American Express Co. is continuing to extend its presence in social media with a new online community developed with interactive online travel community FlyerTalk that rewards cardholders for sharing their best travel tips.
AmEx did a soft launch of its Top Flyer online community earlier this year and began promoting it as it gained popularity, Pepper Evans Roukas, the card company’s vice president of digital brand and social media, tells PaymentsSource.
“We decided to launch Top Flyer to connect with our cardholders in the social-media space, much like we did with Foursquare,” Roukas says.
AmEx launched a pilot with social media locator Foursquare Labs Inc. in March at the South By Southwest music and technology festival (
The move into social media is important to AmEx, which will continue efforts to reach cardholders where they are online, Roukas notes. “We’re going to fish where the fish are and communicate with our cardholders the way they want to be communicated with,” she says.
The Top Flyer program is providing cardholders the chance to win 10,000 Membership Rewards bonus points or a $50 AmEx gift card each month through the rest of the year. Each month, AmEx holds a contest in which the top 10 participating community members with the most online “likes” on their travel-tip posts win the points or gift card, Roukas explains, noting members of the Flyer Talk online community vote for winners by “liking” the posts.
AmEx is marketing the online community through its partner FlyerTalk. FlyerTalk is a central online hub where leisure and business travelers congregate and share travel information, Brent Conver, FlyerTalk director, said in a release. The partnership is a good move because AmEx’s services meet the customized needs of both business and leisure travelers, he noted.
AmEx also is marketing Top Flyer through its various card-product channels, including the AmEx Gold card, says Roukas.
“The good news is we feel we’ve struck a chord with our cardholders and potential cardholders,” says Roukas. “The community is definitely going to be evolving.”
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