Chase Sapphire Reserve
A strategic media plan based on user research, competitive insights & psychology.
Project Summary
The Product
The Chase Sapphire Reserve travel & dining credit card.
The Problem
Chase Sapphire trails the competition in usage rate, with only 2% of cardholders using it as their primary card, compared to 8% amongst competitors.
The User
Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders (A25-34 HHI $100K+).
The Solution
A campaign centered around the concept of reciprocity; delivering cardholders improved experiences based on user research with the intention of them, in-turn, using the credit card more frequently.
KPI
Incremental spend amongst existing Sapphire cardholders.
The Results
$20MM increase in cardholder spend.
Parameters & Details
Methods Used
User Research, Research Synthesis, Competitive Analysis, Data Analytics
Team
Amanda Hellrung, Mohamed Jalloh, Brandon Cherry
My Role
Led the research synthesis, strategic approach development and presentation processes.
Research & Strategy
The Problem Area
Before crafting our strategic approach, we had to first identify an objective and problem area to solve for. Through use of proprietary research, we noticed that the Sapphire card was relatively competitive in all brand categories other than credit card usage.
Now that we knew there was an opportunity to support credit card spend, we still had to figure out how we were going to utilize our resources to drive usage.
The Strategy
We were faced with the tough obstacle of trying to convince our user’s to take an action (increase their card usage). In order to overcome that challenge and get the user’s to use their card more frequently, we leveraged the psychology principle of reciprocity, stating that we first had to reward the users with something, in order for them to reward Chase Sapphire in return.
However, the reward that we’d use to initiate reciprocal process was still unclear, and had to be identified through user research.
Research & Synthesis
By analyzing and synthesizing survey data from 10,000 users, we were able to identified that our users wanted tailored travel experiences that require less effort and planning. This area of opportunity was based on two key user insights:
Strategic approach based on user research insights
Use of reciprocity to drive cardholder spend
Problem Statement
Chase Sapphire cardholders primarily use non-Chase credit cards for their everyday expenses.
How might we deliver experiences tailored to our cardholder’s travel and dining habits to encourage them to use Sapphire more frequently.
Approach & Recommendation
Competitive Analysis
After we identified the opportunity of encouraging usage by delivering personalized and timely experiential recommendations, we still had to figure out how we were going to execute it.
To start, we performed a competitive analysis and identified how other financial institutions with high card usage rates were leveraging similar principles to delight their users.
Media Recommendation
Next, we paired our user and competitive insights with the brand objective to craft the media recommendation.
User Research Insights
Users are extremely spontaneous, often making a local travel/dining decision within 1 hour of experience. As such, 60% of users want timely recommendations that facilitate spontaneity.
Competitive Insight
AmEx’s virtual travel assistant uses a chatbot format to deliver quick recommendations.
Recommendation
Leverage Quartz’s creative studio to design a chatbot for Chase cardholders that quickly provides local recommendations that users can take advantage of in the moment.
User Research Insight
83% of users want brands to leverage data to deliver experiential recommendations based on their interests.
Competitive Insight
CapOne uses interactive formats that enable users to choose their personalized experience from a list of options.
Recommendation
Partner with Foursquare to create custom lists recommending local experiences based on cardholder foot traffic data. From there, users can choose the experience that most aligns with their personal preferences.
Results
The campaign surpassed benchmarks, successfully driving an incremental spend of $500 per cardholder, generating a total of $20MM in aggregated incremental spend amongst all cardholders.
Following the success of the 2018 Sapphire campaign, we analyzed our learnings and pulled out the most effective tactics to be applied to the 2019 campaign.