#408 The Evolution of Loyalty Programs: Maria Alvarez on MarTech and AI-Driven Rewards

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today, I'm very pleased joining me Someone who's residing usually in Dubai, but today she's not in Dubai, but no problem Maria Maria the way I love to do it Please introduce [00:01:00] yourself. Tell us a bit about your journey And what you are currently up to and then we're going to talk about really cool stuff related to marketing tech and cpg Marketing and all this stuff.

Mehmet: But first let's start with you know, an introduction about you and then we can take it from there So the floor is yours.

Maria: Okay. Uh, thank you. Thank you. Mehmet, uh to invite me, uh, first of all for having me Uh, so talking about myself, uh, my journey Uh started in back in 2011 2011 And, uh, straight away from a different international market because I'm from the Eastern Europe and I went to Latin America.

Maria: Uh, so my, basically my journey in business development has been, uh, all about, you know, building value through strategic partnerships, looking for the expert, uh, people that can actually teach you, uh, real things. Uh, in, uh, also the in data driven marketing, that was [00:02:00] always my, uh, passion and I started out, um, market expansions and, uh, building cross functional teams, which gave me a solid understanding of how different part of a business, uh, works together.

Maria: And also how, uh, different, uh, cultural difference, how cultural differences affect, uh, building a company or a business or a strategy, business strategy. Uh, on different markets, uh, across the world. This experience naturally led me to a digital marketing and affiliate networks where I, uh, discovered actually a passion for connecting brands with their customers in a impactful way.

Maria: And, uh, later on, uh, to companies like, uh, lady shops and, uh, now CheckRewards, uh, which have both cashback services, I've specialized in affiliate marketing in cashback and in, uh, building loyalty programs, helping brands better understand and engage with, uh, their [00:03:00] customers. Uh, so yeah, um, our tech, uh, nowadays is, uh, my passion and here I am.

Mehmet: Great. Thank you again maria for being with me here today, and I appreciate also the time you're putting for for being here with us now let's talk about CheckRewards and I know like you are the cbdo there and part of the board of directors also What usually i'm curious about maria is like any other company in the world that gets started So there will be a mission Uh for for for them, right?

Mehmet: So and I want to understand, you know You What were like the missing parts that CheckRewards, you know, they found like it's not in the market, right? And they tried to bring such a product, uh, especially to the mina region I know like you're very active now in in the mina region So if you can tell me a little bit about that about that because you know, i'm always curious about you know [00:04:00] What's all what problems you're solving like what challenges you help, you know people and companies to to do So i would love to hear that from you if you don't mind You

Maria: Yeah, sure.

Maria: Thank you, Mehmet, for the question. So we come from from the market where cashback as a category exists for more than 10 years. And the loyalty app we have already built in MENA region and in the UAE actually, the UAE. Uh, it is already present for almost a year. Uh, it is all about creating a rewarding ecosystem for CPG brands, especially in markets where competition is high and consumer preferences are evolving rapidly, you know, so for CPG brands.

Maria: This app offers the ability to directly engage with their customer with their consumer, which is not actually They don't have a lot of opportunities to do that while they are listed in [00:05:00] supermarkets or big retailer chains They don't interact with their customer directly and cpg brands can incentivize loyalty which has a measurable impact on both sales and learned from brand affinity or as you call it, uh, brand awareness, brand awareness.

Maria: So, uh, also our technology allows CPG brands to track customer behavior, the, uh, the shopping, uh, journeys, the, uh, shopping behavior across different purchase channels. So, uh, you, you know, who is exactly buying your product in one or another supermarket and you can make personalized deals and personalized offers to that customer.

Maria: audience according to that data. Uh, we provide insights. We provide monthly reports to CPG brands, uh, into what drives customer decisions at each stage of, uh, the shopping journey. This is incredibly valuable in the MENA region and it is [00:06:00] valuable in other markets where, uh, it is, uh, was already launched, uh, By us and not by us before us, for example, uh, in the U.

