Marketing Tea Party

Jason Putorti, Mint.com’s lead designer and an early employee of Mint.com, recently expounded on the reasons he believes caused Wesabe’s demise (and Mint’s “victory”). Below are some of his points with my rebuttal.

According to Mr. Putorti (JP), Wesabe failed because of:

Revenue. JP: “Wesabe never made any. You can’t overlook this in a startup. They literally ran out of money.”

My take: Partially correct. Yes, Wesabe ran out of money. But “running out of money” is very different from “never making any.” Plenty of startups stay alive for long periods of time without generating revenue. Tweet tweet.

Product/Market Fit. JP: ” If they set a price up front, and people didn’t pay, they would have worked on customer development until people started to pay.”

My take: Huh? Geezeo never set a price, and its users didn’t pay, and yet Geezeo is not only far from dead, it’s thriving. Customer development has nothing to do with Wesabe’s demise — if we’re talking about consumers as customers that is.

Wesabe changed its business model from consumer-direct to white label — which Mint, as part of Intuit, is now doing as well. So why didn’t Mint “work on customer development until people started to pay”? Better question: What does “work on customer development until start to pay” even mean?

Savings. JP: “Mint saved people money right out of the box without changing their behaviors. These were in the form of offers, which we then monetized.”

My take: An overstated claim. Mint never made public how many people actually accepted the offers to switch that were made. I’m just guessing of course, but if it was that many, every other FI (besides E*Trade) would have jumped in. And the claim just doesn’t hold water since for someone to have saved money s/he would have had to switch providers, which — by definition — is a change in behavior. It’s also an unsubstantiated implication that Wesabe never saved its users money. The forums that Wesabe managed contained lots of advice on how to manage one’s finances. I’m just guessing again, but I bet plenty of Wesabe users saved money as a result of the tool. And, “changing behavior” is a good thing — not a bad thing.

Team/Founder. JP: “I don’t know the Wesabe folks, but the Mint executive staff and team were world class. I think we just had more firepower. Our board members and investors similarly were world class.”

My take: No argument about the opinions regarding the Mint folks, but to infer that the Wesabe management team, board members, and investors were any less “world class” is uncalled-for arrogance.

Audience. JP: “Mint always focused from day one on people who didn’t want to ‘manage’ their money or do a lot of work. It’s a fire and forget product. We auto-categorized transactions, (Wesabe required tagging which takes time), we synced to bank accounts (Wesabe required uploading data), we emailed you every week, there really wasn’t a lot of work to do.”

My take: Partially correct. Mint did (and does) auto-categorization and syncing, and Wesabe didn’t. But the consumers that Wesabe tried to appeal to were those it believed didn’t place a high value on those capabilities.

The perspective that Mint was (is) focused on people who didn’t want to “manage their money or do a lot of work” is misguided. The percentage of people in this country who want to “do a lot of work” to manage their money is minuscule. Trust me on this one.

The whole reason that online PFM has begun to gain traction is that it makes money management easier to do. I have argued in the past, and will continue to argue, that “auto-categorization” and “syncing” capabilities appeal most to people who have an already established inclination to use PFM tools. Which is only about 25% of the population. Reaching the rest requires something else. To its credit, I think it’s things like peer comparisons and user forums, which Mint is now pursuing. But Wesabe kind of led the pack here.

The ultimate downside to Wesabe of not providing auto-categorization and syncing has nothing to do with the consumer audience. What Wesabe found was that when it went white label, the paying audience — banks and credit unions — wanted these capabilities.

Name. JP: “It’s a cheap shot, but Wesabe fails a lot of tests for what makes a good brand name.”

My take: Agreed (that it was a cheap shot, that is). The name was not a factor in Wesabe’s demise. Once it went white label, it didn’t matter what its name is or was.

——————————————————

So why did Wesabe fail? Three reasons. It didn’t sufficiently execute on:

1. Marketing. By not adequately positioning itself as an “alternative” to the traditional approach to PFM (i.e, aggregation, categorization, budgeting, forecasting), it missed an opportunity to attract millions of users. Had it done that, success would have been far from guaranteed, but with a larger base of users, it might have been seen by investors as worth putting more money into.

