• by Tanya Gazdik , July 11, 2011

Chase Card Services is offering its Sapphire card loyalty members access to an exclusive golf experience hosted by PGA Tour champion Stewart Cink.

Chase, a division of JPMorgan Chase & Co., first tested a golf experience last year with several PGA Tour golfers and with a few different formats, says Sean O'Reilly, general manager, Chase Card Services.

This year's program includes a series of five events in cities across the U.S. in which Chase Sapphire cardmembers can participate by using their Chase Ultimate Rewards credit card rewards points.

Sapphire members tend to be affluent and well educated, O'Reilly says.

"Golf is certainly a sweet spot for this customer segment," O'Reilly tells Marketing Daily. "It's something that can be accessed all around the country so the accessibility is very good. It's certainly an area that people both watch on TV and participate in."

Cardmembers in the geographic area where an upcoming event will be held will be notified via personal invitation. The event is also publicized on the Chase Ultimate Rewards Web site. Sales open up on a designated day where cardmembers can trade in their points.

The golf experience packages include a walking clinic with Cink, swing analysis using V1 Golf video technology, advice from professional Callaway golf instructors, rounds of golf at some of the nation's most prestigious courses and a chance to challenge Cink in a "closest to pin" contest. Chase partners with golf equipment manufacturers such as Callaway to offer prizes for the contest, O'Reilly says.

Cardmembers can purchase the experience for 15,000 points, which could cost as little as $150 with cardmembers earning multiple points per dollar for travel purchases through the Chase Web site or via purchases from the Ultimate Rewards Mall. "We wanted to provide an experience that's a good value for their points, is really aspirational, and created that envy that we wanted to have that they feel like they get more value by being a Chase Sapphire cardholder," O'Reilly says.

This year's first event was held June 7 in Dallas. Upcoming experiences will be held July 25 in Philadelphia (which sold out in two hours), followed by Chicago on Sept. 13, Atlanta on Oct. 10 and Los Angeles at a date TBD before year's end.

Only about 75-100 cardmembers can sign up for the event in each city, O'Reilly says. "When you get up to the multi-hundreds of people, it doesn't feel as intimate anymore," he says. "We wanted to make this a little smaller and little more impactful. People leave feeling like they had a really unique PGA tour golf experience. That's absolutely what we are trying to do. We want folks to be able to say: 'This Chase Sapphire card 00 I get access to this and I don't with other cards.'"

The partnership with Cink ends at the end of this year, O'Reilly says. "We've gotten great feedback from customers so this is a program that we think has legs, but right now the commitment is through 2011."

Cink was a good fit for the program because not only is he accomplished, he is hugely popular with fans (he has over 1.2 million followers on Twitter alone), O'Reilly says. Cink really seems to enjoy interacting with fans, he adds.

"There's no real substitution for just how people will interact with the cardmembers," O'Reilly says. "So we're looking for folks who want to partner with us for the long run, but also are able to really understand the program that we've built and the value we trying to provide the customers but also just has that real natural human interaction with cardholders."

The golfer has won the British Open (2009), finished in the top three in each of the other three Major championships (The Masters, U.S. Open and PGA Championship) and notched six wins on the PGA TOUR.

Besides golf, the Chase Ultimate Rewards program also offers experiences in "passion" areas including culinary (food and wine), arts and culture (film), sports and active lifestyle (skiing and golf) as well as travel experiences.