimtak as well as Cafe Droptop.

The customer management solution now has 1.3 million customers, and the shops using it have posted an average revisiting rate of 60 percent.

BY KIM JUNG-YOON [kjy@joongang.co.kr]