Answer:
Email can actually work better than mail for new customer acquisition. It can also do a bang-up job for customeractivation and cross selling, assuming that you have (or can get) email addresses for your customers. Lets look at these issues one at a time.
The end game in new customer acquisition is to get in front of the most interested people at the lowest cost. Email is less expensive than direct mail, and more immediate than almost any other medium. So if your bank is in a market area that has lots of prospects, email could easily beat mail in terms of both cost and performance.
When it comes to customer activation and cross-selling, the only limitation is whether you have your customer’s email addresses or not - and can feel comfortable about soliciting them without raising privacy issues. Commercial services can append email addresses to 10-20% of any file. But the real issue is getting customer’s permission to reach them by email, a process that can take time, but that can pay large dividends.
First published on BankersOnline.com 11/5/01
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