A bank card (credit / debit) is so much more than a tool you
simply use to pay your bills or buy groceries. It empowers you to
live your life to the fullest – from booking your dream holiday to
dining out at the hottest new restaurant.
Flipping this perception is what Emirates NBD (ENBD) wanted to
achieve and together with Horizontal Digital ENBD MORE was born –
a mobile rewards programme app that offers its credit cardholders
exclusive access to thousands of hyper-personalized retail,
entertainment and travel offers, enabling them to live their best
lives.
ENBD is the largest consumer bank in the Middle East and one of
the most recognized brands in the region. In an “overbanked”
market like the UAE, they already control 25% of the consumer
credit card market and a substantial portion of the debit card
market, but in order to further expand that footprint, ENBD needed
to create a new digital experience that no other bank could
offer.y
Following the successful launch of Liv., a ground-breaking
digital-only lifestyle bank targeting millennials and Gen Z
prospects, ENBD approached Horizontal to orchestrate a unique
customer experience that would change the way their cardholders
feel about their bank cards. Powered by Sitecore Commerce, the
goal of the app was to add MORE value to customers’ lives,
building loyalty and boosting their engagement with the brand to
ultimately increase spending.
A plethora of new marketplaces and Direct-to-Consumer (D2C)
commerce platforms sprung up during the pandemic offering a
seamless, highly-personalized and real-time experience that
consumers have now become accustomed to. Against this backdrop,
non-retail brands that haven’t played in the ecommerce space can
find it hard to compete.
ENBD had an existing reward-based incentive programme that offered
discounts, but in the absence of a sophisticated commerce platform
delivered into the hands of their customers via a mobile app that
was powered by real-time data, customers weren’t always getting
offers when and where they wanted them. In addition to this,
cardholders weren’t necessarily aware of what benefits/discounts
were available to them based on their card type.
In the absence of a sophisticated commerce platform powered by
real-time data, Horizontal created an app offering a highly
personalized customer experience, increasing their engagement,
while enticing prospects with the promise of exciting lifestyle
perks that no other bank in the region could offer.
If it’s Friday night and you’re looking for somewhere to eat with
friends who love Chinese food, you’ll be interested in relevant,
real-time offers for nearby Asian restaurants, not a discount for
a gym on the other side of the city.
In order to maintain interest and drive engagement, the intuitive
MORE app ‘learns’ the preferences and interests of each individual
from food and restaurant type to budget and location so the
customer gets the offer that best suits their tastes. It also does
this for other types of leisure preferences, matching shopping
deals, flights, hotels and ticket offers to customers.
Horizontal achieved this deep level of personalization by
harnessing the powerful personalization capabilities of Sitecore
to create an app that assimilates existing information on the
preferences customers select when downloading the app, their
in-app behaviors and their geo-location, to put the right deal in
front of the right customer at the right time.
Since this kind of implementation had never been done on Sitecore
Commerce 9.3, Horizontal’s long-standing relationship with
Sitecore helped overcome development hurdles to support
customization and deployment efforts, realizing the vision for CX
in the MORE app.
ENBD partnered with premium brands like Amazon, MasterCard,
ClearTrip, Headout, and Musafir on MORE to enable customers to
live their best life with deals on dining, shops, flight and hotel
bookings, as well as tickets to shows.
The app was recently updated to include a new “Shop by Amazon”
experience that lets clients shop for groceries, personal care,
beauty products and electronics using their ENBD card for cashback
and rewards. Customers will also be able to purchase Mastercard
gift cards for special occasions.
To keep things fresh and engaging every time a customer opens the
app, the user interface (UI) shows a new list of personalized
deals interspersed with lists related to customer preferences. App
users can also enable automated notifications on MORE so they're
the first to know when a new deal or offer drops.
For brands that are not traditional retailers, utilizing a
partner’s commerce-as-a-service offering helps to de-risk an
adventure into ecommerce. With MORE, Horizontal is the merchant of
record and handles all the behind-the-scenes operations from
fulfillment to payments and promotions, freeing ENDB up to focus
on what it does best: servicing banking customers.
By embracing a customer-first mentality with MORE, ENBD stands out
as the only bank in the region that provides customers with an
intelligently personalized experience that enhances their
individual lifestyles — while also building loyalty and expanding
market share for its bank card business.
Building a commerce-as-a-service solution has provided a path to
address a gap by offering a simple commerce experience for almost
any purchase the customer wants to make. It is revolutionary in
the way the bank can build better relationships with its customers
and this is evidenced with increased time on app, return visits
and downloads, and ultimately happy customers.