Card Member Onboarding
Becoming an American Express Card Member is a big deal. For many people, it is a sign of success. Having the Card in your wallet is nice, but Membership in this elite group comes with benefits that take time to learn and use.
We were asked to strategically rethink this email series to increase engagement and turn early-tenure Card Members into Amex loyalists.
Responsibilities: Creative Direction, UX, Content Strategy, Design Direction, Art Direction
Agency: Sandbox
A disconnected
disjointed problem
All new Card Members went through a CRM-based onboarding program that provided all the information they needed, in every communication.
This sequence lacked any continuity, didn’t build on previous knowledge, and was not contextual to what the Card Member needed at that point in time.
Our strategy was simple:
Send the right message at the right time.
We defined relative send dates based on a variety of factors:
Amex can not send any marketing emails before day 10 of membership
It takes 21 days to form new habits
Your bills will be due around day 30, 60 and 90.
Most sign-up bonuses are around 90 days.
Using this as a basic framework, we knew when we would send emails and what their messaging should be.
The approach
Our goals was to establish card usage habits, build trust with new Card Members and open pathways to digital engagement, with that in mind, we shifted from a fixed sequence of content-heavy emails to a series of triggered, personalized micro-touches. Created a high-level content journey to define each communication, aligning with the milestones.
Each email was defined as either a timed trigger, a behavior trigger or as an AOR-triggered email.
The sequence starts off with the essentials, and builds up to advanced benefits. We decided that each email should focus on a single topic or action. Any personalization or dynamic content would bring value and not just add fluff. Overall the emails should feel like a unified series with an ownable look and voice.
A system designed to grow
Amex has many different cards, each with their own benefits, so we needed to create a design system that can work for all of their cards.
Based on Atomic design principles we defined a library of elements needed to present every card in the best way possible.
New Additional Card Members also received these communications, with the same goal of increasing their digital engagement. This proved to be a challenge since benefits for them are significantly less than benefits afforded basic Card Members.
Digital Membership Education
While rethinking how to increase new Card Member engagement, our client asked us to take the same approach to our more experienced members. Labeled “traditionalists” there is a large segment of Members with little to no usage of Amex’s Digitals tools like the app or website.
This new email sequence introduced traditionalist Card Members to the digital tools available to them. Using Movable Ink device targeting we were able to remove barriers of entry by presenting App focused information to those who open on their mobile device, and desktop focused information to those opening on desktop.
