Zap! Here's your statement: marketers have had to resort to promotions to enlighten sometimes hesitant customers to the benefits of receiving electronic statements.

• Author: Marlin, Brenda
• Position: E-Statements

Bankers are hopped up about the idea of offering their customers the option of receiving account statements online rather than by regular mail. In 2005, only about a third (32.3 percent) of banks with assets of less than $30 billion offered this service. By 2007, that figure has risen to nearly two-thirds (58.3 percent), according to the most recent ABA Bank Marketing Survey Report.

The reason that bankers are so bullish on electronic statements is clear: They save on printing and postage and therefore reduce the bank's operational costs.

Customers, however, have been slower to embrace e-statements. In 2005, only 11.4 percent of customers at banks with assets under $30 billion had signed up for electronic statements. In 2007, that figure had nudged up only modestly to 13.4 percent, according to the survey.

The question for marketers is: How do you encourage all those holdouts to accept e-statements?

On one hand, e-statements would seem to be an easy sell. They save time, help to simplify the lifestyles of customers and are environmentally friendly. On the other hand, customers are often resistant to changes in long-established patterns of handling financial matters.

Pushing e-statements just because they are financially beneficial to the bank is not the best approach, observes Joseph Sullivan, CFMP, who is the CEO of Marketing Insights, Chicago.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Everything counts when you implement a new product or service, he notes. It must connect with the bank's overall strategic plan. Marketers need to know the "why" and "how" they are communicating with customers before they do so, otherwise it can confuse the bank's brand or disconnect from the needs of the end user. "Things like this are just empty calories unless you put it in an overall strategy," he says.

Whenever a trendy product or service comes along, a bank needs to step back and look at the big picture and ask, "How does this fit into my overall strategy?" Just because many banks are in on the hottest trend does not mean that your bank has to jump on the bandwagon as well. "You do not have to do this just for the sake of doing it,"

ABA Bank Marketing magazine rounded up a group of marketers and asked them to share their experiences--good and bad--in promoting e-statements. Their stories follow below.

Going Green

Kevin Keller, CFMP

First Vice President, Marketing

Union Bank & Trust Co.

Lincoln, Neb.

Asset Size: $1.7 Billion

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Union Bank & Trust Co...