“We were at the back office cutting and marking vouchers with unique numbers, ensuring they had signed signatures so that the client could keep distributing the verified vouchers for every order.” recalls both Jared and Jason at a launch event for a skincare product in Sunway Pyramid Mall while still working for their digital agency back then.

Because the redeemable products are of high value, each voucher that was eligible for a redemption needed to be unique to prevent any potential frauds or reprints. This was back in 2018 where physical vouchers were still the prefered choice, in fact even in 2021, some brands are still using physical vouchers for their promotional efforts. These physical vouchers are prone to be either lost, forgotten or damaged.

“There has to be a better way! Something easy for both the brands and users to use.” Jared and Jason collectively agreed after multiple tiring launch events. To provide context, prior to HeyOmni, both Jared and Jason were working together on multiple agency projects helping brands with their marketing efforts and customizing digital solutions for them.

Jared Khoo, is an experienced creative lead having worked for a 4A awarded advertising agency that manages campaign strategies for leading DTC brands such as Digi, BMW, Carlsberg, Sime Darby and more.

Jason Chew is a digital transformation specialist with extensive experience in delivering digital solutions for brands. Before HeyOmni, he was crafting lifestyle privileges reward programmes for local banks, telcos and corporations.

In their careers, they have identified that brands are unable to drive and retain customer engagement effectively after making the first sale. Most brands are aware of this and are actively trying to look for membership solutions to convert their customers into long time loyal supporters.

While assisting their clients and in search for a simple to use end-to-end membership solution, they realized that most solutions that were in the market did not provide the ease of setup and most are not SME friendly, coming with a hefty price and are usually bundled with their hardware and other solutions such as a Point-of-Sale system. In short, flexibility and customization were really lacking. Even the most popular B card in the country at the time focused only on well-established organizations such as leading petrol stations and supermarkets, they did not cater to the SMEs. Smaller brands were mostly left with the option to make their own physical vouchers or stamp cards.

Having identified a need in the market and opportunities for innovation, Jared and Jason decided to build a solution themselves, and thus HeyOmni was born – an end-to-end membership solution helping businesses build long-lasting brand loyalty. With the ease of use and robust customization in mind, the co-founders wanted to build a solution that can be accessed effortlessly which translates to having no need for any physical vouchers and even without any app downloads.

“Having digital vouchers is a no brainer for us, no one wants to carry around a physical voucher. But to take it a step further, we wanted to create a solution that requires no downloads and can be easily used by the masses which includes the elderly that may not be as technically savvy. We can ask ourselves when was the last time we really downloaded an app? Even downloading an app can be quite a hurdle for consumers these days. The solution was to leverage existing applications that most people already have on their phones, for example, Facebook, Instagram, WeChat and WhatsApp.” Jared and Jason claimed.

“We would consider ourselves as an early adopter of chat technology. Our first iteration of a seamless loyalty program was to deploy a chatbot that is attached to our clients’ Facebook pages and users will only need to interact with their Facebook page to start collecting points and redeeming rewards, absolutely no downloads needed and pretty much everyone has a Facebook account.” Jared and Jason shared. Things were going great and the co-founders managed to onboard multiple clients in a short span of time until Facebook decided to ban them and suspended their clients’ Facebook pages.

“It was quite literally working so well with thousands of interactions daily, to the point that Facebook decided to flag us for spam and claims that we have violated their Privacy Policy. We quickly learnt that we were at the mercy of Facebook and that we could lose complete access and ownership to our collected data.” Jared and Jason said. However, this frustration led to the team’s renewed vision of putting data ownership back to the hands of brands.

“We put our heads back down and coded our new product entirely from the ground up ourselves. This time, we ensured that we had more control and that our API is omni-channel and can be used alongside any other platforms or channels. We guarantee our brands that they will always have full ownership over their customer data regardless of any channel they obtained it from. Using a real case study, for example, an F&B client of ours is on several third-party platforms such as GrabFood and FoodPanda, leveraging these platforms’ existing users to extend their customer reach. But the brands do not truly have a direct relationship with the customer and vice versa. The brands will immediately lose access to these users as soon as they leave the platform and to the users, the brands are just another vendor that is easily replaceable.” shared by the co-founders.

With HeyOmni, brands can easily convert end-users to become their loyal members and re-engage them freely regardless of any other platforms they might be currently using, brands will always have a direct means of communication with their members using customer data they truly own.

“What we realised is that there is still ample room for innovation and we believe that HeyOmni can still stand out in this competitive space simply due to our ease of use and adaptability to the market trends. To put it simply, to use HeyOmni, you do not need to download any applications and do not require any additional hardware other than your smart device and your web browser; for both our brands and their users. At its core, HeyOmni is an API service that can be used on and alongside any other platforms that you may already be using, and this includes even other loyalty programme services. What we provide is the ability to use data to identify exactly which platform is working the best for your brand and for you to get the best ROI for your marketing dollars spent.” said the co-founders.

HeyOmni recently completed their participation in MaGIC’s Global Accelerator Programme, where the team was able to gain valuable insights and mentorship, set to position themselves as a leading startup in the region.

“Our time with MaGIC’s GAP has been fruitful and rewarding. The sessions in the program truly offered us insights that we will be putting to good use as we continue embarking on our entrepreneurship journey,” said Jared and Jason.

HeyOmni is currently fundraising for its seed round to expedite its plans to serve the larger Southeast Asian region in the next 2 years. “We plan to be the go-to membership platform for all brands, including for creators. HeyOmni aims to provide a seamless outreach for brands to both physical and remote audiences. The retail industry is only the beginning for us. If you are looking to invest or collaborate with HeyOmni, please feel free to reach out.” Jared and Jason concluded.

This content is provided by Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre (MaGIC).

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