[SAAS Series] Driving Local Business Growth: Inside GetintheLoop’s Success Story With Matt Crowell

Matt Crowell is the Founder and CEO of GetintheLoop, a mobile marketing SaaS platform designed to help businesses engage modern consumers and drive revenue. A former professional hockey player, Matt transitioned into the tech world with a vision to empower local businesses through effective digital tools. Under his leadership, GetintheLoop has grown into a top-rated iOS and Android app in Canada. He has led the company through various phases, including bootstrapping, partnerships, and franchising. Matt’s entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to hard work have been instrumental in GetintheLoop’s rise to prominence.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:59] The origins of GetintheLoop and its evolution into a full-fledged marketing platform
• [07:41] GetintheLoop’s pivot from consumer subscriptions to a business subscription model
• [10:32] How radio partnerships boosted GetintheLoop’s reach
• [18:46] How social AI is helping local businesses automate their social presence
• [21:42] The challenges and lessons learned from raising capital as a tech startup
• [24:39] How mentorship has played a crucial role in Matt Crowell’s entrepreneurial journey
• [26:17] The unique franchising approach that fueled GetintheLoop’s growth
• [36:15] The role of location-based marketing
• [41:24] GetintheLoop’s future plans for US expansion and new features

In this episode…

How can small businesses stay afloat in the rapidly shifting landscape of digital marketing? In a world where big brands dominate online advertising, is there a way for local shops to cut through the noise? What if there was a platform designed specifically for these underdogs to engage with modern consumers effectively?

Matt Crowell tackled these issues head-on by founding GetintheLoop, a mobile marketing SaaS platform that empowers small businesses to engage with modern consumers. Matt shares how he initially pitched his idea to golf courses, leveraging text message deals to attract customers during slow periods. This approach eventually evolved into a comprehensive platform, helping businesses by automating their marketing efforts, particularly through AI-driven social media strategies. By eliminating the need for businesses to manually engage in marketing, GetintheLoop allows them to maximize focus on growth and operations.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz welcomes Matt Crowell, Founder and CEO of GetintheLoop, to deep dive into the challenges and triumphs of transitioning from a niche market concept to a widely adopted SaaS platform. Matt shares how he built a robust franchise network, handled investor relations, and continuously innovated his product to meet the changing needs of small businesses. Through compelling stories like partnering with radio stations and empowering micro farms, this episode offers valuable insights into entrepreneurship, scalability, and the power of localized marketing.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Matt Crowell on LinkedIn
• GetintheLoop

Special mentions:

• Lukas Siemon on LinkedIn
• Cayley Humphries on LinkedIn
• Mark Payne on LinkedIn
• Coulter Wright on LinkedIn
• Cliff Shillington on LinkedIn

Related episodes:

• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde [Inspiration]” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “The Impact of Automation and Email Marketing with Tom Kulzer Founder of AWeber” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Tips To Thrive in the SaaS Space With Sujan Patel” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “We learned that the important thing was to be building tools for businesses so that they see value, not just how many customers we deliver.”
• “Our motto has always been: ‘we might not have the best idea, but we’ll work the hardest.’ Control what you can control.”
• “We’ve never been that good at getting great deals; we’ve been good at getting great experiences.”
• “I started to realize just how big the need is for local businesses to leverage technology to make a difference.”
• “We’re trying to create a world where we’re always here, but on your time, through the click of a button on your phone.” 

Action Steps:

1. Leverage automation tools: Small businesses are often too busy to handle extensive marketing on their own, and automation tools can alleviate this burden.
2. Embrace AI technologies: AI can significantly enhance the efficiency of marketing strategies without requiring constant manual input from the business owners.
3. Utilize SaaS platforms: These offer scalable and cost-effective solutions for small businesses to engage with customers and drive revenue, streamlining business operations.
4. Develop strong partnerships: Building partnerships with other businesses and media outlets can significantly amplify your reach and effectiveness.
5. Focus on customer-centric solutions: Always listen to your customers and adapt your services to meet their needs, ensuring the solutions you provide are relevant and valuable.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Matt Crowell of GetintheLoop. You can check him out at GetintheLoop.ca and Matt, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. 

Since this is part of the top SaaS series, I had one of the founders of Zapier on that with Wade Foster. Super interesting episode how they grew and built and started Zapier. Also, I had one of the founders of Pipedrive on. Pipedrive, if people don’t know, it’s a CRM for managing your pipeline. It was interesting, Matt, because when I had him on, I think they were like around 10,000 customers, and now I think they have over 100,000 customers. So they’ve grown quite a bit. AWeber was another one, which is an email tool. And Mailshake was a really interesting one. Sujan Patel was talking about how he’s been buying up SaaS companies. And so that was a really cool episode. So check those out. More on InspiredInsider.com. 

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25. We help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. And we do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. 

You know, Matt, someone was emailing me today and like, yeah, we do all the production and everything, But like the most important thing is the strategy and the accountability part. And so we don’t want to lose those pieces. 

