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Update; the role of email for Banks

email and its role hit me twice in the last few minutes, so thought I would update the things I have seen lately. 

William over at VanCity asked about the role of email.

I don’t pretend to know it all, but the reading and examples I have seen, point to email as a relationship tool. Pertinent communication that is useful to the receiver. Anything marketing related at all should still meet those criteria, but always with the opt in/out preferences in the hands of the customer. I’ll do up a post with the links I have seen on this, including a good one I read just a few minutes ago.

In terms of email as a marketing/ acquisition tool, clearly the landscape has changed inexorably.  This interview with Justin Cook from BorderWare Technologies Inc covers it well, and he puts it this way:

Marketers as understanding that ‘batch and blast’ tactics just don’t produce the same return as highly relevant targeted emails ‘conversations’

He talks about email “marketing” as appropriate for subscribers, and absolutely not associated with rented lists.  He speaks about the high impact of even a small number of reported spam infractions. 

He has this advice:

  1. Ask: “Who reads or will read our marketing e-mails?”
  2.  Ask: “Do they perceive value in our e-mail content, that it can actually help them perform their job better?”
  3. Build a working opt-in process, and highlight it on every page of your website.
  4. Build a working opt-out process; make sure it’s very easy to opt out if people want to.
  5. Get authenticated.
  6. Don’t spam.

Other comments on this topic here, from the same source as above, AIMS.

UPDATE:

Here is an even more sinister reason (phishing life threats) that emails from unknown and untrusted sources are treated with, at best, suspicion.

And, final update – this excellent post from Ron sums up email and relevance to loyalty well.

Relevance to Bankwatch:

Broadly email is accepted as a relationship tool, but hated for spam.  The implication is that either the customer opts in, or has an agreed relationship with you that implies email is acceptable.

 

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5 thoughts on “Update; the role of email for Banks”

  1. Thanks Colin. I wonder how many FIs will move almost completely away from this channel in favour of a combination of online banking messaging, newsletters, RSS subscriptions and DMs as a way of promoting our products and services. It’s better than risking that people will mistake our genuine emails for phishing or fall victim to phishing done in our names.

    Something I’m thinking about a lot.

  2. I think if we’re relying on the social conscience of marketers not to spam customers we may be doomed to clogged inboxes.

    Email has one practical use for a bank, in my opinion: alerting the customer. In many cases customers have been trained not to trust what they see in emails purporting to come from banks, so its questionable as a content delivery method. Instead, email should be used to notify the customer that they have content waiting in a secure site, or at a short URL (not a link!).

    Funny how most other companies have already figured this out and avoid email marketing; banks are just now getting around to this as if it’s a fresh debate.

  3. Dan’s right, FI marketers love email because it worked. Past tense. And it works just well enough now to justify keeping it around. RSS should become the email blast killer. But that’s not happening for at least a few years.

    Does my PFI have my PEA (primary email address)? No way. That’s reserved for real people who want to have a real conversation.

  4. Trey’s comment that his PEA is “reserved for real people who want to have a real conversation” could not have been said better.

    What’s sad is that the reason he’s come to that view has nothing to do with email (the technology), but the way people (ie, banks and other firms) have used email.

    This may sound like a trivial distinction, but I don’t believe it is. If banks (and CUs — I guess I should say FIs) made smarter use of email, then Trey might not be as hesitant as he is to give his PFI his PEA.

    My point: If email could talk, it would utter that famous line from the Monty Python and The Holy Grail movie: “I’m not dead yet.”

    And it’s not too late for FIs to start making changes — there’s a whole new generation of financial services customers coming down the line who WANT to have real conversations with real people from the FIs they do business with.

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