Maria: S. It already exists for more than a decade as well, where diverse customer bases have unique preferences, right? So ultimately, brands gain access to reach data and can leverage our app to build targeted and data informed loyalty campaigns and force that foster lasting connections with their customers.

Mehmet: Now out of curiosity Sorry out of curiosity maria. I want to ask you like who's from okay There's the consumer part of it on the other side. Like who's your customer? Is it like the brand them themselves? Is it like the retail stores like who's the ultimate? Customer for you like where do you sit in the supply chain if I want to rephrase it in another words?

Maria: [00:07:00] Uh, we both, we work both with B2C and B2B, meaning that, uh, we attract audience, so customers to the, to CheckRewards app as a cashbook category. And also the partners for us are, uh, different, uh, retailers, restaurants, and CPG brands that are sold in supermarket or in retailer chains.

Mehmet: Okay, I got it now We started to see maria like every single brand every single you know Manufacturer every single product, you know, uh owner they want to be on this.

Mehmet: Uh rewarding. So is it like something that became the trend now? Is it something that if you don't do it, you are missing something big? What I'm curious about, of course, you explained about the benefits from, from, you know, the CPG, um, you know, producers perspective, but what I'm [00:08:00] interested in more is, you know, the main driver for this to now, especially in the MENA region, because like, you know, It's not only in CPG, I, I see it also like even in, in finance, like I see banks, they start to do it.

Mehmet: I see like every single, you know, company trying to, to be there. What is the secret of everyone want to be on, on this one? Is it like really customer loyalty? Is it like increasing sales or all of the above?

Maria: You know, marketing is always about trends and trends usually come from other market that have already experienced that before.

Maria: So this is obviously coming from the U S then there was Brazil, Russia, Europe, and now it's coming to. The MENA region, this is the answer. And about talking about brand loyalty, of course, this is the evolution of basically marketing channels or marketing tools that help, uh, engage with your [00:09:00] customers.

Mehmet: Got you.

Mehmet: So this is really interesting. And this is, you know, I got to ask you the question now, because I was planning to ask you later. So I know like you've done like similar work in other parts of the world, like in Latam in, in also Europe and so on. Now. How was your experience in getting this in the MENA region?

Mehmet: Because I always tell people, MENA region, yes, it's booming. MENA region is very dynamic. Yes. But MENA region also is like a very, uh, high competitive market. It's like also kind of mixed cultures and so on. So if you can tell us a little bit about the experience of bringing this concept to, to this part of the world, Maria.

Maria: Uh, yeah, it is true that you're saying that, uh, Mina region is a very competitive market. I'm going to repeat myself and that, uh, consumer preferences are always evolving and people want [00:10:00] more. People want different things. For example, before coupons were popular and they're still popular. Uh, now cashback is, uh, getting more and more developed.

Maria: You know, the difference, uh, with cashback and coupon is that cashback is a long term value for a customer and for the brand as well. Coupon is just an instant, uh, discount that you apply. So everything has its process of developing in this world, you know, and the Martek is not an exception.

Mehmet: Yeah, of course like it's kind of an evolution that always happen and I like, you know this space and um So we are you know Just now today is 25th of october.

Mehmet: So for people who follows the show so we had on monday uh something about mark tech and you know, like it was really interesting discussion because I think it's one of the kind of very special field in, in technology, which is marketing. I'm a little bit [00:11:00] biased. I like marketing, you know, I'm not a marketing guy by any mean, but you know, I have like a huge, uh, you know, interest in that. What I want to ask you, when we talk about market, the marketing technology, right? So MarTech, um, so. Tell me more about like some of the things you have seen, you know, working from technology perspective. And you know, like if there's any kind of like value framework that usually you go by when, when you, uh, you know, jump on, on a new venture, for example, or like even you want to add like something new to CheckRewards and so on.

Mehmet: So what are like, you know, some of the value frameworks that you can tell us about regarding MarTech?

