Consumer offers from credit card providers

Credit card providers have some of the best sets of consumer data in the world, however until recently they’ve been rather slow at introducing this so as to cross sell to consumers.

Loyalty cards, on the other hand, have been specifically designed to get a large amount of customer data so that this data can be mined and then used to sell goods. While credit cards do not have as much data as a loyalty card has, they do have a large amount of data, including the shops that were used, how much was spent and what time it was spent.

The store cards often double as loyalty cards and will already be giving useful information to the store that is providing the card.  This means that store cards are particularly likely to make consumer offers, as the consumers are usually loyal customers already.

One of the reasons for credit card providers’ caution in this area has been worries about data protection and the misuse of personal data.  This is however subsiding as offers have started to be tried out on credit card users.

The pioneer cards in making consumer offers, at least among bank cards, were the prestige cards.  These cards, the gold, platinum and “black” cards, deliberately try to maintain the air of a club.  One of the ways in which they do this is to have special offers, usually of holidays or luxury items.  These are often exclusive offers from luxury brands who appreciate the fact that the prestige cards give them access to a wealthy market.

This has developed into a more widespread feature of credit cards with many credit card providers channelling selected offers to their client base.  These tend to mainly be tailored to the card rather than to the purchases, but they do tend to be targeted to the same demographics that the card is targeted to.  These can include travel and holiday offers, as well as lifestyle items such as subscriptions to wine clubs.

For some of the no thrills cards, such as the Discover credit cards, there are add on programs which are not run by the credit card provider but are discount offers that “piggy back” on to the card offering.

Rewards programmes are also increasingly tied in with third party offers.  Again, this was pioneered on the prestige cards and spread to the no classic cards later.  These are more likely to use rewards data to shape the offers than credit cards use purchases.