The DigitalMailer Blog

April 17, 2013

Earth Day, Arbor Day – Any Day’s a Good Day to Save Trees!

Filed under: electronic statements,green,green technology,One Click,technology — admin @ 10:41 am

The “Big Green Holidays” are coming up fast – Earth Day, April 22 and Arbor Day, April 26. As usual, we want to encourage our clients and partners to get more people on board with eStatements and digital documents. They’re compliant, they save your organization money, and best of all, they help cut down on paper waste in a BIG way. You don’t need a holiday to encourage more eStatement adoption – all you need is to encourage more people to receive their statements electronically.

See how many trees you save each year with our handy-dandy Green Checkup Calculator.

Are you a credit union or bank that really values “green business”? We’d like to hear from you. Drop us an email at blogs@digitalmailer.com and tell us what you’re doing to promote planet-friendly initiatives at your place of business.

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March 28, 2013

Backing Up in (Way Less Than) 60 Seconds

Filed under: technology,World Backup Day — admin @ 12:44 pm

by Jimmy Marks

So you’ve taken our advice and decided to invest in a proper backup strategy. Cool! But have you actually backed up your computer yet? What’s keeping you?

I wanted to try and show the skeptics out there that backing up a computer isn’t that tough – in fact, you can get it going in less than 60 seconds. And what better way to show a process moving quickly than with Vine?

Here are a few less-than-six-second videos I shot of me backing up my computer.

First: the equipment.

(more…)

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March 13, 2013

How Many Backups Do I Need? [A World Backup Day Post]

Filed under: mobile technology,My Virtual StrongBox,technology,World Backup Day — admin @ 12:42 pm

by Jimmy Marks

I’ve been on the lookout for good articles to share for the World Backup Day on March 31. I’ve been trying out the tips and tricks offered by these articles and I’ve found a few of them quite useful.

This article, “The Computer Backup Rule of Three” by Scott Hanselman, is a good read. Much more than telling you what a backup is, the article tells you what a backup isn’t. Namely, a backup is not a copy of the file stored in the same storage space as the original. Backing up your photo library to another place on your computer hard drive is NOT backing up your library, for instance.

Have I committed a few of these sins? Yes. And MAN, have I been burned for it.

I backed up a copy of my old photos and moved them off my computer to organize the newer photos…and the .zip file got corrupted. Who knows where those images are now. Do I have another copy? Can I undo what’s been done? I’m honestly not sure. I wish I could go back in time and smack the younger me in the head. Alas, we can’t look back – only forward, to a future where we don’t make such foolish mistakes.

From the article mentioned above, a practical guideline for backups – how, how often, and how important:

Here’s the rule of three. It’s a long time computer-person rule of thumb that you can apply to your life now. It’s also called the Backup 3-2-1 rule.

3 copies of anything you care about - Two isn’t enough if it’s important.

2 different formats - Example: Dropbox+DVDs or Hard Drive+Memory Stick or CD+Crash Plan, or more

1 off-site backup - If the house burns down, how will you get your memories back?

After I read this, I went home and gave it a try. I already have external backup disks (about 1TB apiece, one for each computer in my home), but I wanted to look into the other ways to store my important stuff.

One easy way to store a few gigs worth of files? Thumb drives and DVDs. Fewer computers are coming with optical disk drives nowadays, but my computer burns DVDs which, on average, hold about 4 GB worth of data. Thumb drives, once an expensive convenience, are now cheap, cheap, cheap and come in many sizes. Moore’s law is your computer’s best friend and makes the once-hard-to-get 8 GB thumb drive a thing of beauty and thrift (they’re about $8 at your local Walmart).

Now, these aren’t built for full-computer backups. They are, however, perfect for photo libraries, documents, music, and more. Buy a few and cycle them, backing up your important files every so often on one, then the other. You probably won’t even fill that 8GB every time. DVDs come fifty to a spindle and cost roughly $20, depending on where you shop. 50 DVDs x 4GB apiece = 200 gigs, which is pretty hefty. Use these for files that aren’t going to be updated regularly.

