Tapping the market for EBP.

• Position: Marketing News - Direct marketing of electronic bill paying - Brief Article

Marketing electronic bill paying (EBP) at times can seem as difficult as marketing air conditioners in the Yukon. SunTrust, the Atlanta-based banking giant, recently learned some lessons about how to market EBP effectively through the use of direct mail.

Last year the bank rolled out approximately 60,000 direct-mail solicitations to Internet banking customers who were not bill-pay subscribers. The campaign was considered good enough to win the American Marketing Association Atlanta chapter's bronze AMY award this year. SunTrust won't discuss the results in detail, except to say that it was gratifying, that they determined to their own satisfaction that there is a market, and that they learned things that will help them the next time they go out. And they're definitely going out again.

One lesson was that direct mail appeals can work, even for EBP. According to Amanda Bowman, SunTrust's direct marketing coordinator, the bank's direct-mail pitches produced a response that was 2.5 percent higher than that of the control group, which did not receive a mailing. Another is that there isn't necessarily an advantage to sweetening the offer with extra incentives. Some prospects were offered 90 days' free access in return for signing up quickly. Others were offered $10 or $20 online gift certificates. All three approaches worked well, and the less-expensive, free-access option worked about as well as the others-- which led the bank to wonder if they need to bother with the gift certificate...