Many financial companies have enrolled customers for an Internet service, but far fewer have had much luck with follow-up sales.
In their efforts to change this, some are using one online service as a foundation for brand building and cross-selling.
E-Trade Financial Corp., for example, has thrived as an Internet brokerage house but has had less success promoting E-Trade Bank. The New York company aims to correct this not by hyping the bank but by better familiarizing customers with online banking, and it is using its Quick Transfer service to do so.
Quick Transfer lets the user move money from outside bank accounts into E-Trade trading accounts and routes them to an account management screen that uses the E-Trade interface to show balances at their external accounts.
Robert Shenk, E-Trade's vice president of retail banking, said Quick Transfer "is a simpler first step for many customers. This is a great way, and a low-impact way, of trying out our online banking."
Citibank.com customers can transfer funds from one institution to another. Catherine Palmieri, the director of the Citigroup Inc. unit, said that at first there was concern that Citibank would lose accounts by offering the transfer service.
But the opposite has occurred.
"We've actually found that the inflow is 75%, versus the outflow of 25%," Ms. Palmieri said.
And the more active the customers become on the Internet, the more likely they are to use it to research and buy other services, she said. "It matters that they do things online."
SunTrust Banks Inc. of Atlanta is using live chat to cross-sell loans, credit cards, and other products, said John McGuire, the senior vice president and managing director of SunTrust Online.
"Our chat system will proactively monitor visitors to our site" and their product research, Mr. McGuire said. A pop-up window offers a chance to speak with one of the 12 sales representatives.
"We get about a 10% acceptance rate when we present the 'Would you like to chat?' … [window] and from that we get an application rate or sales rate that's better than we get in the telephone channel," Mr. McGuire said. "To keep that momentum going to close the sales process is really vital."
A survey report published last week by NetRatings Inc. said 24% of the 400,000 people polled use online banking in addition to doing stock trades online. Thirty-one percent of online banking customers also look at their credit card information online, and 68% of mortgage customers use online banking.
Ken Cassar, the director of strategic analysis with NetRatings, of New York, said these numbers point to a good marketing opportunity. Not many people "are doing multiple financial service activities online," he said.
