Marketing Resources

New Partner Program Guide

A Letter from the CEO

As Founder and CEO of Evolv it is my honor and pleasure to welcome you as an Evolv partner! 

Partnering with Evolv means more than MasterCard and Visa credit card processing services—Evolv enables you by providing a complete array of payment processing and digital marketing vehicles for your merchants. Our integrated platform, multi-channel capabilities and partner-centric distribution model creates a compelling value proposition. 

In addition, you have access to state-of-the-art software, cutting-edge hardware products and the most efficient processing methods—while assuming no merchant liability. We believe superior customer service is essential for the retention and betterment of our partners and their merchants. Service, coupled with our in-house PCI program, enables us to maintain that high rate of merchant retention.  

Our broad-spectrum Digital Marketing Products Suite provides you the opportunity to be a true market differentiator in your footprint. As the "new normal" is driving more transactions online, you will have the capacity to provide your clients with a digital marketing strategy that will provide long term value. 

Our team of dedicated Relationship Advocates and In-market Sales Executives will grow your portfolio through training, branch visits, joint calls with your treasury and commercial loan officers, drip email marketing campaigns, outbound calling campaigns and a variety of other strategic marketing options. 

We look forward to working with you for many years to come. Thank you for choosing Evolv as your Merchant Processing and Digital Marketing partner!

Sincerely, 

Useful Contact Numbers & Emails

Toll Free: (888) 311-7248

Implementation Process

Getting started

We want to make sure that your new Merchant Services Program gets off to a great start by ensuring you have a complete understanding of the implementation process, best practices for having a robust program and have all of the tools and training to jump start your program. To accomplish this, we will lay out a normal implementation schedule for your reference as well as the “Best Practices” we have developed over the years of supporting and working with our partners.

The very first step is to have a brief "what's next” call with the Program Manager at your financial institution to put together a timetable for the various steps that make up the full implementation process. This complete process is laid out here for your reference.

1. Welcome Call - this will give you and your team the opportunity to meet the management and operations teams at Evolv that will be supporting our partnership. 
2. Welcome Email – this important email will include links to helpful materials, forms you will be required to fill out, as well as, calendar links to set up important training sessions.
3. Form Submission - Complete the MAC setup form via the link in your welcome email. This is where you will provide us with MAC login credentials for yourself and the employees you deem necessary. There are two hierarchies of logins to which you have access. 
4. Referral Source Manager - with this login the person can see all leads and merchant account details for your institution regardless of to whom the referral belongs. This will also include access to the revenue share residual reports. 
5. Referral Partner Associate - with this login the person is limited to only the leads and merchant detail on account that they have referred. 
6. Branches and Branch Managers - by giving us a list of your branches we can track the leads coming from specific branches and will be able to reach out to the branch manager, if necessary, regarding a lead tied to that branch.
7. Not all employees referring your clients will need the robust capabilities of MAC. For those employees, a link will be provided to be placed on your intranet. This link will pullup a landing page through which they can refer. Please reference "How to Refer" for more information on the processes and a sample of the referral page. 
8. Announce your new Merchant Services Program internally
9. We can provide your bank with an overview of your new program for you to distribute to your employees should you desire.
10. Announce your new Merchant Services Program to your customer base by an email campaign, for example.
11. Training - we will provide interactive web trainings for your employees:
12. MAC Training - for those employees that have MAC logins your IRM will provide an in-depth training on MAC's functionality. It will cover all topics, including how to refer and track referral, look at your client’s accounts and transactions, pull and create customized reports, and open and submit tickets for Customer Service and Technical Support. This training is broken down into three sessions.
13. MAC How to Refer - Program Managers, Branch Managers, and anyone you see fit would have MAC access. This training will be recorded and supplied to the bank for new employees.
14. MAC How to Manage Your Program - Program Managers and Branch Managers.
15. MAC How to Service Your Merchant - Scheduled three months after referring begins.
16. Branch trainings - These may be done by either or both web training and in-person trainings with your In-market Account Executive if one is assigned. These trainings are geared to help all your bankers understand your new program at a high level, giving Bankers the confidence to start a conversation with your commercial customers about Merchant and Digital Services.
17. Help them understand specific offerings such as our Micro Merchant Option and Clover and EvolvPOS Systems.
18. Show solutions that are specific for target markets such as GovCard for municipalities, PayTrace for B2B etc. but keeping it very high level.
19. A high-level overview of the digital marketing products and how they can help your business clients generate revenue even in slow periods.
20. Give Bankers conversation starters to help open a dialogue with your commercial clients.
21. Teach Bankers how to refer through your referral portal on your intranet.

