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A monthly report from
FPS President Vince DiPaolo
July 2003
Cut costs, build e-mail lists, cross-sell if you...
Expand e-Newsletter Content,
Share Sponsorship
with Other Business Lines
E-mail newsletters are a powerful means of communicating with clients and demonstrating your brand value in a competitive marketplace.
Despite a growing spam problem and crowded in-boxes, the validity of e-mail as a viable marketing medium continues to grow stronger, according to
DoubleClick’s Q1 2003 Email Trend Report.
Open rates increased 8% in first quarter 2003 to 39.2% from 36.4% in fourth quarter 2002, DoubleClick says. Meanwhile, click-through rates increased
from 8% in last year’s fourth quarter to 8.9% during this year’s first quarter. Furthermore, bounce-back rates fell from 13.5% to 12.5% during first quarter 2003, reflecting that legitimate marketers are keeping
track of their customer information and practicing good data hygiene. To learn more about DoubleClick’s survey findings, click here.
Nevertheless, publishing an e-mail newsletter can present challenges, especially for an individual bank business line attempting to initiate a program
on its own.
E-mail newsletter challenges
First, there’s the cost and time. Most banks lack the internal resources to produce a quality client
communication. And the cost of hiring an outsource provider can make a newsletter unaffordable for individual bank business lines.
Second, there’s the matter of content. Do you have enough quality content to engage clients on a consistent basis?
Third, there’s the issue of developing a sufficiently large database of client e-mail addresses.
Expanded content benefits
To address these and other concerns,
some banks are producing e-mail newsletters that cover issues relevant to a number of bank business lines—treasury services, international services, card services and lending, for example. The benefits of a publication sponsored by multiple business lines include:
- Lower cost per business line. When a business line goes it alone in producing a four-article or four-page client briefing, it typically
spends $11,000 or more per online edition through e-mail broadcast. Printing and mailing the same the newsletter to 5,000 clients can add $3,500 to your costs. However, if you share the cost and editorial
space with a second business line, you can cut your costs almost in half. Have a third and fourth business line join your collaborative effort, and the total cost per business line per edition could fall to
as little as $3,000.
- Better editorial value for readers. When multiple bank lines collaborate to produce a single client communication, you dramatically
increase both the number of industry issues and products and services about which you can effectively communicate with clients. You will no longer have to worry about having enough material to produce a
regular client newsletter.
This type of multi-line electronic communication also allows for sales and relationship management departments to select all or parts of the information to e-mail to clients
and prospects. And, by archiving each edition by topic, you can make a resource library of diverse business information available to clients with a click of a mouse.
- More cross-selling opportunities. Your collaborative newsletter will expose your business line’s products and services to clients and
prospects of other bank business lines, thus increasing the opportunities for all participating business lines to cross-sell additional services.
- Expanded e-mail address database. Acquiring e-mail addresses of current clients and prospects is one of the biggest challenges facing bank
marketers today. However, when multiple business lines combine their e-mail distribution lists, they quickly achieve the critical mass needed to make a newsletter distributed via e-mail extremely cost
effective.
Where a single bank business line might effectively use an e-newsletter to communicate with 1,000 clients, bankers can increase their marketing impact exponentially by communicating about
four business lines to 4,000 or more clients and prospects.
- Less clutter in your client’s e-mailbox. By sending a client a single communication in place of up to four—one for each business line—you are doing your part to reduce spam.
- A cohesive bank image across multiple business lines. A traditional criticism has been that bank business lines have a “silo” mentality, where individual lines tend to communicate with clients without regard to what other bank business lines are saying to the same clients. This creates in the mind of bank clients the perception that they are dealing with a number of different institutions. A collaborative newsletter effort shared by two, three or four business lines can replace that perception with one of your institution as a single source for meeting all of a client’s business needs.
If you would like to learn more about this collaborative newsletter concept, please contact FPS President Vince DiPaolo at vince.dipaolo@fpsc.com or FPS Business Development Director Chris Durkin at chris.durkin@fpsc.com. Also, look for our upcoming
e-mail notice that graphically demonstrates how a multi-line e-newsletter can help your bank to more effectively communicate with its business clients. The e-mail notice will be coming to you in about two weeks.
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