Maria: Yeah, sure. So, well, uh, Martek, not only I like Martek, but it also inspires me, you know, in my everyday, uh, work, uh, because it's a, it's a perfect mix of, uh, strategy, of data and of, uh, technology. [00:12:00] And that brings you like real, uh, impact and, uh, measure, measurable, uh, results, uh, which you can, uh, which you can actually see in your, in your work.

Maria: Uh, it allows for engagement and personalization on a new level. Something that was not, uh, achievable before, uh, before MarTech and before measuring all the data that marketing campaigns bring you. Oh, for me, it's an, uh, exciting, uh, to work. Uh, in this field, uh, that's constantly evolving and, uh, to use technology to solve, uh, marketing challenges of, uh, brands.

Maria: So for example, at CheckRewards, we are bringing innovative, uh, loyalty and cashback solutions to market, uh, living in a digital world, as I, uh, like to say that we connect. Physical receipts, uh, and the technology with AI, uh, tool that recognizes the information on the physical receipt and brings it to a digital world and digital data, uh, in order [00:13:00] to structure them and give brands, uh, information on how to act.

Maria: Uh and how to engage with their customers further.

Mehmet: It's very interesting you mentioned about You know, you know these new, um, you know things that happens and you know Before we started the recording you mentioned a little bit about you know You know how things became short and you know, we were talking about instagram and tiktok and so on out of curiosity maria Like how you know from martek perspective especially with what you do for from reality apps perspective and so on and rewards Um, is there like any intersection or combination between what the, especially Gen Z they want?

Mehmet: Because Gen Z, as we know, they are all, you know, in the social space and, you know, on TikTok and Instagram and all these things. So where the intersection between what the Gen Zs they want [00:14:00] comes with something like CheckRewards.

Maria: It's a gamification. Uh, brands nowadays need to invent something, you know, uh, of course the product, uh, itself and the quality of the product always matters, but on the field of marketing, they always need to, uh, move forward.

Maria: They always need to invent something new and develop their brand and gamification helps them in order to interact with customers all the time and engage their brand with customers, you know, in different methods. So they are happy to, for example, snap receipts and CheckRewards. And even if the reward is not Huge, you know, you uh, You rarely receive 100 dirhams, for example for uh as a cashback of one purchase but anyway, uh, it is uh rewarding and it's always the Uh dopamine that [00:15:00] you receive from getting that reward and from the coins.

Maria: Uh, Appearing in your app and in your account

Mehmet: Yeah, this is really interesting. Um, you know, and I like You know, you call it gamification, which is by itself. It's maybe it would require from us, uh, you know, a full episode talking about it because I believe in, in, in marketing, especially there's a lot of things that can be done over there again, not talking as an expert, but from, you know, My curiosity reading about the topic now want to go back to The business part of you know what you do with CheckRewards So I know like it's a b2b b2c You mentioned at the beginning when you were explaining to us like what CheckRewards do and you know the all the things one Aspect I wanted to a little bit highlighted to us Which is the insights that they can see because you know at the end of the day you're linking The behavior You know [00:16:00] the purchases of the consumer to a single point which is technically it's like a Large database like it's a data lake whatever you want to call it so we can extract a lot of things so tell me more about the use cases there like Let's highlight them one more time because I think this is very important businesses How they get the best when they utilize?

Mehmet: Okay.

Maria: So, uh, here it comes, uh, AI, for example, that we use, uh, the technology that recognizes information and physical receipts, uh, in CheckRewards and advanced analytics that play a central role role in what we do, uh, especially in, uh, deriving actionable insights from complex data. Right. There is a lot of data.

Maria: You need to know how to use it. Uh, my experience across markets in Europe, in Latin America, and now in MENA, [00:17:00] uh, has shown me how critical it is to adapt the strategies based on Uh, cultural and regional nuances. So for example, we share demographics of the customers, uh, uh, of the brands, uh, that snap receipts.

