CardMarketing 2.0

Specialist pet retailer, PetSmart, is offering its customers a fun new way to earn rewards for themselves and their pets: it's allowing them to put an edge-to-edge picture of their little bundle of fluff, six foot snake (or whatever their pet may be!) on their PetPerks Visa card. Alternatively, they can choose from a library of predesigned 'pet-themed' card designs. In the words of PetSmart, people never have to leave home without their pet again.

Discover Financial Services has launched two online financial tools that will help cardholders better manage their credit (and most of us, let's face it, need some help in that area): the Paydown Planner and Purchase Planner.

The way that companies market their products and services will need to change radically if they are to remain relevant in the digital era, according to recent research published by Gartner. In an online world, says Gartner, traditional ways of selling to customers, based on demographic information, will become irrelevant.

Last month, we covered research from Pew Internet & American Life Project showing how video sharing sites were becoming more and more popular. Well, the significant growth of online video usage — particularly in the youth market — has been confirmed by yet more research, this time from Leichtman Research.

Three useful podcasts for you to listen to — as supplied by the Internet Advertising Bureau. The first focuses on the future of internet marketing and includes views from such luminaries as Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO of AOL.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).