And we’re kind of like the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the hosts so they can create amazing relationships, amazing content, and most importantly, run their business for me. The number one thing in my life is relationships, and I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I have found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. 

I’m excited to introduce Matt Crowell. He’s the founder and CEO of GetintheLoop. GetintheLoop is a mobile marketing SaaS platform. It helps businesses engage the modern consumer and GetintheLoop helps businesses drive revenue, build awareness and increased loyalty by driving those customers to their business. It’s beginning started in 2014. It’s grown to a top rated iOS and Android app in Canada. It’s used by thousands of top national and even local brands. And Matt, thanks for joining me.

Matt Crowell 03:14

Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. Excited for today.

Jeremy Weisz 03:36

We’ll get into it. I mean, your professional past professional hockey player turned SaaS entrepreneur, but just start us off and talk about GetintheLoop. And while you’re talking there is a video portion to this. If someone’s listening I’m going to pull up the GetintheLoop website so we can poke around there as well. So just tell us about getting the loop.

Matt Crowell 03:59

Yeah. Well thanks. I mean getting the loop is really built for local business. And what we are is we’re like an AI driven marketing and loyalty platform with the goal of helping small businesses attract customers, retain those customers, and most recently, help by helping them maintain a presence on social media. And so we got a team of folks that help support small businesses, venture into the online world. And we’re really, really focused on just trying to make marketing yourself easier for small businesses.

Jeremy Weisz 04:28

I want to talk about the evolution, a little bit of GetintheLoop. I know it started with a golf course and driving traffic. What was the business idea, were you thinking? I’m going to take a portion of our business? Are you going to take a subscription? What was the original model with when you’re driving people to the golf course?

Matt Crowell 04:55

Yeah. I mean, it was like the true MVP. I was basically like, had just finished college and we were talking with a bunch of friends around how all these great golf courses are so expensive, and we wish we could golf them more often and came up with a concept because, like, text message platforms were becoming popular at that point and was like, what if we created a database where the golf courses could text out deals when they were slow in real time? And so I pitched a few golf courses on the idea and they liked it. And at that time we actually launched with a different business model than today, we actually charged consumers to give us their cell phones, and then the golf courses got to use it for free to give those consumers deals. And so we launched the Golf Loop initially and started to learn. 

Jeremy Weisz 05:34

How did that work charging consumers? The dual sided marketplace is tough, right? Because you’re going into businesses and you’re going to consumers. How did that work at the time?

Matt Crowell 05:44

Yeah, I mean, it was good. I think when you’re trying to build up a stable of businesses that are going to support sort of your marketplace, it was good that we could offer it to free for the business, and then it was all about how many consumers can we get to pay for this? And so, I mean, the subscription was $29 a year. And so the idea was if you went golfing once, you more than paid for the subscription, and it actually came with a two for one round at a really nice golf course. And so it was kind of like self-fulfilling if a consumer was looking to go golfing.

Jeremy Weisz 06:08

Did the businesses just want more new customers or did they require you to pay them also?

Matt Crowell 06:16

They just wanted new customers. And so I mean, as we evolved, we basically, we were kind of coming up in the time that Groupon was going down. And so a lot of how we built our business model was around kind of trying to fill the gaps that the Groupon model had created, like taking a big piece of the deal was something that every golf course was very against and things like that. And so we tried to find our way to be different early on, that’s for sure.

Jeremy Weisz 06:41

It’s interesting because, you know, I am in Chicago, and so I saw Groupon from the very beginning. So it was really interesting to see its trajectory. And I talked to a lot of business owners in the area and they were, you know, Groupon was pretty aggressive in like favoring the business in the beginning to get the business. And then, you know, maybe it was like, who knows, 30%. I don’t know what it is today, but it was in the beginning like 30%, then 40, then 50, then 60 and for specific businesses it just doesn’t work like restaurants. Their margins are small in itself. So giving away that amount, especially if it’s a nice restaurant, how many times are you going to a nice restaurant? So it’s not like a repeat business. So did you see some of that? What were you observing and kind of how you use GetintheLoop to fill gaps?

Matt Crowell 07:41

Yeah, I mean early on that was for sure. All the feedback businesses were giving us was like, we can’t afford to be giving these huge deals and then you taking a cut. And so we flipped our business model pretty early of like we’re going to charge businesses a subscription to use our tools and to reach out to customers. And then developed an app that was going to be free. 

And early on, most of our consumers came to us and said, hey, we’re not as interested in deals that you’re helping us find cool stuff, local things and unique brands. And so we I think it’s because we started in golf, which is kind of a niche thing anyways. So we kind of focused on that early on. It was a lot of like golf courses and wineries and the cool local coffee shops, and then kind of grew from there. But it was more about what could you help people find locally and less about the kind of deals we were delivering? We’ve never been that good at getting great deals.