Three copies of things you care about is an achievable goal. Multiple formats? Got that covered, too. Off-site backups? That can be tough. But not to worry, you can achieve this in two ways:

One at home, one somewhere you trust – Do you have a locking drawer at work? Do you have a friend or family member that wouldn’t mind you keeping sensitive material in their home? Get creative, then get quiet. Don’t go bragging about how hard to find your backup disk is, because…well, that’s the whole point.
Online – There are a number of solutions for this, but you know which one we’ll recommend. Online, secure storage options that you can use easily and effectively are worth the time.

I think the takeaway for all this can be simplified to “even your backup needs a backup”. Never trust just one disk. Never trust your computer to “be in tip-top shape”. Never assume your in-laws won’t click on a virus in an email. Never, ever, ever assume.

Know for sure. Follow the rules. Back it all up!

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March 6, 2013

Fortune Favors the Prepared: World Backup Day, All Month Long

Filed under: emergency,My Virtual StrongBox,technology — admin @ 10:46 am

by Jimmy Marks

Louis Pasteur, inventor of pasteurization and the vaccines for anthrax and rabies, once said “fortune favors the prepared”. If your computer is fried in an electrical surge, or submerged in a flood, or stolen, what would you do? Many people – nearly one-third – have never backed up their computer. Of those that have backed up, more than half haven’t backed up in a year or more. And when a computer disaster hits, whether it’s big or small, you need more than “luck” to get through it. You need a stable, reliable backup to get back on your feet.

That’s why a group of thoughtful techies created World Backup Day, a day to get folks to back up their important files and documents and to convince those that do so to back up more frequently and more reliably.

At DigitalMailer, we’re big proponents of World Backup Day. We hope more folks take part in a proper backup strategy. And backups aren’t just for computers, they’re for tablets, smartphones, email, and so much more. We’ll be sharing important stories and strategies as we find them, on our Twitter feed and our Facebook page. Join us and let’s get “lucky”…by being prepared for anything.

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January 16, 2013

DigitalMailer Benchmarks: How many of your consumers should be using eStatements?

Filed under: e-Statements,electronic statements,enrollment campaigns,eStrategy,One Click,One Click Campaign,technology,Uncategorized — admin @ 10:13 am

by Ron Daly

Recently, a number of clients have written us emails asking for the “industry standard” of eStatement penetration. While there are any number of results in your typical Google search, we wanted to offer our clients and, in turn, our blog readers a thoughtful answer. So we took the number of eStatement users each of our clients had, compiled our data into an Excel spreadsheet, ran some of the averages and came up with some numbers we think are quite interesting.

Yep, you’re reading that correctly – nearly 80% of online banking users have eStatements. These folks manage their money online and take advantage of eStatements. This number grew twenty percentage points in one year, leading us to believe that more and more people are making the connection between electronic documents and smart money management.

A little more than half of all the customers/members we evaluated were checking account holders. It stands to reason more checking users would be using eStatements just to avoid getting a paper statement that’s weeks behind their online banking reports, ATM receipts, or mobile alerts. Still, that number grew 19 percentage points in a year…that’s a big gain.

Even though this number grew 11 percentage points in a year, it’s still a little low for my tastes. Only 28% of members use eStatements? Why so low? Here’s why:

Most financial institutions still have eStatements inside online banking and only online banking members can get them (see the first percentage number we listed, for eStatement/OLB users? Make sense now?)
Very few financial institutions have marketing campaigns to increase adoption anymore. Those that do typically see great ROI.
Most financial institutions don’t make eStatements the default for online banking users. Reg E says you have to give your users a choice of paper or electronic…but it doesn’t say what the default option must be. Why not start those users with eStatements and make them ask for paper statements?

If only credit unions and banks would make eStatements the default. Most users would never bother to make the switch or make a stink – they’d probably never even think about it again.

Check out our one-click program and see if this simple solution is right for you.

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January 2, 2013

The Case for Onboarding: A Timely Way to Help Financial Institutions Build Loyalty

Filed under: Banks,Credit Unions,On-Boarding,technology — admin @ 10:35 am

Technology continues to eliminate face-to-face contact and cross-sell opportunities. With the proliferation of online account opening platforms, now is the time for a formal onboarding process.

