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

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.

PayPal email: Simple steps to protect against fraud and ID theft

Despite calls for banks to stop marketing via email (see here) to help reduce fraud, PayPal, probably the most phished brand in the world, shows that the technique can still be effective. 

It requires a professional layout, good personalization, and behind-the-scenes fraud monitoring to nip phishing attempts in the bud.

Here's the latest from PayPal. Note the 30-second credit card button (bottom left) and personalized greeting at the top of the message.

Classification

Type: Marketing email with educational focus

Product: Payments with credit card cross-sell

Customer Type: Active customer

Personalization: Hello <yourname> at top of message

Header

Date received: Wed 11/1/2006 9:38 AM
From: PayPal [[email protected]]
To: Jim Bruene
Subject: Simple Steps to Protect Against Fraud and ID Theft

Everbank's latest email newsletter

Everbank <everbank.com> has been an active emailer, sending a newsletter every few months for the seven years I've maintained an account there. The newsletters have always been chock full of content, from general finance topics to detailed discussions revolving around the bank's unique currency- and commodity-related products.

The newsletter design has evolved with the times, from plain text in the 1990s to the well-designed HTML missive we received last night (see below). The short headlines letter encourages customers to click through and read the full document at the Everbank website (see End Notes).

Email Sample
Date/Time: Oct. 11, 2006, 8:59 PM (received 10:24 PM Pacific Time)
From: EverBank [[email protected]]
To: James
Title: Are commodities worthy? Find out in the latest EverBanker newsletter
Personalization: Dear <firstname>
Signature: EverBank Customer Care

Analysis
Email
There is little to criticize. The short email is direct and to the point. Its layout lends itself well to viewing within the preview pane. The small "did you know" box adds an element of interest, and the drop-shadow makes it stand out. 

With four major articles, it makes sense to send just the headlines and ask the reader to click through to the website to read the full article. However, the bank should use the standard convention of hyperlinking each article directly to the appropriate place on the website.

The bank does include two hyperlinks to the Web-based newsletter, a "click here" in the first paragraph and a "read it today" at the end. However, for even better usability, the bank should add a big shiny button that leads directly to the Web version.

Web-based Newsletter
The website demonstrates good usability in its layout and content. A synopsis of each article is provided on the main page and users click through to read the complete article. It's useful and well-written information, better than a lot of what you read in mainstream consumer-finance publications. We especially liked the "whatever happened to" look-back at some recent initiatives, such as Check 21, and the overview of consumer-protection laws.

As good as the newsletter is, we couldn't stop thinking that it would work much better as a blog. That way, readers could pursue subject threads and more easily peruse all that Everbank provides. The bank could also experiment with accepting comments to make the whole experience more interactive.

Overall grades:
Content: A+
Email design: A-
Website (newsletter) design: A

End Notes
Click on the following link to see a screenshot of the newsletter landing page.

Citibank's e-Savings email

Last night, Citibank sent selected checking-account customers an email solicitation for its 4.75% APR e-Savings account. I live outside its branch network, so Citi may have elected not to send the message to customers serviced by traditional branches.

The message was direct and to the point (click on screenshot left). Citibank even included the impressive 4.75% interest rate in the message subject. The only distracting portion of the message was a garbled first word in the second paragraph. It was probably caused by incompatibilities in software rendering of the apostrophe in the first word, "there's." To avoid this type of error, make sure you proof your message in multiple email clients.

The bank continues to engender trust in its marketing messages by including the "email security" box in the upper-right corner which includes the customer's full name and last four digits of their ATM card. The security information is prominently displayed, in a blue shaded box to make it more prominent, even if the user has images blocked (see screenshot below).

The bank also includes short text messages that appear where the images would have been displayed (alt-text tags) making the message relatively readable even for users that never download the images.

Surprisingly, the landing page for the offer was a generic product page. The campaign would be much more effective if the bank had reinforced the e-Savings benefits on the landing page like it does when it advertises online (see FMW March 29). Click on the following link to see a screenshot of the landing page. --JB

Email: US Bank "Spring Clean Your Finances"

Every month we receive dozens of emails from the many financial institutions where we have accounts and also, increasingly, from non-customer mailing lists at others. As part of our expanded coverage of email marketing, we plan to post many of them here. You will be able to access the entire sample collection by clicking on the "Email Archives" subject on the right-hand navigation. Alternatively, individual emails will also be filed within their pertinent product areas, in this example, "Loans & Credit" and "Personal Financial Management."

Today's message is from US Bank <usbank.com>, which sent the following solid, but fairly boring financial organization email to current customers.