Jeremy Weisz 08:26

I want to talk separately because dual sided, it’s tough. First of all, you have technology and then you have to get consumers onto the app and then you have to get businesses. So let’s talk on the business front. So after the golf course, and then people can pay a subscription and use the tools and that’s how it is today, right? How were you getting these businesses onto the program?

Matt Crowell 08:54

Yeah. I mean, we as a company to have like, really learned that the important thing was to be building tools for businesses so that they seen value and not have all our value be based on how many customers we deliver, like a Groupons value would have been, or a deal company’s coupon companies would have been.

Jeremy Weisz 09:08

So because they could use it to acquire their own customers.

Matt Crowell 09:13

Yeah, it’s exactly like over the years, I mean, some of the reasons a business would use us today is we help you power a promotion strategy. We help keep you top of mind on socials. So a lot of what we do with our new social I feature is all about just helping a business have an automated social presence so that they’re talking about what’s going on their wing night or their weekend special, or the fact that they’re hiring. Social is such an important thing for business, and that’s kind of where we’ve gone in, most recent. 

Early on, how we got to thousands of customers, iIt was like a lot of different ways. It was building our own sales team and realizing that was hard. It was partnering with media. So we partnered with like radio station groups and their group would take it to the market. We then realized we wanted to build our own franchise network of like local entrepreneurs that went out and talked to small business, which was a really neat venture and helped us get scale across Canada. And so we haven’t found that one growth channel that just took off. We’ve like grounded out to get there, to get to a certain size.

Jeremy Weisz 10:15

I love it. I mean you really have like okay, there’s different ways you can use this technology and you’ve explored these things and I want to break this down for a second. So radio station groups, that seems like a super smart idea. Talk about how that played out.

Matt Crowell 10:32

Yeah, I mean, it was early on; it was very successful. So naturally the radio stations, the bigger groups wanted to start in their smaller markets, less risk for them. And so we went into these smaller markets and it was really successful. We would go into a market, we would train up a radio station sales team, and they would go out and start to sign up customers all across the city because they had these relationships. And naturally, like a traditional media company like that is looking to be more digital. So there they were loving to go out and say, hey, we’ve got a tech platform. And you know.

Jeremy Weisz 11:00

When you say customers, is it businesses that they’re signing up? So the businesses they were signing up, there was a subscription at that point where the radio stations, were they kind of individual franchises, or were they just kind of have like enterprise plans so they can make a little bit of money?

Matt Crowell 11:20

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, they operated similar to a franchise. They were responsible for selling and then marketing the app, but it was more like an enterprise customer for us. And then they would go on air talking about, hey, we got a great deal at the local restaurant and the coffee shop and, you know, download the GetintheLoop app to see all the greatest local businesses. And they would drive a bit of the demand for the businesses using their airtime.

Jeremy Weisz 11:42

Do you find, Matt, so I’m looking at GetintheLoop.ca. I’m in the enterprise area. Do you find, I see, you know, obviously a use case for these radio station groups? Do you find that agencies also use the, you know, to help run marketing for local businesses?

Matt Crowell 12:06

A little bit. I mean, we have a few. It would be like a handful of agencies that are our partners and actually bring this to their customers. The one challenge we’ve always found with agencies, and truthfully, we probably haven’t invested enough into the channel. But generally, an agency is all about managing the relationship with the customer and doing a great job by them. 

And for them, it’s safer to bring them products that are known, like Facebook and Instagram and everything else that they’re hearing. And so although they will try us, that’s a risk, because if they’re just spending a business’s money based on where a customer is heard or thinks they should, That’s a bit more simple. So we’ve never had huge uptake from agencies because we’ve always been kind of a new thing or a bit more innovative.

Jeremy Weisz 12:45

So who does tend to use it? Who’s like a power user of GetintheLoop?

Matt Crowell 12:51

It would be so I mean, if it’s a local business, like it would be a coffee station or coffee shops, restaurants, you know, we’re getting a lot more into the service space. So like, you know, electricians, plumbers, folks like that. And then our power users are like our shopping centers and groups like that where they actually use the platform from an enterprise point of view and, and basically create a way that all of their tenants are using it to attract customers and kind of working together.

Jeremy Weisz 13:15

Talk about Night of Lights.

Matt Crowell 13:19

Yeah, that’s a pretty special thing that we’ve been a part of for about seven years now. So we’re a partner of Hillside Shopping Centre on Vancouver Island, so in Victoria. And they do this amazing charity where all of the businesses put together a deal for one night special discounts, and they sell tickets to it through like local schools and sports programs. So all the kids go out and sell tickets, and it’s this big thing where there’s like a four hour door crasher event where they raise a ton of money for charity and create a bunch of awareness, and they open the shopping center up late at night, and they use our technology to power all of that. And so they kind of give all of the people that have bought tickets an early bird view of what kind of the deals are going to be in there, and then they can navigate what’s available all through the app. 

So it becomes like one of our most engaged nights of the year every year. And then we get to be a part of a really cool charity as well. And they’re a pretty innovative group, Hillside. So we get to do a lot of fun stuff with them.

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