7. Initiate a "Kick-off contest" - work with your DSP to create a "Kick-off contest" that will help motivate your employees to actively work at getting referrals. An example of this could be as follows:

1. Contest runs from Specific Date through Specific Date
2. $25 gift card for every qualified product sold.

• Example: 1 merchant referred to your Relationship Advocate -
  He sells them Merchant Services, Website and Social Media Management
  3 qualified products = $75 gift card

Best Practices

Over the years of working with a variety of Referral Partners we have developed a set of "Best Practices" that we have found work very well in building a solid merchant services program, giving you a steady non-interest income stream and helping your SMB customers become even more "sticky" by having multiple products from you. We highly encourage you to put these best practices into place with evolv, giving us the best chance at significantly growing your portfolio for you. 

 At the Bank Level

1. Make merchant referrals part of your "scorecard" for your Bankers and Loan Officers: Whether you choose to track the number of referrals, your merchants' revenue, or a combination of the two, we can help you track those items in MAC. By making your merchant program part of your scorecard, your bankers will be motivated to mention Merchant and Digital Services to your commercial clients, thereby generating more sales and revenue.
2. Update your website with information about your new program: In your welcome email, we provide a link to an example webpage for you to use as a guide to adding information about our partnership to your website.
3. Pull weekly reports listing your new commercial DDA accounts: Hopefully, your bankers that open new commercial accounts are talking to the clients about their merchant services at that time. However, we have found that things come up and the bankers do not always do that. Because of this, we have found it highly effective to pull a list of commercial DDA's and send them to evolv for your Relationship Advocate to call on your behalf, making it much more likely to get their processing. This can be done in either of two ways. 
4. First - Create a CSV file that can be sent to operations and imported into MAC, weekly, allowing your RA to call and you to track the results in MAC. This is the preferred way as it is easy and less time-consuming for the bank.  It is also entirely secure and PCI compliant in MAC.
5. Second - someone at the bank enters them one at a time into MAC or the web portal and then they are routed to your RA for them to call. While you are more than welcome to do this, it is not considered to be the best option as it is time consuming and requires a lot of extra work for the bank.
6. Pull a Foreign ACH File semi-annually: By pulling a file that shows all the ACH deposits coming to your commercial accounts you can identify the account that have deposits coming in from other credit card processors. Since you have the banking relationship with them you are in an excellent position to talk to them about their merchant services. We can also do that for you on your behalf should you choose. If the list is pulled in a CSV format, we can import it into MAC and your RA can call them on your behalf letting them know about your new program.
7. Use Social Media on a regular basis to reach new potential clients: Post about your new Merchant and Digital Services program on your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn pages. This a great way to get your message out to your clients that follow you on Social Media. Consider boosting your posts to reach the specific demographic and geographic targets for your program, which could potentially bring in new banking customers for other products as well. Social media is the “word of mouth” for the 21st century!

Goal: Grow your merchant portfolio by an average of one new account per branch per month. To do this, there should be at least 2 – 3 referrals generated per branch per month.

• As an example: A bank has 10 branches - using best practices, 25 referrals are generated monthly and submitted though MAC or the referral portal. Your RA reaches out to all these referrals and works with the In-market Account Executive to contact and present our program to each one. These referrals then result in 10 new merchant accounts per month on average. 