2. Sales. From a sales perspective, Geezeo was (and continues to be) far more aggressive about making inroads into the credit union community and with vendor partnerships. Yodlee had a base of large FI relationships to leverage. Wesabe simply didn’t have the sales presence of its competitors (including Jwalla and SimpliFi).

3. Technology. I’m speculating here, but my hunch is that Wesabe didn’t integrate very easily with FI’s online banking platforms.

As a result, Wesabe ran out of time and money.

But there’s something else about Mr. Putorti’s assertions that I don’t agree with: The inference that not only did Wesabe fail, but that Mint succeeded.

With all due respect to the folks at Intuit, let me be clear in my opinion: Mint did not succeed. I have believed all along that the reason Mint sold out to Intuit was that it recognized its business model was untenable. It could not survive for  long on an ad-supported business model.

Yes, Mint “succeeded” at attracting 3 million users. And to Mr. Purtorti’s credit, Mint’s design played a huge role in that. The design is definitely better than any other PFM platform (sorry fellas), and it leveraged that superior design to become the cool PFM tool.

But those are 3 million  ”users” — not “customers.” You might not agree, but I’d rather have 100 paying customers than 1 million users I can’t monetize any day. Despite Mr. Putorti’s claims, Mint did not successfully monetize its user base.

If it had been successful, I doubt Mint would have sold out at $185 million, and instead waited a few years to become a half billion dollar firm. Tweet tweet.

Last point: Not only did Mint not win (past tense), it’s too soon in the development of the PFM market to say that anybody has won.  We haven’t seen the last of new entrants into the PFM market.

Technorati Tags: Mint.com, Wesabe

I read a lot of marketing-related stuff, and see a lot of references to marketing terms that make me wonder if we all have a common definition of what’s being discussed. To help achieve some small degree of consistency, I’ve prepared this guide to marketing terms, in an effort to translate brandspeak into something an average consumer might comprehend.

            What it means to                What it means to
Brand term  marketers...                    consumers....
Brand       An exalted demigod, possessing  A product.
            human-like characteristics
            and personalities that can be
            shaped, developed, and nurtured
            by marketers and now by the
            consumer that are engaged with 
            the brand.



Ambassador  A consumer that advocates for   A shill, a loser.
            the brand, and influences
            other consumers to purchase--
            and engage with--the brand.


Advocacy    The act -- on the part of the   Boring one's
            ambassador -- of extolling the  friends and
            virtues of the brand to         family to tears.
            friends and family.


Engagement  Turning on a prospect to a      Spending a boat-
            brand idea enhanced by the      load of $ for a
            surrounding context.            piece of jewelry.


Brand       The positive differential       Nothing. No one
Equity      effect that knowing the         in their right
            brand name has on purchase      mind would ever
            intention.                      use this term.


Brand       Repeated purchases to a         The result of not
Loyalty     single brand.                   having any choices
                                            or not caring
                                            enough to choose
                                            among alternatives.

Brand       Undesirable consumer            Sleeping around.
Promiscuity behavior, characterized by
            the absence of brand loyalty.   

Brandspeak is the result of a common marketing affliction known as delusions of brandeur. This affliction reared its ugly head again this morning as I read about another study promising to reveal the “secret” to customer loyalty.

In this latest study, researchers found that the key to customer loyalty is brand “warmth”. According to the article:

Researchers confirmed that consumers assess brands in much the same way that they do people: By sizing up a brand’s intentions toward them.

This, of course, only supports the delusion that a brand has the ability, like humans, to have “intentions.” It is, of course, a delusion on the part of consumers to think that a brand has intentions towards them.

