I’ve had a credit card through Household Bank for many years. This morning I opened an email from them and saw that they wanted me to log into my account for an important message.
I wondered what it could be? Has my account been compromised? Has my identity been stolen?
The slightly urgent email
So I immediately log into my account…
Ummm, this message is NOT important to me
The message waiting for me wasn’t important to me in any way. It is important to them, just not to me.
I understand that Household Bank wants to stop sending me my statement every month in the old-fashioned way. I understand that it costs them money to do that and that they would save lots of money if they never had to mail anything again. What I don’t understand is why I should care about their cost-cutting measures.
How about this instead, “Hey Phil, if you sign up for email notifications instead of paper mail we’ll lower your interest rate a bit!” See how that suddenly becomes a message that is important to ME?
{ 22 comments }
To be fair, they did offer a prize. Not sure why you have to log in to see that message though…
Well, they don’t exactly offer a prize. They offer a chance to win a prize.
If direct marketing is about three things (the list, the offer, and the creative), it sounds like Household Bank failed on at least one — the offer wasn’t relevant to you, and it was misleadingly packaged.
I bet this campaign got a great open rate and clickthrough rate. But I also bet both metrics will be a lot lower next time they send an “urgent” message, whether truly urgent or not — “The Bank Who Cried ‘Important Message.’”
Well let’s be honest, the creative wasn’t all that inspired either.
Honestly I would have questioned the authenticity of who it’s from because it looks like it could have been someone hacking Household Bank’s ESP.
I suppose it’s possible, but it never occurred to me. Thanks for making me more paranoid Erika!
The email is misleading, so it’s actually doing damage to their brand. And why do you have to log in for the secure message of an offer that likely isn’t unique to you? They are doing brand damage with this email, and it’s disappointing to see this tactic in use. I certainly understand your frustration. I would never approve this kind of marketing.
I can’t say it’s really damaging their brand, because the bar is set so damn low for banks (and especially credit cards), but it’s still a crappy tactic.
I agree with Karl and Christine on this one. Had I received an “urgent” message and then opened it to a chance at winning a prize, I would’ve been pretty PO’d, if you ask me. But, maybe that’s the marketer in me talking.
I was sufficiently PO’d to stop everything I was doing and wrote a blog post – does that count?
The marketing team is probably patting themselves on the back because their click through rates are through the roof! The promotions team is high-fiving each other because they are getting a ton of entries! The Retention team won’t know until 18 months from now how much they hate the marketing team.
The problem is even if they send me another one that says “important” I have to click through – because it could be something actually important!
It’s not something drastic enough for me to call and cancel my account over because all the banks do this same stupid crap. It’s like complaining about your cell phone carrier or cable tv provider – where are you going to go that’s any better?
I think this is the result of a c-level executive who has no clue about email, telling their email marketer what they should do. Unfortunately I see it often where marketers cannot explain to senior management why they shouldn’t be doing things like this. They just want to add more names to their list. And I also don’t get why you had to log in to your account to see this – they could have done this in a regular email like lots of other people are doing that want us to enter contests – then you could go to a secure web page to enter if you really wanted. If they got real smart they would test the landing page and the conversion path on that too and that would help them find out how to get more opens and clicks. Oh well.
Similar to what we talked about yesterday. There is a CHANCE (albeit slight) that they are versioning the offer post-login. Granted they could version at the email list level but maybe that’s what happened.
Obviously they should be seeking help from you and Brooks Bell
Funny, I *just* got an email with the subject, “Important Notice from the Consumer Reports Foundation.”
What was the important notice? They want me to donate $27 to support their fundraising campaign.
Oh no, maybe it’s an IMPORTANT trend!
Great point about “it’s not important to the you but it is to me” messaging! I think even if they had a “green” message that would be better than the scary and uninformative important message email. Why not offer a simple incentive to go paperless and engage the customer at the same time. Greg is right the retention rates will lower over time!
I can only hope that Household Bank’s social media monitoring firm finds this post and the thread makes it back to the email marketing team.
Yup, retail card services pulled the same on me around the holidays. See the PS in my blog post here: http://hanginginmycloset.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-thoughtful-holiday-reminder.html. FWIW, I don’t like it one bit and it is going to devalue any importance I might give to the word “important” from them next go around. Hope I don’t miss something actually… well… important.
Thats indeed a very bizarre “secure” message.
Phil, you could always find the Twitter customer service link for your credit card company, and Tweet them the link to this blog. That might be kind of giving them a heads up.