Internet marketing campaign for iDEAL, the Dutch standard for safe online payments
This was one of the most successful internet marketing campaigns done by Novocortex. Rabobank Netherlands asked us in 2005 to manage market introduction of a new online payment standard, called iDEAL. iDEAL was based on a simple idea – connecting online shops with internet banking applications of major Dutch banks. Novocortex was responsible for marketing iDEAL to web shops. The objective set by Rabobank was to get 150 shops on board in the first year. We managed to convince over 400 internet stores to connect to iDEAL via Rabobank by the end of 2005.
01 The iDEAL campaign strategy
Our objective was to convince web shop owners to connect to iDEAL via Rabobank, and not via other participating banks. We decided to start the campaign well in advance of the product launch to be ahead of other banks, in order to position Rabobank as the driving fource behind iDEAL. And we established connections with tech blogs and IT forums, the most popular social media in 2005, in order to engage web shop owners and software developers in our campaign. Other banks didn’t use blogs in their communication at that time.
02 The iDEAL marketing instruments
We informed tech blogs (Marketingfacts, Dutch Cowboys) and forums (Tweakers, osCommerce) about latets iDEAL news. We organized a congress on e-payments in order to get feedback on product development of iDEAL. We developed the iDEAL payment plug-in for osCommerce, the most popular open source software for internet shops, in collaboration with members of the osCommerce forum. We created a webpage on the site of Rabobank for payment service providers to help web shops with installation and integration of iDEAL. We facilitated online donations with iDEAL to help victims of the Pakistan earthquake, and collected more than 695.000 euros in two weeks.
Social media marketing and search advertising helped us to build a database with over 1.500 addresses of Dutch web shops. This allowed Rabobank to be the first in the market to announce its iDEAL fees and 3 versions of the iDEAL software targeted to small shops, large internet stores and payment service providers. Other banks could only follow.
03 The iDEAL Shopping Centre
In order to further differentiate Rabobank from other banks, we decided to spend part of our advertising budget on additional iDEAL services for web shops, such as URLinked and the iDEAL Shopping Centre (iDEAL Winkelplein in Dutch). URLinked offered consumers direct links to web shops from the internet banking system of Rabobank. The iDEAL Shopping Centre was aimed to generate traffic to participating web shops and to convince consumers that shopping online is as safe and easy as in the real city.
04 Results
The main campaign objective was to get 150 web shops connected to iDEAL via Rabobank in the first year after the market launch. In 6 months, there were more than 400 internet shops that chose Rabobank as their iDEAL services provider (about 40% market share). In 2007, the market share of iDEAL online payments exceeded the share of credit card payments. And 75% of online consumers considered iDEAL to be a very safe payment method (source: Thuiswinkel monitor by Blauw Research).
05 Credits and awards
The iDEAL Shopping Centre developed by Novocortex and Astronim received Gold of the Kiev International Advertising Festival in the Online Services category, as well as Silver Hammer at the Baltic Sea advertising festival and Golden Apple in Russia.
See other award winning digital campaigns by Novocortex. Learn more about internet strategy development projects done by Novocortex.