Another piece of the research that caught my eye was consumers’ ratings of a brand’s honesty and the extent to which it acts in the best interest of consumers. Consumers rated both McDonalds and Burger King at 7.6 for honesty, and gave McD a 7.1, and Burger King a 7.0, on the second factor. The researcher concluded that:

“In brand positioning terms, this points to important opportunities for both chains. Whereas it seems that it will be an uphill battle for Burger King to gain leverage against McDonald’s by competing on an operational level, Burger King might find differentiation by focusing on the two warmth factors, where McDonald’s doesn’t yet have a real advantage.”

You’v'e got to be kidding me. In other words, restaurant location, pricing, food quality, or other factors like the influence of children on the decision process, etc. can be safely ignored by marketers for BK, who simply need to be seen as more “honest” and more apt to “act in the best interest of consumers”.

It’s a hamburger, people. It isn’t a life or death decision about treating advanced cancer. It isn’t a critical decision like how to invest your retirement savings.

The biggest delusion that marketers have is that people care enough about the marketer’s product category to make a conscious decision about which brand to choose. People have better things to do. Granted, for some people, fast-food Hamburger A versus fast-food Hamburger B is an important decision, one that will be influenced by factors like perceived honesty and acting-in-best-interest.

But marketers seem to forget that for a lot of people, it isn’t an important, conscious decision. And, as a result, they don’t focus on what’s really important — getting more people to care about fast-food Hamburger A versus fast-food Hamburger B (or whatever the marketer’s product category is).

And for some reason (although it’s not surprising), market researchers conveniently forget that brand-related attributes don’t have the same importance across categories. Why would the same attributes driving the selection of BP versus Shell apply to Tylenol versus Advil or McDonalds versus Burger King? They wouldn’t.

Delusions of brandeur live on.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams recently spoke at an event in San Francisco, CA. Here are some of his quotes, with my take on them:

Williams: “The problem with email is that it’s sender-driven, and sender-driven media doesn’t scale. The sender is motivated to send as much stuff as possible because it’s free. Tweeting can be different (and better) than email, because people who have something to say can find their audience.”

My take: Nonsense. Email marketers have learned — albeit, the hard way — that sending too much email will drive customers and prospects to opt-out.  As for Twitter being better, that’s nonsense as well. In fact, Twitter is worse. It has enabled (if not encouraged) people to tweet things they would never dream of putting in an email: What they ate for breakfast, a running account of the delays the plane they’re on is experiencing, Twitpics of the nail polish they put on their toes, and (a personal pet peeve) pseudo-inspirational quotes from pseudo-famous dead people.

Williams: “Google serves more purpose-driven needs versus Twitter’s focus on an interest-based world. Google is very good at ‘I need to solve a problem, I need to buy something, I need an answer’. Twitter is more ‘I’m interested in many things, I don’t know what I need to know.’”

My take: Google and Twitter don’t belong in the same sentence. Google is search, and it’s great for ‘I’m interested in something, but not sure what’s out there, where it is, or what might be related to it.’ Twitter is for….well, different things for different people. For me (and I bet for many of my Twitter buddies), Twitter is for conversation. For other people (and I tend to unfollow these people and firms pretty quickly) it’s for broadcasting. For sure, plenty of people use Twitter for searching. But it’s searching for what somebody tweeted — and that’s a different kind of search than what Google is for. Being “purpose-driven” or “interest-based” doesn’t factor in here — real people (i.e., not marketers) don’t think in those terms.

Williams: “What we need to get much better at is scaling that system so you don’t have to pay attention to everything, but you don’t miss the stuff you care about.”

My take: This comment reflects a somewhat narrow view of how some people use Twitter (in particular, me). I’m not worried in the least about missing “stuff” I care about. I don’t follow “stuff” — I follow people. Granted, there may be a lot of marketers out there who don’t want to miss mentions of their beloved brand, but I’ve got to believe that out of 145 million Twitterers, only a small percentage are marketers worrying about missing “stuff.”

Final thought: I admit that it’s unfair of me to try and read intention into his statements, but I think Williams’ comments are driven by a view that Twitter needs to become more useful to marketers. Why? Because that’s who Twitter thinks will pay to use it. People who tweet don’t obsess over Google vs. Twitter, or email vs. Twitter.

