Card marketer starts major campaign for new online protection service
American Express has begun a multimedia campaign for Private Payments, a new program for consumers who are concerned about online security.
The free service lets cardholders use a one-time-only transaction number when buying online instead of using their American Express card number. The card number never enters the virtual world, reducing the possibility of its being stolen on the Web.
Multimedia Push In addition to advertising on television and in print, AmEx is promoting the service through e-mail, traditional direct mail, statement inserts and in banner ads on the company’s Web site. Most of the latter efforts target AmEx cardholders who signed up for products and services on the Web site as well as people who check their bill online, but who in both cases don’t take the extra step and order there.
Some who have already been sent e-mail about the new service are those who went online in response to print and television ads and gave American Express their e-mail address, asking to be notified when the service went into effect. “We had a strong response to that,” says spokeswoman Molly Saust. “We were very pleased with the number of people who showed interest and provided their e-mail address.”
E-mailings describe how the service works and provide a link to the Private Payments page on AmEx’s site. Direct mailings deliver the same message but steer recipients to the site.
Television and print ads started alerting customers about the service in early September. The TV ads will continue to run in national and major markets, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington. Newspaper ads have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today.
The company plans to run ads in various magazines during the fourth quarter.
According to Ben Cutler, an Internet consumer analyst for New York-based online CRM firm Cyber Dialogue, 77 million adults are on the Web – surfing, joining chat rooms or gathering news. But the count of those who actually order products online falls off considerably, to 32.7 million.
Moreover, some 28.8 million who order online pay with a credit card, accounting for only 37 percent of total online visits by adults.
Security a Big Factor By Cutler’s estimates, however, the number of adults who don’t currently order online – but might if the threat of credit card theft were eliminated – would jump to 36.3 million.
“Fear of credit card theft is definitely one of the things keeping e-commerce from growing to its potential,” says Cutler.
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