Digital onboarding tools, once reserved mainly for the largest banks, are becoming popular with financial institutions of all sizes, helping to drive online banking and bill payment and the cross selling of other financial products, said Paul Murphy, president of Murphy & Co. in a Monday morning workshop entitled “A Fresh Idea to Drive Internet Banking and Bill Pay Usage: Digital Onboarding.”

Onboarding is a process banks use to follow up on new accounts to make sure customers were handled properly. The digital onboarding tools Murphy referred to are print-on-demand and e-video.

“Digital onboarding tools have only been affordable to the very top tier banks that might be able to enroll, say, 250,000 customers a week in their online programs,” Murphy said in his Monday presentation.

Today, however, better pricing and advanced technology offered through third-party service providers makes digital onboarding available to all banks, Murphy said. Print-on-demand and e-video are especially effective at getting customers to actually use the online banking and bill payment services for which they signed up.

Print-on-demand involves sending customized kits via direct mail to customers within seven to 14 days after signup. Computerized processes allow customized versions of these kits to be produced and sent out quickly at a reasonable cost. The kits welcome the customer to the new service, provide additional information about how the service works and describe its benefits.

The kits can also be customized to include offerings for additional bank products, such as home equity loans, car loans or high-yield investment products. Murphy said banks need to analyze their customer base to determine the appropriate products to offer. Print-on-demand programs can be accomplished for as little as $1.50 per household, Murphy added.

With e-video, customers who have signed up for online bill pay are quickly sent an e-mail “call to action.” This e-mail welcomes the customer to the new service and invites them to view an online video that walks them through its use. A link in the e-mail allows customers to click directly to the video.

Costs associated with e-video are harder to pinpoint than with print-on-demand, Murphy said. While the cost of the e-mail itself is negligible, there is an upfront cost of producing the video.

Banks may want to offer both tools or choose just one, Murphy said. “Some banks may want to send the e-mail first and then send the print-on-demand kits only to those customers who did not respond to the e-mail. Other banks may want to coordinate both efforts.”

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