Please Help Me Decide

If your customers come to your web site regularly, you can use your site for upselling and cross-selling. That's not news. What is surprising is what an awful job some companies do of this.

Take American Express, an outfit that should have consumer marketing down to a science. I have an Amex card and I visit their site regularly to manage my account. The last few times I've been there, I've gotten a message that I've been pre-approved to upgrade to a Rewards Plus Gold card.

I was curious what I would get for that, so I clicked and started reading about the benefits. Double reward points on everyday purchases! Fee waived the first year! I use the reward points to get extra frequent flier miles, so this was interesting.

Here's the problem; while there's an exhaustive list of benefits, it's missing crucial information. For example, the site tells me that I get double rewards for things like gas, groceries, and at the drugstore - but only specific participating merchants. Which ones? It doesn't say.

And the annual fee that's being waived - what is that after the first year? No information.

Now, does someone at Amex really think I'm going to apply for a card that will have an unknown fee after the first year and which may or may not give me extra rewards, depending on whether the places I shop participate?

It would be so easy to give this information and close the sale. But it's not there. So I simply abandoned the process, and that's that. Opportunity lost.

If you want your customers to buy upgrades and additional services, give them the information they need to make a decision. Don't tease them and then ask them to buy without disclosing the details; they're not going to do it.