Mr Aneace Haddad: Taggo's system lets customers enjoy fan benefits and special privileges at real-world shops and businesses.

With more than 10 per cent of the world’s population residing on Facebook, and growing rapidly, it has become a burgeoning hive of virtual business activity, and Taggo has seen an opportunity for companies to link it to their physical retail stores. According to Mr Aneace Haddad, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Taggo (www.taggo.me), the use of Facebook by businesses is exploding with half of all small business owners engaging in social media to attract new customers.

“This feels very much like the mid-1990’s, when companies were just beginning to put web site addresses on their advertising material,” he said. “You now see ‘Become a fan on Facebook’ on advertising materials in places that would not have had it a couple of months ago.”

The upside of becoming a Facebook fan is that many e-commerce businesses offer special promotions specifically for fans of their Facebook page. “It is a great way to attract fans and to convert customers into fans,” said Mr Haddad.

However, while it is relatively easy to do in the on-line world, it is much more difficult to do in the real world since the customer is not on-line and cannot easily be identified as a fan.

This is where Taggo’s tap-and-go service comes in as it brings Facebook fan recognition directly to the point of sale. “Taggo’s system lets customers enjoy fan benefits and special privileges at real-world shops and businesses,” explained Mr Haddad. “Customers simply become fans of their favourite brands on Facebook, then turn on the tap-and-go feature on the brand's Facebook page.”

Users then register their transit or other contactless card as proof of fan membership, so that they are able to tap the card at the retailer’s point of sale to enjoy the associated fan discounts and privileges.

While the card of choice differs from country to country, “in Singapore, customers can register their EZ-Link card or get a Taggo RF-ID sticker that they can place on their mobile phone”, said Mr Haddad.

To make the Facebook fan ecosystem work, Taggo provides application programming interfaces (APIs) to companies that develop retail solutions so that they can build Taggo’s Facebook fan recognition service into their point of sale and membership management systems.

“We also provide the Facebook application that companies insert in their fan pages, and lets users register their preferred contactless card, and we operate the servers that connect these various applications together,” Mr Haddad said.

Launched in January 2009, Taggo’s original intent was to make it easier for customers to join loyalty and other membership programmes without filling out forms and carrying plastic cards.

“More recently, we applied the same technology to enable Facebook fan recognition at the point of sale,” said Mr Haddad. “This turned out to be a much more lucrative application of our technology.”

It is also unique as no other company offers such a service and Taggo has already filed technology patents and expects to be able to grow with no direct competition.Based in Singapore, Taggo has a lean team of five people and the company leverages staff within its partners’ organisations working on Taggo implementations.

Moving forward, Mr Haddad expects to grow Taggo globally very quickly. “Our strategy is to work with two main channels to market,” he said. “On the one hand, we partner with companies that provide retailer point of sale systems, membership management, loyalty, and CRM (customer relationship management) solutions.”

These companies integrate Taggo into their solutions as a value-added feature, and Mr Haddad is currently working with eight such partners to serve retailers across the Asia Pacific region.

“We also work with advertising agencies that provide social marketing services to retailers and other organisations,” he added. “Taggo’s cost per acquisition pricing model is very well-suited as an additional advertising channel. Our channel strategy will give us a powerful way to efficiently address a global market.”