Financial Marketing Weekly

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 from increasingly 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.   

Google unveils new finance site

Google just staked its first claim in financial services, opening Google Finance <finance.google.com> today. It comes as no surprise that the search giant would look to grab a share of the considerable traffic to consumer finance sites (see chart below).

Naturally, the Google effort is well designed and fast. The site uses interactive, Flash-based price charts, news feeds from Google news, and company and officer information from a number of sources. The site allows users to set up a personalized portfolio, and it links to blog postings and even to postings from Google's moderated forums (click on inset below for a closeup).

The only surprise is the lack of advertising. Not only are there no banners or postage-stamp ads, but also no buried "sponsored links" to be found. We don't expect it to stay advertising free, but for now, it's a good place to refer customers to check stock quotes, track target companies, or set up an online portfolio.

Consumer finance traffic
Unique visitors in Feb. 2006
  Yahoo Finance>>>12 million
  MSN Money>>>11 million
  CNNMoney>>>8.5 million
  AOL Money & Finance>>>8.3 million
  WSJ/MarketWatch>>>8.3 million
  Forbes>>>6.7 million
  Reuters>>>6.6 million
  Entrepreneur>>>5.5 million
  ConsumerInfo.com>>>4.0 million
  BankRate.com>>>3.5 million

Source: Nielsen/NetRatings, 3/06

-JB

Quicken-izing your site

Looking for ideas to appeal to the Quicken segment? Personal Mvelopes, an online personal financial management system from In2m Corporation, stitches together account aggregation and bill payment into a $9.95 per month offering.

Analysis
The company has recently attracted some good PR (Kiplinger's, Boston Globe, BankRate.com) that may translate into some accounts. But unless In2m partners with stronger financial brands, the finance site will struggle to attract paying customers.

Consumers are wary, make that VERY WARY, of online financial services offerings, especially from unknown entities. But if a bank were to license the system and operate it under its own name, it might become moderately successful. (We say moderately, because budgeting is not a mainstream activity, and many of the budget-minded are already locked in to using Quicken or Money.)

If nothing else, the system demonstrates good customer advocacy. The bank could bundle additional services, such as long-term transaction archives, to help justify the $10 per month. Also, bundled revolving credit could boost the business case substantially. (Refer to Online Banking Report's payment series for more info.)

--JB