Banking

The Client
Founded in 1784, The Bank of New York is the oldest bank in the United States. A global leader in providing a comprehensive array of services that enable institutions and individuals to move and manage their financial assets, the bank has a long tradition of collaborating with clients to deliver innovative solutions through their core competencies. The bank has worldwide staff of 22,993 located in branches, representative offices, affiliates, and operations centres in 32 countries.

The Pain
Previously corporate newsletters were sent in hard-copy format to senior executives including the bank's clients and prospects. The process of which was lengthy, requiring several internal resources to complete and execute. No feedback mechanism meant The Bank of New York had no effective method of collecting intelligence from the audience they were communicating with and therefore no way of understanding the type of content certain audiences were interested in. Another factor considered was that a specific number of recipients only received corporate communications via mobile devices such as their Blackberry or smart phone and it was imperative that this group was reached effectively in all communications.

The Solution
The Bank of New York collaborated with Concep to develop a communications program designed to deliver regular interactive email newsletters directly to various senior executive audience segments with key content generated by the bank. The purpose of which was to provide an open channel to develop a two-way dialogue allowing all recipients to impart their own feedback directly back to The Bank of New York. Each campaign was in the format of an integrated email newsletter. The professionally branded interactive email was delivered directly into the recipient's inbox with interest generated through small content sections or teasers containing links to the complete article hosted online. The reporting capabilities of the Concep campaigner system allowed The Bank of New York to track all click-throughs enabling them to gauge the recipient's interests therefore allowing the optimisation of content for future editions plus further segmentation of the audience based on specific content preferences. The campaign was also delivered containing a link to a Blackberry or smartphone version allowing the recipient to easily view and read the content on their mobile device.

The Results
The first campaign conducted achieved a 71% view rate, which is remarkably high when considering the target audience of senior level executives. A very impressive 33% click-through rate of viewers was also achieved meaning a third of viewers clicked through to read the articles in full. The campaign success highlighted the importance of appropriate content delivered professionally through a direct and highly relevant channel in terms of the target audience. The Bank of New York team was also able to further breakdown recipient interactions via the analysis of click-throughs on a per-link and per-recipient basis fine tuning further email campaigns.