CardMarketing 2.0

Thursday, January 31, 2008

One of the key qualities of a web 2.0 marketing campaign is enabling consumers to participate by providing content of their own — letting them, in effect, become co-creators. This engages them, builds relationships and trust.

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Video-Sharing Sites Boom in Popularity

A significant 48% of American adults have visited video sharing sites, according to research published in January by Pew Internet & American Life Project. What's more, the daily traffic to such sites on a typical day at the end of 2007 was nearly double what it had been at the end of 2006. Basically, online video is booming.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Considering Video Advertising? Watch This.

Alongside m-banking, another area of opportunity during 2008 is online video advertising. The mass penetration of broadband internet, which is getting quicker and more stable all the time, has made sure of that. In fact, with some companies, high definition online video advertising is already the channel of choice.

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Nowadays, your Card really can be your Flexible Friend

It's all happened rather quickly. In less than two years, it seems, there's been a sea change in the way card services are structured. These days, more and more cards are issued that can be tailored by consumers, co-created in a way that suits and benefits them financially. It's no exaggeration to say there has been a seismic shift towards consumer empowerment, towards financial flexibility, although for some reason you don't really read about it all that much.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

VOIP Usage Taking Off

These days, I use Skype to communicate with two or three clients almost exclusively. I do this for two reasons. Firstly, talking through Skype is better quality than my landline. Secondly, there are huge cost savings, as Skype to Skype doesn't cost me a penny (whereas if I was calling New York and Chicago, London or Dublin on a landline every day, it would cost me an arm and a leg).

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Sunday, January 20, 2008

2008: Year of the Mobile?

So, what will be the single most important challenge (and opportunity) for card marketers in 2008? Well, the conclusion of most is that issuers, in the shadow of the iPhone and what it represents, will need to work on sending their services mobile.

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Capital One Offers Full Customization

In early January, Capital One started allowing its US cardholders to customize their cards with images of their own — check it out yourself at Image Card. The growing demand by consumers to express themselves and create content online means it's likely to go down well. Many other issuers globally are already offering this service and it's proving a real success — in Belgium, for example, around 1.2% of the population opted for a customized card when KBC went live with the service in late 2006.

In case you're new to this blog, please note that Serverside, the company that sponsors it, is the company that first introduced card customization to the market — for transparency reasons, you need to know.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Blogs: Monitor, Engage and Learn

I wonder how many issuers have a blog monitoring tool that allows them to actively track any mentions of them in the blogosphere? It's an area, I'm pretty sure, few issuers have looked into yet (I say this because I was in a meeting the other day with a highly successful UK dotcom and even they are only starting to do it in the new year). But it's an area issuers can no longer afford to ignore.

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Starbucks Card Shines Bright

Starbucks in the US has started allowing people to design their own customized cards — and is doing a fantastic job of it, too. In fact, the way it's promoting the new service on its website is pretty damn awesome — the usability is sublime.

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Monday, November 26, 2007

Capital One Launches 'Do-It-Yourself' credit card program

Capital One today launched an interactive online 'Do-It-Yourself' credit card program for customers, which leads them through an array of options resulting in the card that suits them best. As choices are made, certain options are greyed out so you can see, in real time, the various trade-offs of having this or that card. So, if you decide to opt for an annual fee, you can earn rewards faster. The greying out is evident in the screengrab, below.

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