In June 2008 Chase launched an innovative marketing program called Chase Exclusive that provided preferred offers to its existing online checking account customers. The campaign promoted “better rates,” “more rewards,” and “bigger discounts” to this group of consumers. Undoubtedly the aim of this program was to increase customer retention and grow the bank’s overall share of wallet amongst its consumer base across multiple product lines.

Michael Cleary, head of product development and marketing for Chase’s consumer bank stated: “We created Chase Exclusives to deepen our relationship by delivering benefits that are real, quantifiable, and immediate.” (Source: Payment News) Cleary later goes on to say that its checking consumers could save $2,000 or more by choosing Chase, rather than a competing bank, for a financial product such as a mortgage, home equity loan, or a CD. The business case for this campaign is predicated on driving high adoption amongst Chase’s customer base for these preferred offers. The cost of providing preferred terms could in fact be less expensive for Chase than the marketing costs associated with driving new consumers towards the bank’s products.

At this point you are probably wondering: Is the Chase Exclusive campaign working? Compete analyzed this campaign from an online perspective. Despite a direct link from Chase’s home page to a dedicated “Chase Exclusives” page (see above), the bank has not yet driven meaningful online traffic to this page. The number of weekly online visitors to the Chase Exclusive page can be seen below.

The campaign is still in its early stages, so it is very likely that site traffic will increase in the future, however at this point the campaign is not driving significant online traffic. This actually might be by design, as visitors to the Chase Exclusives page cannot directly enter into an online application for these preferred product offerings, but rather get redirected to a branch location tool. It appears that shoppers need to go offline to receive the “Chase Exclusives” offers. It will be interesting to monitor whether traffic to this site grows in the future. One could conclude that some visitors to the Chase Exclusives site likely wanted to purchase a product online as opposed to being driven offline. Is Chase losing application volume by not readily enabling an online enrollment process from the “Chase Exclusives” page? Time will tell.

About eighteen months ago we wrote about the emergence of Zillow.com - the innovative real estate site that allows one to obtain a “Zestimate” of a residential property’s market value based on the company’s proprietary formula. While most people associate the Zillow brand primarily with home value estimation services, the company has increasingly expanded its product offerings.

In April of this year Zillow launched a mortgage service called “Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.” The marketplace enables consumers to create a request for a purchase mortgage, home equity loan, or refinance loan. However, unlike other home loan aggregators, Zillow enables the potential borrower to remain completely anonymous throughout the process. For instance, consumers are not required to enter their social security #, address, or even their name at any point during the online application experience. Borrowers ultimately receive loan offers from multiple lenders sent directly to an anonymous Zillow account. Clearly Zillow believes that by keeping the application process anonymous users will be more likely to fill out an application to gauge potential home loan financing options without fear of being inundated with marketing solicitation from lenders.

At this point you probably are wondering what type of traction the “Mortgage Marketplace” is gaining with consumers. As the chart below illustrates, traffic to this section of Zillow’s site has steadily grown from the time of product launch.

It is clear that this offering is an increasingly important piece of Zillow’s overall portfolio, as ~25% of total site visitors in May went to the Mortgage Marketplace. It certainly will be interesting to keep an eye on the rate of consumer adoption for the Mortgage Marketplace in the months ahead.

The rivalry between the Red Sox and Yankees is certainly one of the oldest and most heated in all of sports. Not only do the two teams fiercely compete on the field, but they also frequently engage in a war of words off the field. The latest illustration that there is no love lost between these two teams were the comments made by Hank Steinbrenner, Senior Vice President of the Yankees and son of the team’s principal owner George Steinbrenner, in a recent interview with the New York Times Play Magazine.

When asked about the Red Sox, Steinbrenner stated: “Red Sox nation? What a bunch of (expletive) that is. That was a creation of the Red Sox and ESPN, which is filled with Red Sox fans. Go anywhere in America and you won’t see Red Sox hats and jackets, you’ll see Yankees hats and jackets. This is a Yankee country. We’re going to put the Yankees back on top and restore the universe to order.” John Henry, the principal owner of the Red Sox, responded by sending Steinbrenner an official membership card for Red Sox Nation.

