Square Adds Personalized Merchant Marketing Touch

Square is stepping outside of its own box and into marketing.

Yesterday (April 7), the mobile payments company unveiled a new program, “Square Marketing,” that is designed to help Square merchants increase the shopping frequency of existing customers. The email marketing software — which is part of a new suite of Customer Engagement tools — allows businesses to send announcements and promotions to a distribution list, as well as providing marketing tools (integrated with the Square Dashboard) for tracking the return on investment per email.

“At our core, we’re definitely a payments and [point-of-sale] company and the health and vitality of the company has created a two-sided network where we have buyers and sellers,” Kevin Burke, Square’s head of customer acquisition, told Forbes. “Marketing will help empower the sellers to have deeper more meaningful relationships with their customers so they can drive their businesses forward.”

In its blog post announcing the release of the product, Square states that, in its pilot phase, Square Marketing created twice the industry average for open and redemption rates, and that Square sellers generated close to $1 million in sales from promotion redemptions.

Square Marketing offers its users the ability to target specific customer groups that are categorized according to their frequency of visitation to the merchant’s store. “You might invite loyal customers to a ‘Friends and Family’ event or maybe re-engage lapsed customers with a special deal,” Square’s blog post suggested.

The service — which also provides merchants with options for email templates — is available as part of Square Register at a cost of $0.10 per email. Businesses also have the option of subscribing for a monthly rate of $15, which includes unlimited email sending. Unlimited members will also have access to the complete inventory of features, including customer purchase history, the ability to see who is sending feedback and instant profiles with “smart groups.”

Square’s step into marketing adds to its growing list of offerings, including its unveiling last month of instant deposits and protection for disputed purchases. At the time, Square board member and Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha speculated on the changing definition of being a payments business and stated that he felt Square had a “huge competitive advantage.” Perhaps this latest move is just the company’s way of sharing the wealth with the small business world.