The frenetic early days of the COVID-19 crisis made it necessary to break some financial institution emailing rules to get the word out about how to bank remotely. Now that America is settling into new habits, fresh thinking is surfacing about email and the way to push content to consumers.
For a communications medium that pundits wrote off a decade or so ago, email has proven to be a workhorse for banks and credit unions reaching out to customers during the coronavirus crisis. Email has been the primary means to tell them about branch closings, service alternatives, digital channel access and financial relief efforts.
“Communication is going to be at the central heart of this crisis,” says James Robert Lay, CEO of the Digital Growth Institute, “and a lot of that will be via email.”
The way the industry reached out early on differed from usual financial brand email practices, going somewhat “old school.” But there has been some return to newer ways of using emails and experts interviewed have recommendations for making the best use of this channel going forward.