Advertising & Promotion

Southwest’s Ding Marketing Direct to the Desktop

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Desktop Presence

Southwest_ding_icon Southwest Airlines, the cheeky U.S. discounter, has just launched a desktop alert system, aptly called Ding, that bypasses the entire spam-clogged email system and delivers alerts to the Windows system tray. It works much like WeatherBug, the popular weather application with more than 10 million users. Southwest_desktop_alerts

When a new fare becomes available, Southwest plays an audible tone and inserts an envelope over the Ding icon in the Windows system tray (see graphic right–click to enlarge). Users can click on the icon to launch the Southwest website and act on the special offer.

Analysis
You’d have to be a real Southwest frequent-flyer nut to want the airline dinging you with messages every day. But since most companies make 80% of their profits from 20% of their customers, this is probably a savvy move from the airline.

Certainly, Southwest knows what it’s doing. And since they do not sell tickets via other online travel services, they especially need this unique corridor to their best customers.

This approach could do wonders for a bank’s online delivery. Instead of trying to wind your way through your customer’s clogged in-box with alerts and marketing messages, drop an account balance alert onto their desktop every day. See Online Banking Report #85, Grabbing Desktop Mindshare, for more information on delivering financial services directly to the desktop.

—JB

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Competitive Comparisons of Services (e.g. Mortgage Rates)

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, IndyMac, Service

Indy_mac_click_to_enlarge_2

There is one marketing technique that is much easier to do online than through other media — competitive comparisons.

In the old print world, you might be able to update your brochure or ad once or twice per year. Online you can do it in near-real-time.

We’ve long been a fan of IndyMac’s mortgage comparison, first writing about it in Online Banking Report #72 (June 2001). The mortgage lender shows the total mortgage cost at various major competitors, even daring to include examples where it’s not the lowest overall price.

These competitive price comparisons are great, and if you consistently have lower prices, then you should use this approach.

But what about companies that compete on service more than price? After all, most consumers aren’t going to choose a bank, simply to save a buck a month on fees.

Idea
If your service is markedly better than your competition, create a comparison chart showing your service standards and capabilities stacked up against the competition.

Even better, hire an independent researcher to document search times, wait times, response times, resolution times, and so on, and post them to your website on a frequent basis. Not only will this impress prospects, its excellent reinforcement to your current customers and employees that you are measurably better than the rest.

— JB

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Instant Online Bank Account Opening

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Sales Techniques

WSJ.com – Banks Speed Process For Opening Online Accounts

The Wall Street Journal reports today in its Personal Finance section on the plans at Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Wachovia, and HSBC to offer instant online checking account signup later this year.

Analysis
While it makes sense for these national powerhouses to enable instant account signup, smaller financial institutions needn’t feel they must follow suit.

Bank accounts, especially checking, aren’t impulse purchases like the consumer goods sold at other online retailers. Most bank customers won’t mind if their checking account is opened by the end of the week.

More important than instant signup are clear explanations of what happens next, email status reports as the process progresses, and clear privacy and security guarantees. A personal telephone call or email followup from a new account rep wouldn’t hurt either.

— JB

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Making Online Banking Fun

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, ING Direct, Rewards Programs

Is banking ever fun? Not really. The best you can hope for is that it’s "pleasant."

How about online banking? It might have been classified as fun the first couple times you tried it, but it’s not fun anymore unless you happen to have lots of money piling up in your account.

Is it possible to keep it fun? Yes, but you’ll have to continuously innovate. As Seth Godin points out in Free Prize Inside: The Next BIG Marketing Idea, "The price of WOW keeps rising." In other words, what impressed your customers today, no longer impresses them tomorrow.

One innovation that we’d like to see more widely used is rewards programs for online delivery. It doesn’t have to be as expensive as frequent flier programs, more like the free Cokes you can win from time-to-time under the bottle cap.

Examples
1. ING Direct has a monthly raffle for its customers who have opted to receive email statements (which automatically shuts off the paper). Every quarter one of its 2 million customers wins a plasma TV, another wins a laptop, and a third wins a digital camera or portable DVD player. The total prize pool is about $5,000 per quarter, which amounts to one cent per customer per year, less than 1/500 of the cost of mailing a monthly statement.