After reading Steinbrenner’s comments I wondered whether he was right that Yankee nation was larger than Red Sox nation. It didn’t seem efficient to go around the country counting the number of Yankee and Red Sox hats and jackets, so I decided to analyze online consumer behavior to uncover which “nation” is truly dominant. The chart below illustrates the number of monthly unique visitors to each team’s website from March 2007 through February 2008.

A couple of things jump out from this chart.

• First, the unique visitors to each team’s home page are remarkably similar with an average monthly difference in traffic of only 89,000 people.
• Second, the Yankees generated more unique visitors than the Red Sox in nine of the last twelve months (as a Red Sox fan this pains me to admit).
• Third, the post-season results of each team had a direct impact on site traffic. The Red Sox site steadily garnered increased monthly traffic from August to October, as the team went deep into the playoffs culminating with a World Series championship. The Yankees site, in contrast, experienced a downward trend in visitors during the same period, as the NY squad lost in the first round of post season play (much to the despair of all of us up here in Boston).

So what does this all mean to our original question of which “nation” is bigger? It looks to me that the “nations” are approximately the same size, with potentially a slight edge to the Yankees in a world where both teams are performing equally on the field. However, given that the Red Sox have won two World Series rings in the past four years and the Yankees have not won a championship since 2000, we are in the golden age of Red Sox baseball. Thus, at least during the post-season, Red Sox nation is BIGGER than Yankee nation. For better or worse, those pink hats will not go away until the Sox stop winning championships.

What signals the arrival of spring to you? For some, it is when flowers bloom, golf courses open, or the Red Sox season begins. For others, spring officially kicks off with the annual chore of calculating and paying one’s taxes. We here at Compete wondered: are consumers increasingly going online to pay their taxes? To answer this question, we fielded a survey (n=660) of our two million member panel. When asked what method they used to fill out and submit their tax form in 2005, 21% of people indicated they utilized the web.

When asked what method they plan to use for their 2006 return, 22% cited the web.

Clearly a 1% growth rate is not exactly a signal of a vast shift to the internet for tax preparation. However, a clickstream analysis of key online tax providers illustrates that shopping activity is increasing year over year. What tax related sites are gaining the most consumer interest you might ask?

IRS.gov generated significantly more site traffic than any private online tax provider, yet its traffic is growing at a slower rate. Unique visitors in January to Turbotax.com and HRblock.com* increased significantly year over year (18% and 11% respectively) while unique visitors to TaxAct.com declined substantially.

What does this all mean? It appears that people are increasingly going to the sites of established tax preparation brands as part of the filing process, but a significant percentage of the population still prefer the council of a professional. Adoption of online tax preparation resources will undoubtedly expand over time as sites continue to enhance functionality and usability.

*Includes TaxCut.com

Many of you might have heard of Zillow.com – the innovative real estate focused site that allows one to obtain a “Zestimate” of a residential property’s market value based on the company’s proprietary formula. However, what you might not know is that Zillow recently unveiled a significant enhancement to its site that enables home owners and real estate agents to list homes for sale. Unlike other listing services, Zillow’s new offering is completely free. It even enables home owners and real estate agents to add pictures and detailed property descriptions at no additional charge.

One new feature that we find particularly interesting is Zillow’s “Make Me Move” functionality. Through this service home owners can set a “Make Me Move” price and have potential buyers contact them anonymously via email. Zillow believes this tool will allow sellers to accurately assess demand for their home prior to actually putting the property on the market as well as provide a mechanism to capitalize upon an unexpected opportunity to sell at a great price.

It is too early to tell whether these enhancements will ultimately have a significant impact on Zillow’s site traffic. Unique visitors to Zillow.com have steadily declined from 2.3 million in May to 1.5 million in November, but most of that can be attributed to seasonal trends in the real estate market. When compared against competitors housevalues.com, homegain.com, and realestate.com it is evident that Zillow has quickly emerged as a major player in this market, as it only trailed homegain.com in unique visitors in the month of November.

Get SnapShots of sites mentioned in this post:

• zillow.com
• housevalues.com
• homegain.com
• realestate.com