Barclaycard Travel Community Reinforces Reward Card Benefits

In May, Barclays officially re-branded its Arrival card as Barclaycard Arrival Plus. The product redesign not only includes chip technology, but also enhanced options for redemption of reward miles, as highlighted by the brand’s Facebook Timeline photo (at right). For example, cardholders now have 120 days (instead of 90) to redeem travel statement credits, and “travel statement redemptions have been expanded to include buses, timeshares and more.”

The update to the Arrival card prompted us to check out “Barclaycard Travel Community.” While it’s not new (it was launched just over a year ago), it’s an intriguing concept for a brand. At its core, the Barclaycard Travel Community is a social endeavor – one that takes the conversation around a relevant brand topic off social media networks and onto digital assets owned by the brand.

Barclays simply uses social networks, like the Barclaycard US account on Twitter, to promote the community and associated card product, as in this tweet which uses a branded hashtag and links to the travel community:

Members of the travel community upload photos of travel along with “story” details, like how they traveled and where they ate. In addition, each user’s profile contains details about travel preferences, like “the travel styles you prefer, whether it be outdoor adventures or luxury getaways.”

Like many online communities, those who share stories and participate in discussions (by ranking and commenting on the stories posted by others) earn badges. But that’s not all: Barclays also awards “participation miles,” actual travel rewards, for community involvement. This element draws attention to one of the primary Arrival Plus card features: reward miles. (Non-cardmembers can even play along, redeeming participation miles for Amazon e-certificates.)

What we like:

• The Barclaycard Travel Community encourages discussions about travel in the hopes that the shared enthusiasm and passion will inspire new travel by cardholders. As a result, the community directly supports the business goals of Barclaycard US (increased card usage) and reinforces the Arrival Plus card’s value proposition (travel rewards).

• Barclaycard US is being social outside social media. As social networks like Facebook continue to place challenges in front of branded content, it becomes more and more important to develop content – and nurture social sharing of content – beyond newsfeeds.

• Content within the travel community – including the user profiles with detailed travel preferences – provides the brand with great market research. It can gain insights about how users travel, as well as what excites and frustrates them.

Some challenges:

• Cross-promotion of the travel community and the Arrival Plus card is not as aggressive as it could be. While the community is promoted via Twitter (as mentioned above), its Facebook Timeline, Google+ page and YouTube channel are relatively mum on the pairing. In addition, while the card product has its own prominent tab within the travel community, the link to the Barclaycard Travel Community is buried at the bottom of the card’s landing page.

• The travel community itself could be more robust, either via the utilization of power users or a greater commitment from the brand itself. There are great examples out there of similar communities that reinforce their brands’ value propositions, like My Starbucks Idea and the American Express Open Forum. We realize that those branded platforms are not only larger in scope, but more advanced in their development (and investment) and that smaller branded efforts can be more of a challenge. More comparable comparisons are probably found in United’s MileagePlus Dining Club (which exists as its own digital asset) and the Chase Sapphire Preferred “First Friday Favorites” (which exists as an app on Facebook). The trick with these recommendation and referral mechanisms – as well as with the travel community concept – is to be sure that they’re offered to cardholders not solely for the sake of promoting a card benefit, but that they are designed and supported in a way that gives them meaningful value for the customer.

Despite the challenges, the Barclaycard Travel Community is a great way to promote and bring to life card benefits and harness the passions of cardholders to encourage card usage. What creative vehicles have you seen financial services companies using to create momentum around their products?