2. PFF Bank & Trust (Pomona, CA) is running a bill payment usage sweeps during the first three months of the year. The promotion is advertised with eye-Pff_sweeps_1 catching graphics on its home page. Every time a customer pays a bill they are entered into the sweepstakes for a cool electronic "toy," January is the iPod (of course), February is a digital camera and printer, and March is a 19" LCD television. The total prize pool is just $2000 for the entire promotion.

— JB

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Citibank’s iPod Offer — Too Much of a Good Thing?

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Citibank

Citi_ipodForget about toasters.

Citibank is handing out iPod minis to new online banking customers provided they fund their new checking accounts with at least $2500 and pay at least two bills per month for a year.

Analysis
This raises the ante for online account acquisition. It's a pricey premium, even for Citibank, which has long been aggressive at its website, giving away eye-catching premiums such as DVD players or $100 cash.

There is no doubt that giving away the ultra-hot iPod mini will drive new accounts. But it may be over the top for a checking account offer, even by Manhattan standards.

How many 20- and 30-somethings will game the system just to qualify for the iPod? An even bigger concern is existing customers closing their accounts and reopening online in order to pick up an iPod.

But Citi knows what it is doing, and they must figure the new accounts, along with the publicity, makes the risk worthwhile. It will be interesting to see what this book of accounts looks like a year or two from now.

We think most financial institutions, at least those outside the NYC metro area, should keep premiums in the $50 to $75 range. It's enough to generate interest and applications, but not enough to create a buzz at FatWallet with people virtually salivating at the prospect of picking up low-cost iPod at the expense of a huge bank.

Aside: Kudos to Citi for posting a link to the Red Cross for tsunami relief.

If you'd like to learn more about the financial interactive marketing efforts, check out the Interactive Financial Marketing Database from our sister publication, the Online Banking Report.

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Where’s the Holiday Bank Marketing?

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, AmSouth, National City, PNC Bank

These days most major online retailers and consumer sites dress up their websites for the holidays.

Unless, they are bank sites.

Each year we surf major banks looking for holiday happenings. We were surprised again this year to find little creativity on bank home pages. On Dec. 21, none of the largest 30 banks in the U.S. had a major holiday theme running.

Two banks, National City (#11) and LaSalle (#15) were running prepaid gift card banners. And two others were running small holiday-themed promotions running, AmSouth Bank (#27) and PNC (#20).

PNC is running a tongue-in-cheek look at the cost of purchasing the items in the popular holiday song, The Twelve Days of Christmas. This year the total cost was $17,300, up 2.4% since last year. The bank has been tracking the cost for 20 years and provides a long-term look at the price increases. It’s very clever, providing valuable publicity and a positive impression of the bank.

AmSouth Bank has an interesting holiday promotion, one that ties directly to online banking a bill payment. Website users can personalize a holiday greeting card and send it to anyone with an email address. Users are encouraged, but NOT required, to use the cards as a notification of a check being sent through AmSouth’s bill payment system. The default "personal" message even says:

A monetary gift is being sent through AmSouth Bank, please look for it in your mail in the next 7 days.

Greeting card users do NOT have to be bank customers. AmSouth doesn’t say whether it is capturing email addresses. We would have to assume not.

Action Items

Add a holiday promotion for your 2005 marketing plan. It’s a great way to jazz up your website for the holidays and you can include a sales promotion at the same time, especially for prepaid cards or gift checks.

— JB

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If you’d like to learn more about the financial interactive marketing efforts, check out the Interactive Financial Marketing Database from our sister publication, the Online Banking Report.

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E*Trade using $175 New Checking Account Bonus

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, E*Trade

Although it takes some work to get the whole thing, E*TradeBank’s $175 new-account bonus is the richest we’ve seen for a new checking account. Here are the bonus levels (see file for download below):

$75 Open a checking account with at least $1000
$75 Begin a direct deposit of at least $1000 per month
$25 Pay 2 bills online within 60 days
$175 Total

For screenshots and the fine print, download the following file:

Download may_21_financial_innovations_etrade.doc

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Local Option Boosts Google AdWords Appeal for Financial Institutions

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Google, Search Engine Marketing

Now that Google has begun identifying search engine users by their IP addresses, advertising via Google has become a whole lot more lucrative for community banks and credit unions.
Financial institutions now have the ability to target their keyword ads via city, state, or MSA.
See OBR 95 for a full report on search engine marketing.

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