One Of The Fastest Growing Software Companies, Womply Helps Small Businesses Engage Their Customers

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Womply is a technology company that helps small businesses engage their customers. Technology has changed everything for small businesses, and they don’t have the time or resources to adapt on their own. That’s where Womply comes in. Below is our recent interview with Toby Scammell, the Founder of Womply:

Q: You’ve recently unveiled Womply Engage; could you tell us something more about that?

A: We launched Womply Engage to address two big problems facing small businesses. First, they don’t have effective methods for keeping track of their customers. Second, they lack a simple, frictionless way to stay connected with customers and build a relationship after they leave the store.

Womply Engage solves both of these problems in an automated way through software to take work off the plate of busy small business owners. Every time a customer transacts with a business using Womply, our software automatically creates or updates a customer profile. Over time, this results in an amazing customer directory that requires no investment of time from the business owner or operator.

From there, our system makes email marketing truly automatic. We match a working email address to the customer record and then send timely, targeted emails to build engagement and encourage repeat visits. All the business owner has to do is turn on the system and we do the rest—set it and forget it.

Big picture, we’re trying to level the playing field for underserved small businesses that make up half of the U.S. economy. They’ve been at a major disadvantage to larger companies and Internet businesses in critical ways, and our software aims to change that.

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Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Womply?

A: Womply is a technology company that helps small businesses engage their customers. Technology has changed everything for small businesses, and they don’t have the time or resources to adapt on their own. That’s where Womply comes in. We make technology work for small businesses—not the other way around—so they can run a better business and save time every day.

We power the “front office”—or, the customer-facing part of the company—for more than 100,000 small businesses in all 50 states and across 400 industry categories. Our software makes it easy, and often automatic, for small businesses to boost their online reputations so more customers find them, engage their customers to encourage repeat business, and monitor the health of their businesses anytime and anywhere with data they can’t get anywhere else.

We’re one of the fastest growing software companies in America, and we’ve raised $50 million from investors to fuel our continued growth. We have nearly 250 employees across offices in San Francisco, California; Portland, Oregon; and Lehi, Utah. We’re motivated by the mission of helping small businesses thrive in a digital world.

Q: What are the biggest issues affecting the world of small businesses?

A: In a word, technology. It’s changing everything about consumer behavior, and the rate of change is increasing. Small businesses don’t have the time, resources, or expertise to evolve with these rapid changes, and the stakes are high. Businesses that don’t adapt won’t make it.

As one example, the way consumers find local businesses to patronize has totally changed in the past few years. It used to be that people used the Yellow Pages or window shopped when looking for a restaurant, auto mechanic, or hair stylist nearby. Today, they pull out their smartphone and search Google, Yelp, Facebook, or countless other local search or online review sites.

This is a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that even brick-and-mortar businesses need to have visibility into their online business presence—their “digital storefront.” Then, they need to take control of their online business reputation, which consists of their star ratings and most recent reviews. These are the things consumers look at when deciding where to spend money locally.

The opportunity is that sites like Yelp, Google, and TripAdvisor have made local business more relevant and made it easier for consumers to find them. In fact, managing your online presence and business listings is the best marketing any small business can do these days because millions of consumers are already using these sites to find businesses precisely when they’re looking to spend money. Own your online reputation and more customers will find you without the need for additional advertising or marketing.

Q: How do you help small businesses improve with online reputations?

A: First, we provide complete visibility into what people are saying about the business across dozens of popular review sites. As you can imagine, it’s a huge challenge for a busy small business owner to keep track of all their listings and reviews across Yelp, Google, TripAdvisor, Facebook, FourSquare, and more. In fact, very often business owners don’t even know that they have listings on these sites.

Our software enables business owners to read and respond to reviews on all these popular sites from one place. We also show the business owner trends in the company’s online reputation over time and send alerts when a new review comes in.

We also give the business owner a seat at the table for discussions about their business. As one example, we empower the business owner to activate their happiest customers to post reviews about their experience, which is important to paint a truer picture of the typical consumer experience with the business. It also reduces the impact of the occasional negative review than any business is bound to receive from time to time.

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Q: You also partner with payment processors. Tell us about that.

A: Womply is the No. 1 partner to the payment processing and merchant acquiring industries. As a software partner, we modernize the product offering for companies that provide credit card processing to small businesses in the age of integrated payment solutions like Square.

Through these partnerships, we’re able to curate data that powers our software and gives us a unique view into the trends driving consumer interactions with small, local businesses nationwide. In fact, our database sees more economic activity every day than Square, Stripe, eBay, or even Amazon. Nobody has a better lens on American small business than Womply.

Q: What can we expect from Womply in the future?

A: Our mission is to help small businesses thrive in a digital world. Since the world is constantly changing in response to technological forces, we’ll continue to build software solutions that level the playing field for underserved small businesses. What we build in five years might be very different than what we’re building today because none of us can predict which direction consumer trends will go.

I can say with certainty that Womply will always stay focused squarely on serving small businesses. We have no ambitions to move upstream and serve large companies or specialize in a particular industry. We want to become the defacto consumer engagement solution for millions of businesses on Main Streets from coast to coast.