CardMarketing 2.0

Each issue, we examine a key word or phrase from the ever-evolving Web 2.0 lexicon. Some of these terms are obscure, others may intimidate but once you get up close, none of them will bite. We break them down and show how they are relevant to the world of online card marketing.

Today’s word: Blog

A few months ago, IBM conducted a survey of 3,000 US banking customers. The results were not encouraging: 74% found bank marketing irrelevant. Customers said banks met their expectations 52% of the time on rational aspects, clearly showing some appreciation for objective service features such as online bill payment. Unfortunately, banks achieved only a 26% satisfaction rate on emotive aspects, which apparently carry more weight. Given survey respondents’ views that banks ought to demonstrate greater empathy for customers’ financial goals and challenges, IBM recommended that bank executives update their communications approach with more focus on the customer experience.

The question is, how?

Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba

The days when chat rooms and Quake III were the only way for people to express themselves online are well and truly over.

There’s a good chance you’ve seen them by now. Slowly, but very surely, they’ve started appearing on more and more mainstream websites, including, in December, the New York Times and, a week or so ago, Business Wire. They’re not always easy to spot – they’re often at the bottom of the page – but increasingly, and in ever-increasing numbers, they are there.

Of the numerous credit card account acquisition channels, internet and agent programs are easily the most cost-effective. Research late last year by California-based bank card advisory firm, R.K. Hammer, has revealed that internet and agent programs deliver accounts at around $20 per active account. This contrasts sharply with the average across-the-board acquisition cost per active account of $95. Time to move online?

UK off-licence (liquor store) chain, Thresher, learned about the ‘power of the web’ the hard way in December. As a gift to suppliers and their friends, the company had created a downloadable voucher that gave the lucky recipients 40% off all wine and champagne.

However, the voucher fell into the wrong hands and quickly went viral via blogs, email and chatrooms, and before Thresher knew it had been downloaded 800,000 times on one website alone. “It was never intended to get this big,” said a company spokesperson, who continued that the blunder “could end up hitting our profit margins”.

But maybe it was meant to get that big. One UK-based blogger, Steve Bowbrick, claims the voucher was in fact a “highly viral, slightly naughty (“hey, did you hear about that Threshers coupon?”) ‘accidental’ campaign”. Whatever your view, as an exercise in branding, the company hit the jackpot.

Well done, you’re the Person of the Year 2006! Or you are according to Time magazine, at least. Reflecting on the growing number of global online communities and the trend towards user-generated content, think MySpace, blogging, corporate crowdsourcing, social bookmarking and the “cosmic compendium”, Wikipedia, Time says that 2006 was all about the many wrestling “power away from the few”, was about the ‘long tail’ of previously unheard voices finding their voice and presenting their thoughts, their creations, to the global network.

The geeks in Silicon Valley, the article continues, call this phenomenon Web 2.0 – the two-way web – but Time looks at it as more of a revolution, “an explosion of productivity and innovation”, a seizing of “the reins of global media”. And, hats off, it’s all down to you.

Is this the year that the Great Migration begins — the mass migration of marketing and ad budgets around the world from offline media to on? A quick round-up of some of the latest forecasts and stats from around the world suggest it just might be.