I hold the following to be fundamental truths:

• Customer engagement – repeated and satisfying interactions that strengthen the emotional connection a consumer has with a brand (or product, or company) — is a necessary path to establishing customer loyalty and strong customer relationships.
• PFM will evolve to become a platform for customer engagement for banks and credit unions.

Given these opinions, how could I not love a site called Engagement Banking, recently launched by SapientNitro, Geezeo, and Brett King?

Officially titled “Banking on the Future: A New Era of Engagement Banking,” there’s a ton of great content — not just text, but video and graphics, as well — on the site. Because of the way the site is designed, I can’t link directly to any single piece, but three of my favorite sections included:

• Building a better dashboard
• Close encounters of the banking kind
• I think, therefore I twitter

[Side note: Ironically, the last sentence is not symmetrical. There a lot of people who twitter, but who clearly don't think]

As much as I love the site, I do have a nit to pick. The following 2×2 graphic is taken from the site:

I doubt there’s anybody who loves 2×2 graphics more than I do, and if I were designing one, I’d put my idea in the upper right hand corner, as well. But here’s my problem:

Convenience banking, transactional banking, and relationship banking are not inferior to engagement banking. They’re a part of engagement banking.

Engagement banking is — or should be — about improving convenience, transactional effectiveness, and relationship building. In fact, the ability to deliver on convenience is directly related to a firm’s ability to scale cost-effectively.

My little nit hardly impacts the overall value that people will get out of this site. But I would encourage SapientNitro, Geezeo, and Brett to rethink this chart. Their ability to communicate a new concept (engagement banking) — and get it to stick — will depend on how well people in the industry can distinguish the new idea from what came before it. As it stands, I think they’ve created an artificial distinction between four labels.

CreditUnions.com recently published a series of slides highlighting CUs’ industry performance through the first half of 2010 (loved the pseud0-slideshow). The headline of the second slide (the first slide with data) read:

“Credit unions are gaining members, however share growth is coming primarily from existing members.”

There’s a word in that headline that hit me upside the head: However.

Using that word in the headline implies that the news, if not bad, is something less than desirable.

Wrong!

There is nothing that CUs should be hoping more for — or working harder for — in 2010 than deepening the relationships they have with existing members — relationships that may very well be in the early stages of development as CUs benefited from the flight to safety that occurred throughout 2009.

I know that there are a lot of credit unions fixated (obsessed would be a good word here) with lowering the average of their member base, leading to a focus on member acquisition. Here’s the reality of the situation: They can’t move the average significantly in a single year. My point is that while it’s all well and fine to launch programs designed to acquire Gen Y members, CUs can’t ignore the cross-sell opportunities they have with Gen Xers and Boomers.

As the CreditUnions.com post indicated in one of its slides, the best loan growth opportunities in the first half of 2010 were in credit cards and business loans. I could be wrong here, but I’d bet those credit card and business loan opportunities weren’t driven by Gen Yers.

I suspect — perhaps unfairly and wrongly — that the use of the word “however” in the slide title referred to above is rooted in a credit union marketing mentality that is driven by some inexplicable need to convert the unwashed masses to the credit union religion and movement.

Credit union marketers just can’t seem to accept that maybe a credit union isn’t right for everyone. That maybe not everyone is going to drink the credit union kool-aid.  Instead of lamenting that share growth was driven by existing members in the first half of 2010, CU marketers should be celebrating.

In a previous post, I referred to a market research study commissioned by ING Direct as “the stupidest market research ever conducted.”

In retrospect, that was a bit harsh and inaccurate. I should have said it was the stupidest market research ever conducted by a financial services firm.

ING Direct surveyed 1,000 American adults about….well, I’m not sure what they were surveyed about, to tell you the truth. It certainly it wasn’t about their financial lives. The study, which the release refers to as the “financial battle of the sexes survey,” found that:

61% of men find a frugal blind date to be both “smart” and “sexy.” This is a little hard to believe, considering that 73% of men don’t know what the word “frugal” means. The other 27% subscribes to the Urban Dictionary’s definition of frugal, which is “sexy, yet surprisingly revealing.” So for these 27%, calling a frugal blind date “sexy” is redundant.