At the Manager Level

1. Make sure your bankers have the conversation starter guide: We provide both digital and printed versions of our guide on how to start a conversation with your commercial clients by providing a few simple questions that a banker can ask to start a conversation about merchant and digital services. Make sure all bankers have a copy printed at their desk for easy reference.
2. Make sure to keep marketing pieces available: Evolv provides a variety of marketing material at no cost to your institution on all Evolv products and services. When you partner with us, a box of marketing materials will be sent to your main branch to be disbursed by you to your other branches.
3. Review production monthly: Review the number of referrals sent to evolv monthly to correlate with scorecard goals. 
4. Schedule quarterly product trainings: Working with your DSP and In-market Account Executive schedule quarterly trainings in the branches focusing on a product or service that would help generate referrals by your bankers. Bring your In-market AE into a branch meeting and allow them to bring in donuts or muffins for the meeting while learning about a product or service. Or, if a branch meeting is not feasible, schedule a webinar training that can be recorded and posted to your resource page so it can be watched as needed. Whatever works the best for your bankers, allow us to help keep your merchant services top of mind within your branches. 

 At the Loan Officer, Treasury or Private Banker Level

1.  Joint calls on clients: Work together with the In-market Account Executive and use merchant services to help land loans or new accounts in joint calls. Many times, the savings we can provide on the merchant services portion can help sway the account your way. This will allow trust to be built between the bankers and our sales staff as they work together to help bring on new business. If you work with an RA, schedule a web presentation with them and your customer and you attend as well. They are excellent at selling remotely.
2. Add "stickiness" to your larger accounts: By working together and adding multiple products, not only merchant processing but digital marketing products as well, we can help make your customers even more "sticky" for you. The more products they have through your bank the longer they will stay with you.
3. We can help with prospecting: Your In-market AE is out in your community on a regular basis talking to many business owners. Many times, they run across potential new clients for your bank. We encourage them to help bring new accounts to you as well by getting referrals for your banking products and services.

Maintaining Communication

1. Regular Touchpoint Calls: Maintaining good communication on an ongoing basis is an extremely important part of any good partnership. To that end, we recommend that you maintain regular touch point calls with your DSP, IRM and your Evolv sales team. Depending on the partner's requirements we can have touchpoint calls on a weekly, semimonthly, or monthly basis. Once the implementation is completed most of our partners schedule monthly touchpoint calls with their DSP, IRM, RA, and In-market AE. This call allows you to voice any issues, feedback on performance or give us recommendations on changes that may need to be made. We, in turn, make sure you are aware of the results of our various sales activities and provide any specific reporting required that is not available in MAC. Your DSP or IRM will work with you to set this up and get it on all parties' calendars and will provide a conference line for all to access. During these calls email or other types of campaigns and marketing strategies can be discussed and planned for upcoming months or quarters. Ideas for various contests or trainings can also be considered by the team.
2. Weekly feedback on new DDA calling efforts: Every week we will provide you feedback outcome from your RA's calling effort off the new commercial DDA lists that are provided. If the lists are provided on Monday mornings the following Monday, your RA or DSP will provide you the results from the previous week's calls allowing you to stay up to date on their efforts. 

Marketing Services

Dedicated to the success of your Merchant Services Program, Evolv offers marketing material at no cost to your organization. The following items will be shipped to your main location for distribution.

Products & Services Rack Card

This 5.5" x 8.5" rack cards offers a brief description of Evolv's Merchant Solutions.

We will provide an acrylic holder to display the brochures in the lobby.

Tri-Fold Merchant Services Brochure

These professionally designed and printed 8.5" x 11" tri-fold brochures illustrate the solutions Evolv provides.

We will provide an acrylic holder to display the brochures in the lobby.

Conversation Starter

Our Conversation Starter is an intended cheat sheet for bankers to assist with warm transfers. We have two types of prompts:

• one for new accounts, and
• one for existing accounts.

On the back of this item is a tracker. This is to track the progress of their leads and how many they have referred.

This 4" x 8" piece will be printed and shipped to your location.

Countertop Tent

This 5" x 7" countertop tent is available for your lobby or desk. We encourage a sign placed on the desks of New Account or Commercial Account Openers.

Lobby Banner (Available Upon Request)

This 2.5’ x 6’ free-standing sign is available for your lobby. upon request. We will send up to one per branch.