December 17, 2009
I’ve been a Citi credit card holder for a little over four years now. After opting for paper-less communications two or three years ago, I started getting “Special Access” offers. Above is just the most recent email offer that I’ve received. Now, I’m a music fan. I check out live music on a fairly regular basis. So offering me opportunities for special ticket purchases is not a bad idea. I mean, I’m very unlikely to use this feature, but what the hell, right? But really, could Citi be any more tone deaf about their clients’ tastes? Let’s pretend that Citi ignores all my purchase history information — which would be stupid, but for all I know is illegal or something. Why wouldn’t they simply look at my general demographic statistics to better gauge the type of offers I might be interested in? Is there no consideration for the fact that credit card holding adults might have less than no interest in Nick Jonas? Beyond that, is there no concern that these type of featured offers actually harm the Citi brand? Maybe I’m overreacting a bit. Sure, I can simply delete this email, along with the one I got pimping the Black Eyed Peas. But Citi seems to be blowing a relatively easy opportunity to better engage with customers here. Hell, I’d probably opt-in to allow Citi to use my data (in a secure, generalized way) to develop a program where they targeted me with benefits offers that I might actually be interested in. My guess is that benefits operations are not huge revenue drivers (and may actually cost a fair bit) but if you’re going to be investing in customer engagement initiatives, then why not do it correctly?

I’ve been a Citi credit card holder for a little over four years now. After opting for paper-less communications two or three years ago, I started getting “Special Access” offers. Above is just the most recent email offer that I’ve received.

Now, I’m a music fan. I check out live music on a fairly regular basis. So offering me opportunities for special ticket purchases is not a bad idea. I mean, I’m very unlikely to use this feature, but what the hell, right?

But really, could Citi be any more tone deaf about their clients’ tastes? Let’s pretend that Citi ignores all my purchase history information — which would be stupid, but for all I know is illegal or something. Why wouldn’t they simply look at my general demographic statistics to better gauge the type of offers I might be interested in? Is there no consideration for the fact that credit card holding adults might have less than no interest in Nick Jonas? Beyond that, is there no concern that these type of featured offers actually harm the Citi brand?

Maybe I’m overreacting a bit. Sure, I can simply delete this email, along with the one I got pimping the Black Eyed Peas. But Citi seems to be blowing a relatively easy opportunity to better engage with customers here. Hell, I’d probably opt-in to allow Citi to use my data (in a secure, generalized way) to develop a program where they targeted me with benefits offers that I might actually be interested in. My guess is that benefits operations are not huge revenue drivers (and may actually cost a fair bit) but if you’re going to be investing in customer engagement initiatives, then why not do it correctly?

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