Women are twice as likely (as men) to be upset by a partner who spends too little on them. From this, ING Direct’s CEO concluded “being a saver is smart…transparency about your money habits and low credit card debt can prevent money disagreements and help build long term trust in a relationship.” Oh really? Sounds like the exact opposite to me.

Women are 56% more likely to give up sex than men. I gather from the context of the press release that this was in reference to the genders’ willingness to give up sex in order to reduce debt. Some comments worth noting:

1. Men aren’t willing to give up sex for anything, so any percentage greater than zero makes women “more likely” than men.
2. If there are women willing to give up sex in order to reduce their level of debt, this implies that they’re paying for sex. Really? Women pay for sex? Really? The finding not only implies that there are women who pay for sex, but are paying enough for it that giving up sex would help reduce their level of debt. If you are one of these women — or know of one — please contact me immediately. I can help.

Women are likely to be more upset about an unfaithful spouse (44%) than losing a job (40%) or accumulating debt (27%). It’s actually comforting to know that for the majority of women — and men, for that matter — love is more important than money. But this finding completely misses the key point here: 56% of women would not be upset about an unfaithful spouse.  Of course, that’s not as bad as the 61% of men who would not be upset about an unfaithful spouse.

Men are also almost twice as confident as women (29% vs. 18%) when it comes to investing in the stock market. That’s a quote directly from the press release. It’s statements like this that make me question the mathematical competency of the parties involved here. Why? Because 29% is nowhere near “twice” as much as 18%. Twice as much is 100% more. That would be 36%. 50% more would be 27%. I’m no PhD in Statistics, but I’ve always thought that 29 was closer to 27 than it is to 36. If you must know, 29 is 61% greater than 18.

———————-

I initially hesitated to publish this post, because I was afraid that calling the research”stupid” might offend ING Direct. But then I realized that they’ll be anything but mad. I’ve played right into their plan.

This study wasn’t designed or intended to be real market research. It was simply a marketing tactic to generate publicity for ING Direct, and get people thinking about savings accounts and investment accounts. And by publishing my “critique” of the study, I’m actually helping the firm achieve its marketing objectives.

You’ll be getting a bill from me for my services, Mr. Kuhlmann.

For the past year and a half, nearly everyone in the financial services industry has been focused on the battles over deposits, overdraft fees, interchange rates, and big banks versus the world. Many, however, have overlooked a battle that has been brewing for some time now: The battle for orange.

The battle pits two financial services giants: ING Direct and Discover.

ING Direct has been focused on orange right from its start in North America, even going as far as naming its accounts after the color: Orange Savings Account, Orange CD, Electric Orange Savings, Easy Orange Mortgage (all of which only fueled rumors that ING stands for Induces Nausea and Gas).

Discover may very well have been hanging its branding hat on the color orange for some time now, but it wasn’t until its escape from Morgan Stanley in 2007 that the firm really stepped up its struggle for orange supremacy. Discover has quietly been infusing its web site with orange over the past few years, and, quite frankly, its orange $75 cashback offer is a better deal than ING Direct’s $50 bonus offer — which is in blue, by the way.

With its orange-branded cafes, bouncing orange balls on its web site, and a huge section of its home page dedicated to nothing but the color orange, I would have to say that ING Direct has been winning the battle for orange.

Until now, that is.

Discover has fired a major shot in the war: It announced last week that it will be the title sponsor of the college football Orange Bowl for four years, starting in 2011. Take that ING Direct!

Who’s going to win this battle? My money is on Discover. Here’s why:

ING Direct is focused on cleavage. It recently released the results of what may be the stupidest market research ever conducted. According to the press release “when it comes to attracting men, a low credit card balance could do more than a low cut dress.” The study also found that “women are 56% more likely to give up sex than men.” Bathing suit-clad flash mob dancers in Canada only further my accusation. Sounds to me like the firm is more focused on blue than orange.

