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• May 8, 2020

Through targeting, we are getting specific info to those who need it most

As the world continues to adapt to COVID-19, teams have come together to innovate, develop and enhance existing offerings to allow us to better connect with customers in new, safer ways.

For the first time, TD has been using assets like the Consumer Insights Engine (CIE) to target smaller groups with relevant emails and SMS messages based on how they interact with us.

Thanks to tremendous efforts across Marketing, Strategic Business Architecture and Retail teams, we're now leveraging Relay, a personalized SMS text message capability, to directly contact customers to provide critical, time-sensitive updates including store hour changes, direct deposit how-tos, information on how to enroll in mobile banking and much more.

What's special is the ways we are using analytics and data to ensure we're sending the right messages to the right people via the right channel.

"It's never been more important to communicate with our customers in unique, personalized ways based on what we know about them," said John Thomas, Head of Enterprise Innovation and Strategic Business Architecture. "Over the past two months, we've been able to harness relatively new technologies like Relay and leverage deep insights from the CIE to deploy contextually relevant messages to specific segments of our customer population in ways we've never been able to before."

In one example, we analyzed store engagement to determine which customers visited our stores more frequently, and then texted that group to let them know their store hours were changing because of COVID-19.

Another example is in how we segmented those most likely to get a stimulus check and provided emails and texts with instructions on how to leverage mobile deposit to eliminate the need to come in to a store or ATM to deposit a check.

The goal was to keep our customers and colleagues safe by using digital banking options over in-person interactions, while helping them to get funds into their accounts as quickly as possible.

"From a marketing standpoint, we've paused many of our acquisition efforts and on-going campaigns to really focus in on what our customers need right now," said Alissa Van Volkom, Head of Product & Customer Marketing. "We've done bits and pieces of this previously, in preparation for hurricanes or large platform upgrades, but never anything of this scope or scale. In a way, this pandemic has allowed us to challenge traditional thinking around how we connect with and support our customers and helped lay the groundwork for how we want to approach customer communications going forward."

Contactless banking for the future

In 72 hours, hundreds of colleagues from across the Bank came together to train nearly 11,000 front-line store colleagues on the Relay platform. Now, in addition to helpful emails and texts, our store employees can use the SMS text functionality to send relevant messages to customers in-person instantly.

If a customer who may not know how to leverage mobile deposit comes to the drive-thru weekly to deposit his or her paycheck, a TD Bank colleague at the store can now send a text directly to their phone (while in the drive-thru) with a link to more information about how to download the app and use mobile deposit.

"The health and well-being of our colleagues and customers is top priority, and we know that during this challenging time, we must find ways to continue to connect with and support them, however they need, wherever they are," said Ernie Diaz, Head of Consumer Distribution and Wealth, TD Bank. "We think of our customers like family. This is about leveraging data to communicate with them in a meaningful, yet Unexpectedly Human way."

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