MEF Executive Questionnaire #16: Ken Fenyo, YOU Technology

MEF continues to seek new ways to profile its members and promote the thought-leadership of the senior executives within these companies. We are pleased to launch the MEF Executive Questionnaire to reveal the real people behind the industry in an informal and entertaining manner.

This will be a regular feature of the MEF blog, so make sure you subscribe via email or RSS. If you are a senior executive from one of our member companies and would like to be featured then please contact MEF Marketing Director, Stephen Jenkins.

The sixteenth in the series is from Ken Fenyo, CEO at YOU Technology.


1. Please describe briefly your main company activities and your role within that organisation
YOU Technology revolutionizes the way brands and retailers connect with consumers by delivering personalized communications in real-time and across a range of media. Customers such as Kroger, General Mills, P&G, and Unilever use YOU Technology for paperless digital coupons, interactive promotions, and end-to-end loyalty programs. I am CEO of the company.

2. Without necessarily revealing any confidential information, please outline the principal business models your company uses
We typically charge the CPG to create and deliver marketing programs. For paperless coupons, we use a performance based pricing model which the CPG paying a fee for each coupon downloaded. For promotions and loyalty programs we typically charge a set up fee with monthly hosting depending on the scope and duration of the program.

3. What has been your company’s greatest achievement to-date?
We pioneered direct to card, paperless digital coupons with the launch of P&G eSaver at Kroger in November 2007. Since then, we have delivered over 40 million paperless coupons to shoppers across 4,500 stores nationwide. With paperless coupons, shoppers can find and download offers to their loyalty card via the Internet, email, mobile phones, or in-store devices and automatically receive their savings at checkout without having to clip or print offers.

4. What is your company currently working on that is going to move the industry forward?
We are continuing to innovate with new delivery methods for coupons and promotions (in particular mobile using both smart phone applications and SMS) and new methods for analyze consumer behaviour to better personalize offers and programs.

5. What is exciting you most in 2010 (either personally or professionally)?
Rapid growth in mobile smart phones and location-based technologies.

6. What is the most important piece of technology in your life?
Laptop

7. What mobile device(s) do you use?
iPhone 4, Blackberry

8. What’s your favourite application?
Google Maps

9. What’s your ringtone?
Right now, dog barking (thanks to my 11 year old daughter)

10. Which mobile industry blogs do you regularly read and why?
I read TechCrunch and GigaOm but don’t read many mobile specific blogs.

11. What is the biggest mobile content issue that is likely to affect the industry within the next 12 months?
For couponing, getting enough CPGs to begin providing mobile coupons to make the service interesting for consumers. This will require in part more retailers to sign on to accept mobile couponing (primarily by integrating with POS but perhaps also via bar code scanning and other technology).

12. Which other MEF member organisation do you most admire?
Impact Mobile (one of our partners)