Given the high degree of market saturation in the credit card industry, card issuers need to focus less on acquiring new customers and more on building profitable, long-term relationships with their current ones. Cardholders will be most loyal to financial institutions who can demonstrate, with relevant customized communications that they truly understand their customers' needs and are interested in developing a relationship with them. By leveraging their customer data, issuers can create unique and meaningful communications that lead to increased retention and more profitable relationships.

"First Data's Strategic Communications Solution is a suite of services that can help issuers improve usage, satisfaction and profitability," said David Bailis, president, First Data Financial Institution Services. "We understand that our clients succeed through the relationships they build. That's why we've created an unequaled solution set that helps them connect with their customers in a totally new way. This revolutionary solution set empowers our clients to communicate on an individual level with their customers across all communication channels - dramatically increasing customer loyalty, reducing costs and significantly increasing revenues."

"Keeping with First Data's tradition of delivering the right technology, at the right time, for the right use, we've assembled a series of services that will allow bankcard and retail issuers to transform their monthly cardholder statement and other customer correspondence from a static form to an interactive direct marketing tool. In addition to card issuers, this solution set is perfect for any company that is looking to better communicate with their customers," Bailis added.

First Data's Strategic Communications Solution helps issuers build loyalty with an individual, getting beyond the traditional rewards points system. By leveraging every point of contact (e.g. statement, email, text messaging) they can turn every interaction into an opportunity to develop a deeper, more mutually satisfactory and profitable relationship with the cardholder.

Strategic Communications Solutions is the integration of four separate First Data products. Together, they can help clients increase revenue by providing unparalleled cross-marketing opportunities, while reducing customer service and marketing expenses and using the most cost-effective communication channels.

Correspondence Director - a state-of-the-art composition platform, offering advanced correspondence formatting capabilities, for both paper and electronic;

DecisionQuest - patented item-level decisioning enabling issuers to customize communications to each customer by offer, communication device and product;

IntelliColor - full color printing combined with on-the-fly MICR printing as well as selective perforation capabilities - an industry first

eMessenger - multi-channel electronic delivery solution capable of converting virtually all customer communications to electronic format (e.g. web, email, text messaging)