New Customer Welcome Letter
The Bank of the West submitted their new customer Onboarding (Welcome) letter for review and comment. It does a good job and with some small changes, could do even better.
Click here (and then on the second “Bank of the West” link) to see pdf of the Bank of the West Welcome
Overall Look –
• The letter is nicely positioned on attractive letterhead, with plenty of white space.
• The body copy appears just to be a shade too long to the reader (but can be corrected with the use of a P.S. as mentioned below).
Specific Comments –
• Johnson’s Box: The use of the pre-printed “welcome” across the top gives it the appearance of a “form letter”… Better to use words in the same typeface as the letter in the space to the right of the address block (called the Johnson’s Box). It could be something like, “Welcome to your home town bank.”
• First Paragraph: This is a nice and friendly introduction, which could be more personalized by mentioning the specific account the new customer opened: “thank you for opening your new [checking] account with us.”
• Second Paragraph: The message points are all good; but presented in a “we” rather than “you” format. The way you translate the “we” to the “you” in the next paragraph (“you can always expect a quick response to all your banking needs”) is better.
• Home Town Banking: The letter does a great job of positioning the bank as the local bank for the consumer.
• Call to Action: When the customer is invited to visit, better to again have variable data that references their local branch and (since the letter is signed by the two top executives) to mention the name of the branch manager and their phone number.
• Set-up for Cross-sell: The last paragraph is a nice preparation for the planned follow-up cross-sell mailings to come.
• P.S.: To reduce the body copy and give greater emphasis to the “security of funds” point, the fourth paragraph could be moved down to become a P.S. in the letter.