NetBanker 2.0

Email: Bank of America's "Ring in the New Year" credit card balance

Here's a timely email from Bank of America, inviting its credit card customers to start the year off with a 3.99% balance-transfer offer. But the savings won't last long, since the rate resets after August 2007.

Here are the specs:

• Subject: Use your Bank of America® credit card today.
• From: Bank of America [[email protected]]
• To: [email protected]
• Product type: Credit card balance transfer
• Offer: 3.99% through August 2007 (cash advance fee NOT waived)
• Customer type: Mailed to current credit card customers
• Personalization: Full name and last 4 digits of account number

Screenshots:

Email body

Landing page

Holiday gift ideas from my bank?

Who'd have guessed banks would become a popular source of holiday gifts, other than good old-fashioned greenbacks of course?

Now that niche audiences can be targeted with online promotions during the holidays, many financial institutions are marketing financial products packaged as gifts. Prepaid Visa/MasterCards are the hottest item, but there's also potential in other areas. 

Gift cards
The second most popular gift item this year, after apparel, is expected to be prepaid cash cards. While the majority of the $20+ billion purchased will be direct from retailers, hundreds of banks and credit unions, such as Boeing Employees Credit Union (BECU) have joined the fray (see email below). If marketed right, financial institutions could gain a significant share of total sales. See our previous post here about integrating gift cards into online banking for more information.

Credit reports
Equifax is taking advantage of the giving season to market credit reports and/or FICO score gift certificates. The cost is $20 for a three-bureau credit report, $15 for the FICO score and explanation, or $30 for both (see email below). An even better gift would be a year of credit monitoring.

Investment accounts
For years, ShareBuilder has marketed "the gift of stock" during the holidays. This year, many of its partners, such as National City Bank, are offering a $50 gift card as a bonus for new accounts (see screenshot below). That way grandma and grandpa can give junior something that's good for him, an investment account for the future AND something he'll actually like, $50 to spend at the mall.

Piggy bank 2.0
For the younger set, ING Direct has for a year been selling The Savings Machine, a toy bank/calculator/ATM machine. And judging from the note on its website,* it's proving to be a popular Deal of the Month with a lower $17.95 price tag which includes free shipping (see inset). Several years ago, ING Direct reported nearly a million dollars in sales from its online merchandise store <shop.ingdirect.com>, an inexpensive way to get its name on the street.

*Note by the "Savings Machine" product page today: All orders placed from 4 Dec to 11 Dec will be shipped out the week of 11 Dec due to the large amount of backorders.

Boeing Employees Credit Union email: "BECU Gift Cards Make the Perfect Holiday Gift"

Boeing Employees Credit Union <becu.org> starts the holiday shopping season off with an email pitch for its prepaid MasterCard gift card. At $2.50 each, they are a bit less expensive than one hanging in Safeway for $4.95. However, the CU neglected to disclose dormant account fees, a significant issue with consumer advocates.

It's too bad you can't order the cards online. Ideally, members should be able to order with a single click (or two) right from within the online banking function. Maybe next year.

Screenshot (click to enlarge)

Classification

Type: Marketing email for prepaid debit
Product: Prepaid debit cash card (MasterCard)
Offer: None (cost is $2.50 plus the cash value)
Customer Type: Sent to nonmembers
Personalization: None
Links: None
Call to action: Toll-free phone, branch

Header

Date received: Tues 11/28/2006 6:08 AM
From: BECU [[email protected]]
To: Jim Bruene
Subject: BECU Gift Cards Make the Perfect Holiday Gift

Comments

• Even if gift cards cannot be ordered online, the credit union should include a link or URL for more information. Since many email recipients will automatically go to BECU's website to purchase, it would be helpful to specifically mention the cards cannot be ordered online, and why.
• The opt-out and CAN-SPAM disclosures could be better designed.
• Add disclosures for any monthly fees that kick in if the value is not used by a certain date.

Chase fails to design email for Outlook's preview pane

More than 70% of business-email users view most or all of their email messages in the preview pane.* Depending on screen size, resolution, and window sizing, the real estate available in the preview pane can be relatively small.

When designing messages, be sure to put the most important information in the upper-left corner to maximize visibility in the preview pane.

Here is a poorly designed email Chase sent to confirm posting of a credit card payment. It requires users to scroll right to view Chase's logo and log-in button. Here's how it looks on my 12-inch laptop screen running at 1024 x 768:

What not to do from Chase:

Better design from Bank of America graphics flush left:

(Note: BofA shows the last four digits of your account number; we changed them to xxxx in the screenshot above.)

