My way to web marketing with American Express
In 1999, I was given a temporary position by Manpower at Alpha Card as a marketing executive, to replace the person responsible for Loyalty during her maternity leave. The story lasted more than 12 years in a team initially composed of only 4 people, and finally more than a dozen. Alpha Card is a joint venture between American Express®and BNP Paribas Fortis for the issuing and distribution of the American Express products in Belgium and Luxembourg. Since a couple of years, Alpha Card now also deals with Visa and Master Card through the acquisition of BCC Corporate. The company became Alpha Card Group by then and is now recognized in Belgium as a bank institution.
My role as a marketeer was essentially linked to the American Express card products. Back in 1999, no website was ever developed for American Express in Belgium and Luxembourg. Marketing was basically focused on paper and telemarketing activities. The job was divided in loyalty marketing (targeted at existing customers) and acquisition marketing (to
sell the American Express Cards): welcome packs, loyalty programme guide and brochures, product information leaflets, point-of-sales leaflets, acquisition packs, telemarketing acquisition or upgrade campaigns, ...
In 2000, we started internet marketing. The site was then comprised of just a few pages displaying some informations on the different products, as well as offers for the American Express card-holders, and loyalty rewards. I have been in charge of content management of the website since then, in addition to the production of paper marketing and direct-mail. In only a 5-year time, interactive communication drastically boomed. We then started e-mailing our customers with offers, loyalty rewards and informations about their products. At first, we used the EmailGarage tool, keeping an updated data-base locally. After a few years, we moved to a global supplier based in the USA, who offered a very competitive servicing to American Express worldwide.
Online card application forms were developed in order to enable the website visitors to apply for a card directly through the internet, based on the very tight security and data protection criteria required by American Express as a financial institution. As a result, the online business acquisition channel quickly reached more than 160% of the initial plan in just 1 year. Following the digital line, we started a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of the website whith iProspect and maintained this optimisation around 38% of the traffic to web from search engines throughout 2011. Still with iProspect, we then placed some Google Adwords marketing campaigns (SEM) in 2010, which brought about more business online than expected at a very competitive cost per lead.
Overall, between 2003 and 2011, the website traffic has been multiplied by almost 4.5.
My time with Alpha Card is now over. With this company, I have learned a lot on the digital line, from direct-mail to webdesign, through SEO and SEM, mobile and social media strategy.