CardMarketing 2.0

GE Money's Earth Rewards Platinum MasterCard, available to US consumers, is the latest 'green' card to be launched. Each time cardholders use it, a portion of their spend goes towards offsetting the emissions created by their purchases and activities. You can learn more about the card here, but what interests me most is the 'holistic' nature of the website and program. It doesn't come across as just another rewards offering, a hard (or come to think of it, even soft) sell, but successfully positions the card as a key lifestyle tool of the environmentally conscious. It's a great piece of card innovation and online marketing.



This attractive and well thought out site is replete with environment-focused features, including:

• You and Your Environment, a section helping people understand how their everyday actions can help fight climate change
• Small Changes, Big Differences, a list of small changes people can make to improve their impact on the environment
• Calculate your Personal Impact, a 'Carbon Calculator' that helps you work out the size of your carbon footprint. It takes about 10 minutes, so isn't a gimmick, and when you get your result, it's compared to the US average

With most issuers now aware of the importance of viral tools, there's also an easy-to-use 'Tell a Friend' functionality, with an in-built message about climate change and how important it is for us all to tackle it head on. If I had the misfortune to live in the States — only kidding — I'd be the first to fill out the application form...

... although I'd have to be online. As you would imagine, you can't apply for an Earth Rewards card via traditional paper-based routes — it's 100% paperLESS. This trend towards paperless statements and 'paperlessness' in general is set to radically change the way issuers market to and correspond with their cardholders and the public as a whole. Issuing any kind of paper-based marketing material or statements is fast becoming a terrible faux pas — and a big brand no-no.