Looking at the larger proposals that are currently under consideration by the Dash masternode network I found “Evolution Offers and Promotions Platform” submitted by: srolinson for 3 monthly payments of 845 DASH. I think this one requires a lot of review as it is very complex.

A simple way of thinking about it is adding a “special deals” tab to your current Dash wallet where you get offers from businesses that you can purchase with Dash.  I reached out to the proposal owner to get more information for this article.  I then found out that Craig Mason had just done this video interview with Brandon Willey the CEO of the company behind the proposal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M166wg-9Ew0

The proposal document provides a great deal of information about the business and their plan for implementation.  The video brings much of the basics of what the proposal is about to easier to understand audio. 

I followed up with Brandon and sent him these questions which we discussed in a phone call.

Will I see an “offers tab” in my Dash wallet? Or will it be some different app?

While there are no final designs yet the expectation is that yes there would be something like a “special offers tab” that would show targeted ads based on your location and any previous history with our promotions service.

How do you see that interface working?  What happens when I click on an offer?

Part of our setup with the business gets their logo and branding which we use to generate landing pages specific to each offer.  That landing page will provide the information needed to directly purchase the special offer using Dash.

How would the “local” offers work?  I live outside a small town would I see any offers?

You would see some online offers but if you live in an area where we don’t have any business clients you might not have any local businesses.  We are actively marketing to businesses so if we see a concentration of Dash users somewhere that we don’t have any local businesses we would would want to target that area with our sales team.

What are the biggest market segments for your business clients?

Health & beauty services like salons, nails or massage,  automotive services like car washes / detailing  and family entertainment / amusement businesses like trampoline parks or mini-golf.

Who is doing the development work?  I see you say  “We are additionally partnered with both a digital marketing software company and a software development firm”  — are there some crypto project references that the development team has?  There is always a big risk on the development side.

Our company has two main functions – developing the software we need to run the business and sales and marketing to grow the business.  So we have software development skills inhouse and with trusted 3rd parties.  We have discussed our plans with Andy from the Dash core team so understand what work will need to be done. Further we will be using the API’s developed by BlockCypher which removes much of the need for a “deep” understanding of blockchain coding.

Why should a local business use Dash?  Have you talked with your clients about adding Dash?

We have not gone out and discussed this with a lot of clients we wanted to keep a lower profile with it until we are closer to having a real product.  The companies we have discussed it with seemed to be excited to have a reason to begin accepting crypto based on the news they hear about the price increases of Bitcoin.  We also know that they will save on credit card fees.

You say that you will be able to convert the Dash a business gets into US dollars how will that work?

We have been in discussions with Alt36 about using the API’s they are developing to allow us to use their banking relationships to convert Dash to cash for our clients.

What is your businesses current sales volume?

The Acme (established in 2015) in collaboration with FetchRev, (which Brandon is also CEO of) a customer retention marketing software company established in 2012,  have worked with over 3,000 small businesses to reach their customers with offers and coupons across multiple digital channels. Working with brands and companies like Elements Massage, 18|8, SkyZone, Precision Tune and Urban Air, our combined team of 30+ employees consistently sends over 28M emails and 21M social ads to over 19M consumers driving over $2M USD in additional revenue for our customers every single month.

With the recent Dash price increase this is now a $1M project (2534 DASH ($691,000 USD) in your proposal) are you sticking to the USD value you requested for each deliverable? 

We have asked the Dash core team to escrow the funds we receive.  Our payments will be based on our USD estimates when we reach our agreed milestones.  Any appreciation in the price of Dash – like we have seen since we submitted our proposal – will accrue to the core team to be used on other projects.

There are a number of questions on Dashcentral and the Dash forum about your claim you return your clients a “5X ROI” can you explain that?

We admit we are not using the official finance based definition of return on investment (ROI) but we explain exactly how we calculate everything to our clients.  We use it to mean they will receive added revenues of 5 times the costs of our program.

What are your projections for how Dash will get a 5 x return?  What is your average sale price?

There are so many variables we have not really tried to calculate that.  We have an average sale price of $65.

Being the spreadsheet person I am I had to take a stab at figuring out what sort of a payback Dash would get on the almost $700K that would be spent if the proposal passes.  There are a lot of variables that would need to be considered – such as what does a 5X return mean?  I used the simplest version where the value of transactions happening helps the Dash network on a dollar for dollar basis.  So one $65 sale provides back to the Dash network $65 of value – I don’t really think this is a fair measure for Dash but it is simple.

On the left side I show estimates for The Acme which include an increase of monthly sales to $2.5M and the big unknown what percent of sales would be done using Dash – I estimated 10%.

On the right side I show how many sales it would take to get a 5X return – defined as “a dollar of money Dash spends on the project is returned with a dollar transaction on the Dash network” times 5 for 5X.  This comes to 53,154 sales required divided by 3,846 estimated sales per month requires a payback of about 14 months.

I leave it to the reader to determine if my analysis provides any help in their decision on the value of this project.