Business is Joined-up thinking

Usually, when letters arrive by the now old-fashioned method of snail-mail, I look forward to opening the envelopes, enjoying the fact that I can still look forward to receiving messages and communications in a more traditional manner, without knowing the title, subject or mail addresses of the senders. Coupled with this is the fact that getting letters delivered to you personally, brings an air of excitement to the letter-opening experience: not knowing whether you are receiving a letter from a loved one, a happy birthday card, a tax rebate from the government (a simple wish...) or even the dread of seeing the most recent phonebill. So it was with great interest, that I picked up a rather anonymous looking blue envelope this morning, with a cryptic return postal address written on the reverse of it. Hoping for a surprise, I opened the letter to find out that I had been “cordially” invited to apply for an internet banking account from my bank, who I have been with now for the last 10 years. Since the launch of their eBanking division and services approximately 5 years ago, I have been a regular user of all of their online services. Obviously, my customer details do not appear on some database somewhere for some unknown reason. Or in their wisdom, my bank has decided to carpet bomb me with marketing material in the hope that even if I have defected from them to a rival bank, they can lure me back with their services. All of this prompted me to ask the question of why they did not realise that I was already an online account holder in the first place? More importantly, why are they wasting time and money sending me marketing material when I know (and they probably know somehow, somewhere) that I am registered as an eBanking user ?