Challenges of the past few years have changed how consumers view their primary financial institutions. Loyalty is harder to come by these days. According to the 2011 U.S. Retail Banking Satisfaction Survey by J.D. Power and Associates, more people are willing to switch their PFIs, more financial institutions are being considered in the PFI selection process, and more consumers are turning to non-PFIs for additional banking products they may need. It seems the days of checking accounts making for “sticky” PFIs may be numbered.

But that’s not necessarily true for financial institutions with effective onboarding programs. These institutions are seeing real success in building stronger, deeper relationships with new members from the first day of opening an account.

Onboarding involves introducing new members to your credit union during their early weeks or months of membership. Part educational and part promotional, the process helps your members see the full value of your credit union. When done effectively, the results show higher retention rates, broader product usage and lower servicing costs.

So how are these effective financial institutions doing it? The key is using well-planned, sustained and value-driven email messages. The most common timeframe for an onboarding program is 90 days to six months. Included among the elements of successful onboarding practices are:

Simple, easy-to-read emails
Similar design styles and formats across all messages
Deliberate, slow-and-steady delivery schedules
Supplemental welcome calls at two-week and 60-day intervals

Happily, today’s technology allows for the onboarding process to be simplified and cost-effective. Messages can be personalized based on members’ individual profiles, often synchronized with credit union data files. Certified email engines can automatically deliver customized emails at timed intervals to keep the credit union name in front of members, without being pushy. And systems can manage email lists for bad or duplicate addresses, while collecting delivery and open-rate measurements.

The shifting consumer trends affecting today’s financial services industry are providing financial institutions with great opportunities to draw in – and retain – new members through initiating a strong onboarding program. It’s a proven marketing strategy that, when done right, can build loyalty, trust and “stickiness” among your membership.

For financial institutions, the timing has never been better.

This article originally ran in our free, monthly e-newsletter. Are you signed up already? If not, sign up here to receive a monthly collection of helpful articles and interesting tidbits right in your inbox.

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December 20, 2012

The Twelve Days of Electronic Marketing

by Ron Daly

If you’re waiting until the last minute to figure out that perfect gift for a special someone, might I dissuade you from looking into giving them the “Twelve Days of Christmas” gifts? Twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, and so on, will cost you quite a pretty penny. Plus, where do you put it all? I haven’t really got the room for the 364 total presents I’d be getting. Maybe we could stick the birds outside in the back yard, but all the milk maids and leaping gentlemen would be a little annoying.

I’ve decided none of you is getting all these birds, rings, busy artisans, etc. Instead, I’m giving you the twelve days of electronic marketing! Sing along, if you think you can.

On the 12 Days of Christmas, DigitalMailer Gave to Me:

12 Months of eMailing - A monthly email newsletter doesn’t cost much to send and gives your customers an idea of what’s shaking at your business.
11 major holidays- You’ve got:
1. New Year’s
2. Valentine’s Day
3. St. Patrick’s Day
4. Easter
5. Mother’s Day
6. Father’s Day
7. 4th of July
8. “Back-to-School”
9. Halloween
10. Thanksgiving
11. Christmas/Holiday
That’s eleven easy touch-points with built-in branding to play with – get to work and make something outstanding.
10 fingers typing – Got an initiative you’re trying to get off the ground? Have a fun community outreach program? Got something really interesting to say? Start a blog! It’s never been easier.
9 referrers referring – If you’re looking into NetPromoter scoring, remember – nines and tens are your only “referrers”. Sevens and eights aren’t counted and six and below are detractors. And always ask “why?” when it comes to the score you were given.
8 hours of working – The eight hour workday is disappearing. People are working from home and on the go. Consider how much information you’re hoping they’ll retain. Make your messages clear and concise, and always lead them to an action. Be efficient, you want to be a solution, not part of a bigger problem.
7 days a week – Are certain emails more likely to work on the weekend? How will you know if you’re not split-testing? Consider a weekend email for new home buyers looking into open houses, or car shoppers who might take a Saturday afternoon to browse the lots.
6 month reviews – Check out how your efforts are doing every six months or so. Set benchmarks, evaluate, make changes, and strive for the best.
5 GOLD RINGS! (Just felt like singing that one.)
4 points-of-contact – We like to give people a few ways to get hold of us, if they need us. We welcome people to email us, call, write or tweet at us…whatever works for them, works for us.
3 calls-to-action – In a good email campaign, you’ll want to give at least three call-to-action links: one at the top, in text, for the impulsive; one that’s a big graphic for the visually minded; one toward the bottom for the thorough readers.
2 ways to view – Remember, more and more users are reading their email on a mobile device – ReturnPath estimates that more people will be reading email on a mobile device than on a computer by the end of 2012 (which, I don’t need to remind you, is less than two weeks away). We’re working on a few ways to optimize emails responsively that we’re going to share with our clients in 2013. What are you doing to prepare?
And a cartridge printer in need (of a job) – More mobile documents, fewer things to print out, more ways to save and store those documents…we’re committed to taking our clients further away from their paper needs.

