Affluent / HNW Purchasing Trends for Credit Card Marketers
Trends in the affluent/HNW space impact purchasing behavior and financial services customer mindsets. While a handful of premium credit card and retail bank marketers already do a good job of aligning marketing with affluent consumer trends and insights, there are opportunities to improve credit card marketing by keeping these learnings top-of-mind and tweaking current campaigns to better sync with segment trends. Here’s a short-list of trends we’re watching for our clients:
A global perspective
The Affluent/HNW population thinks of itself as a global community with an increasingly global perspective. Therefore, financial services marketing must also think globally.
Cater to the needs and identities of world citizens, individuals who are less tethered to their own countries of origin. Financial services product design, construct and marketing should take this concept to heart. This could be as simple as remembering to educate cardholders on the benefits that become important as they travel, but better yet, mine cardholder behavior to allow you to target soon-to-be travelers with highly relevant messages.
The “go-to” card
This segment feels optimistic and ready to purchase luxury items, and so card issuers are going to want their cards to be their customers’ most preferred.
Take time to think through your products. Is it seamless to use your brand’s credit card? For example, consider re-evaluating buying power and increasing POS approvals (even if far from home). Promote purchase protection, and do a better job of rationalizing why customers should choose your card (rewards, security, value prop, protection, etc.). Ideally, you are aligning your premium card with other relevant, luxury brands for surprise and delight offers, merchant discounts and other value adds.
The (self) expression of status
The affluent/HNW segment does not want to visually display status in ways that may put them at risk. Re-evaluate badge cards, and think about giving luxury cardholders a choice of card (Titanium versus understated plastic) so they can self-determine which is the better personal choice.
Details, details, details
This audience wants product and brand information – detailed and at their fingertips. Therefore, you must provide great depth of information about your product. Affluent/HNW consumers want the details… and that includes making it easy to get full information across channels and devices. Even when it comes to the card acquisition stage, taking the mass market tactic of less information is a mistake.
SOURCE: “4 trends dominate affluent purchasing post-recession,” Luxury Daily, 5/1/15.
