Everyone is releasing apps these days, even banks. Here is an email promoting an app from a bank. A great idea, because they are showing that they are into customer service and are catering to the needs of their clients by simplifying customer’s lives – allowing them to add a feature to their phone that locates nearby ATMs without the pesky fees.  On top of that, this bank is smart in using email campaigns to prompt their users to interact with their online accounts. A great marketing plan indeed, BUT, whoever sent out this email missed a number of key points.

1. The call to action

They include a navy blue button to download the new app today, BUT, there are two inherent issues with it.  First, it looks like the header of the email and not a button because it spans the entire frame of the email and sits on top of the body copy and not within it.  Second, they forgot to link it, so the button goes nowhere and leaves the recipient to admire the pictures in the email and wonder how to find this app.

Furthermore, they include a line of text telling the person to go search for the app themselves – “Just search for ‘ING DIRECT ATM FINDER’ in your device’s app store and download the ATM Finder today”.  It would take a very motivated person to take the time to seek out their phones’ app store and find the correct app.  What this email could have done better in this case, is included plain blue text links to each carriers app store, and made the manual download experience a tad easier for the customer.

2. The landing page

There is no way to access the company website from this email. Whether they forgot to add a link to their logo or whether this was purposefully done, it is like inviting someone to a party and not telling them where it is.

It doesn’t make matters better that even if their customer was really enthused about this promotion and immediately went on their website to find more information on this feature (because let’s face it, it’s cool to have a bank that is “with” the program on the technology front), they would be equally disappointed, because they wouldn’t be able to find it easily.  I spent a quality 3 minutes trying to locate it, and could not, which is a red flag because as we know, few visitors stay on a site longer than 2-3 minutes.

Of course, I could always Google it. But then this email campaign would still be a poor one, because when tracking how many people downloaded the app, Google would get the credit for it and the email campaign would not.  Hopefully, they can catch the errors in this email and avoid disgruntling their customers in their future email campaigns.

Food for thought:  Do you think they should resend this email again with functioning links?