Not to toot my own Christmas trumpet or anything, but that’s a much better list. Better to have good advice and food for thought than a bunch of dancers, geese and hens breaking all your furniture and getting allergy-causing down everywhere.

From all of us to all of you, MERRY CHRISTMAS and a happy, productive, lucrative new year!

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November 15, 2012

Malware Launching Fake Pop-Ups for Online Banking Sites

Filed under: security,technology — admin @ 1:19 pm

The “Citadel” Trojan, first encountered early this year, is launching fake pop-up windows during online banking sessions for bank and credit union consumers.

From the CUNA News Now update dated 11/14:

The latest version uses social engineering tools to create the pop-ups, even on legitimate banking sites. And that will confuse consumers making online transactions at their credit union’s site.

The Citadel Trojan is a keystroke reader, keeping track of what the user types into specific fields and web forms. Banks and credit unions should be on the lookout for complaints related to pop-up windows prior to the online banking home page and should always encourage customers and members to be judicious with their user name and password information.

Read CUNA’s full release here.

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November 8, 2012

Showing and Not Telling: Creating Useful User’s Guides

Filed under: Compliance,Credit Cards,customer service,smart marketing,technology — admin @ 2:48 pm

by Greg Crandell

Recently, a team of employees and I sat down to talk about supplemental information for our newest product, My Virtual StrongBox. Among other things, one of the suggestions that really took wing was an illustrated user’s guide that our clients could distribute to their consumers. The product’s pretty self-explanatory, for the most part, but the guide focuses on ways to maximize the amount of storage you’re given and manage your files more efficiently. Our creative team is working on it right now.

As a father of college-aged youngsters, I spent many a move-in day putting together some flimsy bookshelf. One thing that I noticed was how helpful it was to have an assembly guide that gave detailed drawings of the screws, pegs, and tiny wrenches I’d need for each step. “Insert screw-type B into slot 12 and turn counter-clockwise until flush with the cam” isn’t as clear-cut as a picture of all those pieces coming together.

When I got my smart phone, the instruction booklet had a hand that was tapping on various apps and setting up different modes and settings using sliders. If you’ve ever used a Mac, you know that the menu for multi-touch gestures has little videos next to each option that show exactly what those gestures are and how they work. It’s very informative and shows new users how to use two fingers instead of a two-button mouse.

Technology obviously benefits from easy-to-read, illustrated guides. Could finance? Is there a process you’re constantly explaining to customers and members that could benefit from an illustrated, simple guide that’s easy to understand?

Three ideas I had for an illustrated user’s guide:

Online Bill Pay – OBP is a great service and a sticky one at that. What if you walked first-time OBP users through the process with a simple set of diagrams and some easy-to-read instructions? Maybe all that’s keeping your users from signing up for the service is their lack of understanding.
Coin Counting Machines – My nearest credit union branch has a free coin counting machine that deposits the money into my checking account. A great service, but I noticed the instructions are a little tough to understand for first-timers. If there were a little diagram of what to push and how to use the machine, it would all go much more smoothly.
Credit Cards – Not the use of credit cards, that’s pretty easy to understand. But what about first-time credit card users and teens? Shouldn’t they get a little coaching on what to do (and what NOT to do) with a credit card? Give them the basics – maybe there are even blanks where the monthly fee and interests rates can be written in by a customer service rep? Just a thought.