Discover is leaner and meaner. Have you ever driven the 28 miles from Chicago to Discover’s headquarters in Riverwoods, IL? I have.  It takes about 3 hours. The worst traffic I’ve seen this side of L.A. You’d be mean too if you had to drive to work there.

Credit cards are patriotic. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the stimulus package isn’t working. The economy needs another injection of spending. Credit cards — which promote spending — are for patriots. Savings accounts are for socialists.

Anyway, Seth Godin says color is important, so you can be sure this battle will go on for quite some time.

Technorati Tags: Discover, ING Direct

Fast Company recently ran an article titled The Dark Side of Web-Based Savings Schemes. The article includes a description of the experiences of two companies:

• The Gap. According to the article, “Groupon’s first big national promotional partner was Gap, with a seemingly amazing sounding offer of a $50 gift certificate for a knock-down price of $25.”

• East Coast Aero Club. In an attempt to lure people to take helicopter flying lessons, the firm offered 70% off of a first lesson for just $69 through Groupon. In the first five hours of the offer, 2,600 lessons were sold, which, apparently was “the very limit of what the company could stand.”  (I, alas, responded too slowly and was shut out).

The article concludes that:

“Many promotional incentives through Groupon, its competitor peers, or other systems like Foursquare’s location-based game are run as loss-leaders in the hope of enticing new customers who may then deliver repeat business. But in in era of widespread Net use, when a simple promotional message can run round the country in a matter of hours, the risks for companies using Web coupons is potentially much much larger. Get your popularity-to-loss-leading ratio wrong, and you’ll attract thousands of unwanted new customers.”

This, according to Fast Company, is the “dark side” of web-based savings schemes.

Nonsense.

From The Gap’s perspective, there was no downside here. How Fast Company concludes that a $50 gift certificate for $25 is a “seemingly amazing sounding offer” is beyond me. The Groupon deal: 1) generated immediate revenue (the price of the coupon), and 2) produced a set of highly motivated customers with a vested interest in reaping the benefit of that certificate.

And I’m betting that The Gap didn’t pick up any “unwanted new customers” from this promotion, nor was it trying to. My bet is that the firm saw Groupon has a far more effective way of distributing coupons to its target market than other distribution channels.

The Gap might have an email list, but an email from The Gap competes with emails that consumers get from lots of firms they do business with. Too much noise in that channel. FSIs in the Sunday paper? Direct mail? Sure, those were options, but at a lot higher cost (most likely) than through Groupon.

According to Mashable.com, 441,000 coupons — oops, I mean groupons — were sold. The offer might have crashed Groupon’s servers, but that’s Groupon’s problem, not The Gap’s. And it’s certainly not a systemic problem with web-based savings “schemes”.

While The Gap’s use of Groupon was to effectively distribute a deal to customers, East Coast Aero’s business objective was very different. ECA needed to create awareness for their brand (I live in their area and had no idea they existed). Utilizing Groupon to effectively reach prospects in their market was likely a very effective tactic from a cost and reach perspective.

It’s certainly possible that ECA got the “popularity-to-loss-leading ratio” wrong. But that’s not a dark side of web-based savings tactics (sorry, but I find the word “scheme” to be derogatory). What ECA did wrong was mis-structuring the offer.

More than 2,500 people will now be showing up at ECA’s door in the next few months looking to cash in on their lesson. My bet is that very few of them have any plans on continuing lessons. (I was looking to get in on the deal because I thought it would make a cool Mother’s Day present for my wife).

Did ECA think about the logistics of scheduling 2,600 lessons over the next 6 to 12 months? Does it have a plan for converting first-time flyers into long-term customers? I don’t know. If it doesn’t, then that’s ECA’s problem. But it’s not a “dark side” of web-based savings scheme.

Sorry, Fast Company, but the “risks” of web-based coupons that you’ve identified are simply not there.

