While connecting to consumers over Facebook has always been a popular social media strategy for brands in India, but for American Express India, the leading credit card solution provider in the market, it is via LinkedIn. The reason: to capture the working professionals and high net worth executives as new clients. The American Express India promotion through LinkedIn is available till July 30, 2012. In fact, the bank is not only connecting via the social platform, it is actually offering deals on social as well as promoting the concept of digital wallet through tying up with popular social gaming site.
According to American Express India spokesperson, this new promotion from the company is available to LinkedIn members who either have or do not own an American Express India credit card. “Through the LinkedIn referral page on the American Express India website, you can refer your LinkedIn contacts to the Gold Card or the Platinum Reserve Card and earn Membership Reward points and other exciting gifts for every approval. The people you refer get special offers on selected cards. You can also apply for a card and get special promotional joining offers on them,” the media statement said.
American Express India has kept the terms very lucrative to attract LinkedIn members to sign up for this promotion. In fact when it comes to social media, in India Facebook is the leading property; however the professional networking site LinkedIn has been gaining in popularity. In a recent release by the company, LinkedIn said that its user base has crossed the 15 million mark in India. When LinkedIn had entered India in 2009, it had a user base of about 3.4 million users. The company has been able to grow its user base nearly five times in the last three years. Says country manager Hari V. Krishnan, India, ” This milestone (15 million) demonstrates that professional networking is becoming increasingly important to Indian professionals. In just three years, we have scaled our operations in India and our member base has grown by over 300%.”
Only recently, American Express tied up with Zynga, the leading provider of social games services, for the Zynga Serve Rewards, which helps the bank promote its Serve digital wallet. Talking about the tie up, Dan Schulman, President of Enterprise Growth, American Express said, “As the commerce landscape continues to change, and online and offline spending converges, Serve is focused on partnering with companies like Zynga to create unique value for our customers in the environments they love.” The bank claims that this breaks new ground in the prepaid card market by offering rich in-game incentives for everyday spending.
The recent tie ups at American Express shows how the bank is following the growing trend in banking and financial segments to go the social media way to capture the new generation of consumers.
