American Express Canada says a campaign that combined influencers, videos and Facebook paid off in boosting acquisition rates for its Gold Rewards Card in the competitive travel credit card market.
The content marketing campaign targeted prospective customers with a sequential messaging strategy and then retargeted them with additional product education and acquisition messaging after they showed initial interest. It resulted in a 400% increase in acquisition rates on Facebook during the period it was in market compared to the previous quarter.
The Your Travel Style campaign, which launched late last year, consisted of a video series in which five influencers talked about their travel styles and traveling tips.
It involved a holistic marketing strategy as opposed to separate plans and “really changed the way we were looking at social as a whole,” says Lauren Dineen-Duarte, director of public affairs and communications at American Express Canada.
The campaign required collaboration between AmEx’s social and acquisition teams, which required breaking down the silos within the organization to focus on telling one story across the board, she says.
“We felt we needed to come up with a new strategy [and] new content to invigorate the campaign,” for the Gold Rewards Card, which has been in the market for five years, Dineen-Duarte says.
American Express decided to “make sure that we were talking to the right people at the right time as opposed to hitting them with a number of different messages whether they’re ready for them or not.” Facebook has those targeting capabilities, she notes.
As part of the campaign, AmEx looked at trigger-based marketing tools – to target people with content during key decision-making times in their lives when they would be potentially looking to get a new card.
The company created video with five influencers – Suburban Faux- Pas, The Planet D , Marcus Troy, Seattle’s Travel and Adam van Koeverden – all of whom “hit a different lifestyle, demographic and are at different places in their lives.”
Facebook was the main driver in terms of amplificiation, but the campaign was also leveraged on Twitter, YouTube, Buzzfeed and the influencers’ channels. Overall, the campaign had 1.3 million video views.
“This test really helped us see the importance of video and how hard video works for us,” Dineen-Duarte says. “We knew that video is important, but didn’t really see how much of an impact it would have later down the road for acquisition. People who would view our videos were a lot more likely to go lower down the funnel of acquisition and actually apply for a card.”
The campaign was also efficient: AmEx’s cost per acquisition dropped by 40% compared with previous quarters.
“The results were pretty amazing and now it’s something we’ve been able to apply kind of across the board in planning for social.”
AmEx has launched a new Travel Hacks series, which involves TSN personality Cabbie Richards, Toronto Blue Jay centre fielder Kevin Pillar, and Vancouver influencer Monika Hibbs, divulging tips to make travel easier. The first video, featuring Richards, went live this week.
Another campaign will feature videos from influencers focusing on their summer road trips.
“Influencer marketing is a really important priority for us,” Dineen-Duarte says, adding there is value in having influencers with authentic voices relate how they interact with the brand. Doing so “really brings the brand to life in an authentic way.”
Adds Dineen-Duarte: “Social is becoming a much bigger portion of the overall above the line advertising plan. In the past, it was a secondary priority and now it’s becoming first and foremost.”
High Road creates social content for American Express.