I’m not going to stop fighting this. The banking industry’s misguided view of what onboarding is, that is.

A while back I wrote (slightly edited):

“The banking industry has an odd definition of the word on-boarding. Or at least to me it does, considering it’s not a real word in the first place.

To me, the term implies the process by which a firm helps a new customer become a satisfied new customer. To me, the concept implies that simply closing the sale isn’t enough — that some, if not many, customers need help when initially using, establishing, or setting up a product or service.

But, to many banks on-boarding means trying to sell more products to new customers immediately after those customers purchase their first product or service, before some fictitious cross-selling window closes.”

A recent article on BAI’s site called Customer Onboarding: The 90-Day Countdown underscores the industry’s philosophy:

“An invisible clock starts ticking the moment a customer purchases a new product with a financial institution. Research has shown over and over again that by the time the clock has ticked for 90 days – a period of time known as onboarding – the customer’s lifetime value and profitability will have been practically set in stone.”

But what the “research” never seems to explain is why this alleged 90-day window exists. Here’s a theory: It’s the window in which the customer is still in the honeymoon period, and their bank (or credit union) hasn’t done enough to piss them off yet, or fail to live up to the expectations that were set during the evaluation (courting) phase.

There’s a 90-day window because banks have been terrible at building relationships with customers. There’s nothing magical about the 90-day window that causes the cross-selling window to close.

The BAI article does a nice job of explaining why establishing valuable customer experiences following the opening of a new account is important (and recognizes the role of expectations in the the courting phase). But with an industry mindset that associates onboarding with cross-selling, I fear many will fail to realize that onboarding is more about customer engagement than cross-selling.

So I’d like to propose a new term (and process): Honeymooning.

To be clear, honeymooning is not the process by which someone pulls their pants down and shows their butt to their significant other.

Instead, it’s the process that ensures that new customers become engaged with the bank, and that the new customer’s expectations are met.

This implies that actions taken by the bank in the honeymoon period will be oriented more towards driving high-value engagement behavior — e.g., online bill pay enrollment, use of PFM tools and educational material, webinars and seminars the institution puts on — and towards ensuring that new customers have selected the right account or product, than trying to push another product at them.

Dictionary.com refers to a honeymoon as a period characterized by harmony and goodwill. By the way, Dictionary.com doesn’t have a definition for onboarding, and describes on-board as providing or occurring on a vehicle — leading to a perception of “taking one for a ride”. Nice.

In a banking context, honeymooning could  mean waiving any ATM or overdraft fees, or late fees, or other fees that a customer might be asked or forced to pay.

Could that negatively impact revenue at a time when replacing potential lost revenue is a top priority for financial institutions? Absolutely. But if it builds goodwill and trust, it might help to extend that magical window from 90 days to 180 or 360 days.

Email marketers have such an inferiority complex. And with good reason, I guess. After all, all they hear from social media zealots is that email is dead.

So email marketers commission studies to show that email is still alive — and, more specifically, how social media and email can not only co-exist, but mutually thrive.

Reminds me of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where some guy is yelling “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!”, and there’s a guy on the stretcher claiming “I’m not dead yet.” That guy is Email.

One recent study found that:

“Roughly half of consumers indicated that they are willing to act as brand advocates in order to connect email content to social networks.”

When asked what sort of marketing information they would consider appropriate to share through social media, 54% of respondents said special offers and promotions, 42% said news on new products, and 32% said support information (e.g., tutorials and product support content).

These respondents are what the marketing community calls “brand advocates.” Or what the rest of us refer to as shameless corporate shills.

I can’t imagine the thought process that leads someone to think “Hey, this email I just got from Staples with the weekly coupons is something I just HAVE TO tweet about or put on my Facebook page!”

There were, however, 37% of North American respondents that said None Of The Above, when asked what information is worth sharing.

I call this group the NOTAries. These are my people.

It’s good to know that not everyone suffers from Twitterhea or redactile dysfunction. I’m sorry to say, though, that it looks like my irritable blog syndrome is acting up again.