Action Items
Even though it's just a routing email message, the poor layout makes it look like a phishing message. Chase could clean this up with just a few minutes of programming work. While they are at it, they should add a personal greeting and additional text disclosures to make it look less phishy. 

*For more information, read our Online Banking Report #129/139, Email Marketing for Financial Services.

Bank of America uses radio to drive website credit card applications

At 8:30 AM today, we heard an unusual advertisement on classic rock radio for the Bank of America Alaska Airlines affinity card.

It wasn't the ad itself that was so spectacular, although it's not every day that you hear credit cards being pitched on radio. And it wasn't the offer that made the ad stand out, although 20,000 bonus miles is a pretty good perk.

What made it memorable was the call to action, "visit myalaskacard.com." They didn't even bother to throw an 800 number into the spot.

It's hard to say whether a radio spot will prove cost effective, but using a memorable URL should help. It's far easier to remember than a telephone number, and prospective applicants can be immediately greeted with an effective sales pitch reinforcing the product benefits and bonus offer.

Analysis
However, once again BofA stumbles with its search engine support (see previous article). Searching on Google for "my Alaska card" brings up a single ad for a Web-based portal site, CreditStep.com (click on inset for closeup).

In fact, we tested every variation of "my" + "alaska" + "airlines" + "credit" + "card" and BofA was nowhere to be seen UNLESS we dropped "my" from the search query. Interestingly, Chase was an aggressive advertiser on several of the search terms offering a competing airline card with 15,000 bonus miles. BofA showed up as an advertiser only when we dropped the "my" from the search query.

The lack of advertising against "my alaska card" is especially damaging because the first few organic search results do not link to BofA or Alaska Airlines. Also, if you type a similar URL, such as www.alaskacard.com or www.alaskaairlinescard.com you either end up at a generic link site or an error page. At this point, potential prospects will either apply at the wrong place or give up on the search. 

If you correctly input the exact URL, you end up at the following landing page. It's OK, but should reinforce the impressive benefits of applying now, a free ticket right away and a $50 companion ticket every year on renewal (see screenshot below).

Action Items
Here's what you should do to ensure better search-engine support for your offline advertising:

1. Advertise at search engines on likely search terms that would be used by consumers responding to your advertising
2. Create a memorable URL that is not easily mistyped
3. Register or purchase domains similar to the advertised URL (including common misspellings), or pay the owner to refer traffic to your landing page
4. Design a landing page that boldly supports the benefits in your advertising and includes a prominent "Apply" button

PayPal's 30-second card application

PayPal is advertising its PayPal Plus card with this box located in the upper-right of the main account start-page within the secure area (click screenshot below for a closeup).

With the falloff in response to traditional direct mail raising acquisition costs to $200 or more, a pitch delivered within an online banking session can be far less expensive. And with online banking users typically wanting to get in and out quickly, the 30-second response shows that the company is sensitive to the time constraints of its customers (notice they did NOT say that it was a 30-second process).

The PayPal card is issued by GE Money Bank, the same company behind PayPal Buyers Credit used by sellers to offer longer-term financing of major eBay purchases. The Plus card includes a free rewards program offering 1 point per dollar purchased. The current rewards structure includes three levels:

• 1,000 points – Free shipping up to $7 on a PayPal purchase
• 2,500 points – $25 voucher (for merchandise at most PayPal merchants)
• 9,500 points – $100 voucher (for merchandise at most PayPal merchants)

The card carries a variable rate from 14.24% to 24.24% and has no annual fee.

Here's the main account page displayed after login:

Here's the landing page displayed after clicking on the apply button:

MBNA's big & ugly card application

In direct mail, sometimes "big & ugly" beats "short & sweet." But when it comes to preapproved credit card applications, we're pretty sure the 8-screen form posted by Bank of America's FIA Card Services (formerly MBNA) isn't going to help improve response rates (see the full form by clicking the continue link below).

My wife received a preapproved, direct-mail offer from Fidelity Investments where she has an investment account. The solicitation included the usual one-third sheet mail-back "acceptance form." Recipients could also either call a toll-free number, or go online to www.ibscredit.com.

Those that went online were greeted with this almost-blank screen operating under a different URL www.applyforcreditnow.com and had no reassuring message or graphics to assure users they had not arrived at a phishing site.