Maria: Uh, AI also helps us, uh, breach those, uh, gaps by analyzing large, uh, large, uh, data sets to uncover trends that, uh, might not be immediately visible. For instance, uh, AI powered, uh, receipts, uh, snapping technology Brands with real time data on purchase behavior. Let's say when or where, uh, that particular person would have demographics, uh, goes to, right.

Maria: Maybe in the evening or in the afternoon, uh, or, uh, in the morning, this is the, uh, time where they buy it. And, uh, it's a mom with kids. Uh, so you can do cross promotions. Uh, you can. Uh, give her personalized offers and [00:18:00] deals by that time, uh, in order to reward her with, uh, specific, uh, for buying the specific, uh, brands or specific, uh, items from the supermarkets, uh, which can.

Maria: Be a game changer for crafting, you know effective marketing and loyalty strategies

Mehmet: Fantastic, you know talking about the ai and I remember this as you know, we talked You and me about it. Maybe not today before You were telling me about something related to machine learning and ai which touches on the ocr part, right?

Mehmet: So, uh If you want to maybe mention something about that, Maria?

Maria: Uh, okay. Yes. So, um, we have an OCR model, which is, uh, receipt recognition, uh, machine learning model, and we can explain that the main difficulty, for example, for us, the challenges that we have is in recognizing receipts from [00:19:00] users photos, uh, and it has a lack of standardization.

Maria: Okay. All right, so there is no single form for their receipts themselves and they can be of very different structure But anyway, we trained our ml model and now it recognizes 95 with 95 precision Uh, so you we collect information from the receipt. Uh, it could be the location Date, time, place, uh, the items.

Maria: So the excuse from the supermarkets that are sold and of course the amounts and the total amount. And you can reward customer basically for any of these, uh, mentioned, uh, points.

Mehmet: I think this is interesting because this allows, you know, because when people thinks about usually reward, Program. So they think only about the transactions, which are like kind of online, even from invoices perspective, but it's good to see like, also you can scan the physical [00:20:00] invoice actually, or the bill, whatever you want to call it.

Mehmet: And then, you know, upload it to the app, I believe this is what happens. And then it will recognize and then, you know, it will calculate the rewards for them. So, which is fantastic. I think now, um, Talking about more into AI and marketing, in general, and I'm not talking only about MarTech here, what other things are you seeing in this space, Maria, which you think they, you know, they are really interesting, you think that they might do huge, Um, you know, progress for for marketing in general when it comes to AI.

Maria: Uh, just to mention a couple of more words about the OCR model. So in order to use the data that we are using the model right now and in order to train the model, we collected Uh, tens of thousands receipts, you know, first, and then try different approaches to forming and training the ML [00:21:00] model. So this technology, uh, is pretty much unique, uh, at the moment.

Maria: So we can confidently say that. Our solution, uh, right now perfectly recognizes the receipts and you can trust the data and we also have the deduplication model so you can try it yourself, download the app and, uh, you will not be able to upload two receipts for example, or different fraud cases that we have already saw on other markets and we have, uh, implemented them.

Maria: Um, how to work with that case is on, uh, Mina region itself. Uh, yeah,

Mehmet: that's it. That's it. Yeah, that's good. Uh, because I wanted to ask you about this, but you answered like the fraud part of it, you know, because yeah, bad people are everywhere and you know, Things can happen, but it's good to know that you have built, you know, kind of the mechanism and technology to, uh, to avoid this.

Mehmet: Uh, I want to kind of shift gear a little bit, Maria, and, you know, [00:22:00] uh, just ask you about working, you know, In, in the startup, I would say, uh, side of, of the business. So, you know, if you share your experience, like what's usually the challenges and you actually, you did it in multiple regions, which is, you know, also a big plus for you.

