2013 Paybefore Awards: Best Virtual or Digital Program
Best use of virtual or digital delivery associated with a prepaid program or payments, such as gaming, virtual currency and P2P.
Best in Category: $10 Starbucks Card eGift Living Social Deal
Delivered 1.5 million Starbucks Card eGifts on Sept. 4-5, 2012, powered by CashStar’s eGifting platform and LivingSocial’s daily deals engine.
- Starbucks
- LivingSocial
- CashStar
CashStar, LivingSocial and Starbucks teamed up in early September 2012 to issue the largest volume of eGift cards ever—1.5 million in just 29 hours—which contributed to a LivingSocial Guinness World record. CashStar is the Portland, Maine-based eGift platform provider and LivingSocial is a daily deals engine. If we need to tell you what Starbucks is … well, we just won’t go there.
The LivingSocial deal, $5 for a $10 Starbucks Card eGift, was announced in a Reuters interview at 1 p.m. EDT on Sept. 4, creating a platform for wide-scale media coverage. Later that day, marketing to Starbucks’ and LivingSocial’s Facebook and Twitter communities began.
Consumers who purchased the eGift offer were motivated to share the deal with friends to create the ultimate opportunity—getting their $10 Starbucks Card eGift for free. All it took was three friends to also purchase the deal.
The promotion burned up the social media wires: There were 214,000 “shares” by LivingSocial Facebook fans and 25,000 retweets by LivingSocial followers on Twitter.
The goal of the deal was to leverage the element of surprise along with restricted availability to familiarize consumers with the simplicity and convenience of the Starbucks Card eGift. Not only did consumers get a good deal to support their Starbucks’ habit, the eGift had convenience features built in, too. Purchasers could transfer the value of the $10 eGift to their registered Starbucks Cards and manage the process through the Starbucks mobile app.
According to CashStar, the success of the LivingSocial deal demonstrates new uses, new markets and new opportunities for virtual gifting.
Winner: paysafecard
- paysafecard group
paysafecard is a prepaid solution for Internet payments. Over the past 13 years, paysafecard has become one of Europe’s leading alternative online payment solutions and now operates in 29 European countries, the U.S., Canada, Argentina and Mexico. Target customers include cash-based consumers who need a way to shop online and those who are concerned about exposing bank details or bank card information during online transactions—a demonstrable concern, particularly in non-U.S. markets.
More than 4,000 Web retailers accept paysafecard, which is a nonreloadable prepaid e-voucher with a 16-digit PIN. paysafecard e-vouchers are available at more than 450,000 global POS outlets, including retail chains, gas stations and grocery stores.
Since the company was formed in 2000, it’s experienced year-over-year growth of 220 percent and the company currently has more than 2 million active users.
So, who benefits from paysafecard? The company points to online retailers and consumers: online retailers because paysafecard expands their audience to include those who couldn’t or wouldn’t shop online, provides a revenue stream from e-voucher sales and increases customer loyalty. And consumers, because paysafecard is available free of charge, they can’t spend more than they have and can shop online safely.
paysafecard also won Best-in-Category in Paybefore Awards Europe for Best Consumer Value.
Winner: Zynga Serve Rewards
- American Express
- Zynga
Zynga Serve Rewards is a reloadable prepaid digital account that offers cardholders in-game rewards (typically game currency) for popular Zynga games, including FarmVille, CastleVille, Zynga Poker, among others. Customers earn rewards when they use their accounts to conduct certain activities, such as making purchases or reloads.
The prepaid account is core to Zynga Serve Rewards as the central piece of functionality around which American Express built the consumer-facing incentives, quests and game experience, and it enables digital payments as well as traditional payments.
This groundbreaking loyalty program targets Zynga game players (a universe of more than 253 million gamers playing monthly) with the lure of progressing through their games faster and getting exclusive experiences and limited edition virtual goods. And, the underlying account includes the full benefits of an American Express product, including worldwide acceptance, no monthly/annual fees and purchase protections. The marketing strategy combines Zynga game mechanics (such as in-game “quests”) to drive account acquisition and use, and traditional financial services marketing.
For Zynga, the program drives engagement, loyalty and customer satisfaction. And for American Express, the program delivers on the company’s goal to open its products to a wider demographic audience. American Express is the issuer, processor and program manager for Zynga Serve Rewards.