After entering the 6-digit code from the mailing, prospective cardholders are transported to this boring form, which surprisingly includes MORE fields than its paper-based counterpart (click on inset for closeup; click on continuation below to see the full 800 x 5200 screenshot). For example, it contains a section to be completed by students, who are unlikely to be receiving this particular Fidelity Investments WorldPoints Visa card with no preset spending limits.

Not only are the layout and design dull, but also two major design flaws are readily apparent:

1. No reinforcement of product benefits above the fold, especially the "0% through Nov. 2007" offer
2. No division into smaller segments, the first of which should gather the email address

See Online Banking Report #104 for more on application design.

--- JB

Citibank leaves card applicants vulnerable to identity theft

We were impressed with Citibank’s full-page ad in Sunday’s New York Times travel section offering 25,000 miles to take a new American Airlines co-branded credit card. As usual, we looked for a link to the Web-based application and were pleased to find a large, reverse-type URL along the bottom of the ad. Unfortunately, Citi did not follow the usual convention for printed landing-page URLs, creating potential problems for applicants.

Typically, offline advertisements use a special filename after the normal domain name, such as <www.yourbank.com/special>. This allows users to go directly to the landing page explaining the special offer (see landing page below).

Instead, Citibank used the unique server name "miles5" as in: <www.miles5.citicards.com>. There are several problems with this approach. First, it’s long and not easily recalled. But the biggest problem is its non-standard format. Internet users do not expect to see an extra period in the middle of a bank's URL. So many users, myself included, may read this as a unique domain name, <miles5citicards.com>.

Normally, that would be okay. But in this case Citibank neglected to register that domain name. An identity thief could easily have registered that domain, and then taken “applications” for days or weeks before anyone caught on, possibly leaving hundreds of applicants vulnerable to identity theft after entering their personal info, including social security number, in the application.

By mid-day on Monday, almost two days after the ad first appeared in print, the domain was still unregistered. We went ahead and registered it to prove the point, and keep it safe.

Implications
The moral of this story: If you live in a glass house, make sure any transparencies are covered. Register your domain name. Citibank, which has spent millions on its anti-identity theft campaign, left itself and its customers vulnerable for the price of an $8.95 domain name. Make sure you register the domain name of any cute URLs you put out there for marketing campaigns. While you are at it, spend $60 and lock it up for 10 years. 

Memo to Citibank’s legal team: We have no commerical interest in the domain and will happily transfer it to your ownership. All we ask is reimbursement of our 9 bucks.

--JB

Getting even with the call center

Score:
     Tom Brown -- 1
     Citibank -- 0

How many times have you been frustrated by your experience at a call center? Well, if you were a multi-millionaire hedge fund manager with his own blog, you could get back at the company, and then some.

Read today's extremely thorough account (transcribed verbatim from a tape recording) of Second Curve's Tom Brown as he attempts to add a PayPass contactless debit card to his Citibank account <bankstocks.com>.

A couple lessons here:

1. Flag Tom Brown, and other influential VIPs, in your customer database so they get topnotch phone service
2. Be careful with geographic-based product rollouts to avoid irritating customers
3. Simplify call center scripts

--JB

Disposable debit cards

Although they've been around for years, with relatively little success, the time may be right for disposable card numbers. However, this time, the emphasis should be on debit, the payment of choice for many younger consumers.

A compelling case can be made for disposable debit which:

• is the favored payment vehicle for the under-30 crowd, and often the ONLY payment option for high school and college students
• differentiates your checking account from 16,000 other U.S. providers
• encourages more debit card usage
• cements account relationships
• adds value to online banking archives
• provides excellent PR (customer advocacy) and branding benefits

But while great strides have been made in educating consumers about credit card fraud protection, the issue is murkier on the debit side.

Consumer appeal
We were reminded of the appeal of disposable card numbers when reviewing Cambrian House <cambrianhouse.com>, a Web-based venture attempting to "open-source" the business-startup process. While we don't see that taking off, the company does maintain an interesting database of user-submitted business ideas. Of the 433 ideas listed, the most popular according to site visitors is:

Self-destructing credit cards submitted by Rohan Pinto

Essentially what Mr. Pinto is proposing is the one-time-use credit card number offered since the late 1990s by Citibank, American Express, and, more recently, Discover Card (see inset). The main difference is the name, which actually is pretty good, if it hasn't been trademarked yet (we couldn't find any business using the term in a quick Google).

--JB