Mehmet: And I know a lot of the listeners, you know, they, they used to tell me, okay, are, for example, the challenges that they, you know, that's usually the startup they have. Let's say in Latin America. Are they the same in Dubai or like are they the same in the U. S. So having worked, you know, in different regions, Maria, if you want to share with us, you know, some insights about, you know, the main challenges and, you know, the best ways to, to, you know, cross these obstacles.

Maria: Um, yeah, sure. So, you know, the journey of CheckRewards has been, uh, both challenging and rewarding, like, uh, many startups. Uh, we faced, uh, some [00:23:00] difficult moments in, uh, collecting receipts first, you know, then to getting into the customers and, uh, also the challenges of, uh, the brands are similar, but could be a little bit different from, uh, market to market.

Maria: That wasn't in early stages. Right. Uh, such securing funds, for example, and building a robust technology, a technological infrastructure. Uh, however, our commitment to innovation and a clear vision, uh, of providing value to both consumers and, uh, our, uh, our merchants or brands helped us, uh, navigate these challenges.

Maria: So. You need to always be self motivated first. You need to see what is, uh, what is there, you know, What is where are you going to so for example, our goal is to move the industry forward and also in this market particularly and also to Help brands solve their marketing challenges. Uh, if you have this perspective [00:24:00] and everything is easy

Mehmet: Love that, you know as we are almost coming to an end.

Mehmet: So You I know we also like maybe we we talked about this before but how Do you feel you know, because you mentioned you want to move the You want to move the the industry forward, right? So this mix of you know Technicality part of it the technical aspect plus the business aspect so is this like kind of What motivates you maria to to to give more and you know push push things, you know, because always people ask me You You know, how technology can push business.

Mehmet: I mean, what's the relation? Because still, unfortunately, some people, they think, okay, so, okay, we, we, we are the business. And then the technology just is for operations. But actually, now we are living in a time where technology is actually pushing the business into different [00:25:00] direction. So I want to, you know, share a couple of thoughts about, about that topic.

Maria: Yeah, I think, uh, this is a very interesting topic about, you know, leveraging business and technology. What is first, first you need to earn money or first you need to see what technology is coming and then adapt to it. I think, uh, the balance is the answer, you know, all the time you need to see what technology is coming, uh, from a different market, for example, or from, uh, maybe from your head, if you are a genius and then to adapt this technology to business, of course, because.

Maria: If not, uh, somebody else is gonna do it before you.

Mehmet: Love this. Of course, if, if you don't do it, someone else will do it. Absolutely right. And it's not good to wait also for a long time. I know like, of course, we're not telling people to rush and, you know, just whenever they see something new. Okay, let's do it.

Mehmet: Of course, but you know, there was like some I would say some Obvious use cases is where yeah, the [00:26:00] technology will be the driver for the business to move forward. Absolutely maria. I agree with you on this um Finally where people can find more about CheckRewards and maybe find more about you maria

Maria: Uh, you can go to my linkedin profile By my name and you can also download the app by the qr code or go to checkrewards.

Maria: com business Where you can find more about partnering with us.

Mehmet: That's great. Again, Maria, I really enjoyed the conversation with you today. Uh, a topic which is interesting.

Maria: Thank you. It was also my pleasure to talk to you.

Mehmet: No worries at all. So thank you for, for sharing all this. For the audience, the links that Maria mentioned, they will be in the show notes.

Mehmet: So if you are listening on your favorite podcasting app, you can find them in the show notes. If you're watching this, you will find them in the description of the video. And as I say, finally, Uh, if you just found out about this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by [00:27:00] if you like it Please give us a thumb up share it with your friends and colleagues And if you're one of the people who keeps coming back, they are loyal to us Maybe I need to have CheckRewards for my podcast at some stage maria.

Mehmet: So thank you for doing so We're trying our best To keep, you know, the, the show, uh, with the latest trends have variety of topics. So today we talked about marketing and technology rewards and so on. So we're trying to keep this, um, I would say various topics coming to the show. Thank you for tuning in. As I say, always, we'll meet again very soon.

Mehmet: Thank you. Bye bye.