It’s as simple as “show, don’t tell”. Making things easy to understand and offering a mental picture up to the reader means you get them involved. This gives the user a good idea of how things work before they ever start working with them, which cuts down on the amount of time you’ll have to spend helping them out afterwards.

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May 22, 2012

The Five Things You SHOULDN’T Say on Social Media

Filed under: Compliance,Credit Union Tech,Credit Unions,Facebook,technology,Twitter,Uncategorized,web sites — admin @ 4:24 pm

by Jimmy Marks

Recently I attended the CU Symposium in St. Michaels, MD and saw a presentation by COMPASS 4 CUs, a compliance CUSO dedicated to useful, easy-to-understand compliance help. I learned a lot, seeing as I’m not a “compliance person”, and I know most people think about the message first and the compliance language last. It’s almost a curse – you’d think someone was coming in and putting censor bars all over everything. But compliance is important and it’s always on the minds of the folks I talk to, whether they’re bank folks, credit union folks, or social media folks.

[Now, before I go any further, I have to be "compliant" and state the following: none of what I'm about to say should be taken as LEGAL advice. ALWAYS consult with your organization's compliance person, and if your organization doesn't have one, consider retaining a professional.]

Okay, now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about what your credit union shouldn’t say on social media, according to the “Compliance Queens” at COMPASS 4 CUs.

1) “Get Pre-approved Today!” — This is a big no-no. You can’t pre-approve everyone. It’s not possible. Some folks aren’t going to have the credit rating for that. Better Bet: “See if you qualify for pre-approval today!”

2) “We’ll beat the competition!” — No, you won’t. Not if you leave the definition of “competition” so open-ended. Better Bet: “Come see how we stack up to other FIs in the [wherever you are] area!” You’ve got a little wiggle-room in there.

3) “Get an auto loan at 1.99%” — Don’t discuss rates in specific terms. Not everyone can qualify for your best loan rate. Can you promise a great interest rate and low down payment to someone with horrible credit? No. You can’t. Better Bet: “Auto Loans at 1.99% — qualifying borrowers only, see site for details: [link to site]”

4) “Anyone can join!” — Doubt it. Get specific about what qualifies your field of membership. Better Bet: Get specific. Very specific. End of story.

5) “We can save you money!” — Can you? One of the common themes you might have noticed in all of these is that they’re all too general about who can qualify for what and what you can do for any person in your social media audience. Better Bet: Talk about what members could save “on average”.

It’s not deceptive to say someone could save money, that they could get a better loan rate. It’s deceptive to say they WILL. Promises made and not kept are dangerous. Stay away from them.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: these seem similar to the restrictions placed on our print and online advertising. That’s because social media is regarded as a branch of marketing. Whether you want to call it “community building” or “e-commerce whizbang whatever”, it’s marketing. Your hands are bound by those restrictions. Some other good best practices:

Always have your NCUA logo/Equal Housing logo ONE CLICK AWAY from your social media posts. That is, if you’re going to put a link on Twitter about your mortgage services, the next page a person reaches should have all the legal language required and the logos somewhere on the page.
It never hurts to disclose that you’re linking to a third-party website, even if you’re linking from Facebook/Twitter/etc. to another external site.
Remember that no social media sites are built around what banks/credit unions need – they were built for sharing short, simple messages, links, videos and pictures. You’re never going to be able to cram everything you need into a single post, so don’t try. Make sure you have good landing pages with actionable content, paths you can trace from site to site to measure your SM performance, and always – ALWAYS – the most current compliance language and related logos and images.

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The DigitalMailer Blog

Earth Day, Arbor Day – Any Day’s a Good Day to Save Trees!

Backing Up in (Way Less Than) 60 Seconds

How Many Backups Do I Need? [A World Backup Day Post]

Fortune Favors the Prepared: World Backup Day, All Month Long

DigitalMailer Benchmarks: How many of your consumers should be using eStatements?

The Case for Onboarding: A Timely Way to Help Financial Institutions Build Loyalty

Malware Launching Fake Pop-Ups for Online Banking Sites

Showing and Not Telling: Creating Useful User’s Guides

The Five Things You SHOULDN’T Say on Social Media

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