Citibank launched a marketing campaign in May that gained the bank 270,000 new online accounts for existing customers who had zero prior online presence with the bank.

“Consumers wanted to be part of the solution of COVID-19 and find ways they could help those impacted,” said Mary Hines, U.S. chief marketing officer at Citi. The $1.95 trillion dollar bank ran a monthlong campaign offering the opportunity to create an online credential for customers who had never engaged digitally; for each new customer, Citi made a $5 contribution to the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, with a capped total donation of $1 million. World Central Kitchen serves more than 200,000 meals per day across the U.S. to vulnerable communities and front-line medical professionals. In many cases, the nonprofit uses unemployed restaurant workers to make and deliver those meals, Hines noted.

“When you think about these people, who have been with us for years and have never ever engaged with us digitally despite numerous marketing about all our digital features, it really shows that opportunity to contribute to the community particularly resonates during this COVID time period,” Hines said. According to the company’s first-quarter earnings, Citi had 20 million digital users

With the new mass of online users, Citi made preparations to make the onboarding process as streamlined as possible, while taking pressure off the call center. The bank made an investment in “How-To” videos that walk customers through different online tools and processes, such as creating a new online credential, mobile check deposit and online bill pay. The videos quickly gained traction, Hines said, noting the mobile check deposit video had more than 27,000 views the first day, and mobile check deposit volume grew to 37% in May to outpace ATM and teller channels.

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Citi also made tweaks to existing products, like increasing the number of password retries before a customer is locked out and needs to call in. “We didn’t want people to call in because they’d have to wait forever so we changed it from six to 10, and it reduced lockouts by 55%,” Hines said. “There were several friction points that in aggregate, made a huge difference in customers being able to easily integrate with us.”

Citi’s efforts to push people to digital during the pandemic also extended to its call centers. The marketing team was tasked with rewriting the script in the bank’s call center IVR to tell customers calling in that they were “facing a very long hold time and the quickest way to get what [they] need done is through our digital experiences — and it really made an impact,” Hines said. Moving forward, Citi’s marketing team will review all script copy produced by the operations team in order to boost consistency and transparency across all channels.

“People need a reason to change their behavior and prior to COVID, if they were comfortable every month, on the way into work, stopping at their branch to deposit a check, they’re never going to change that behavior,” Hines said. “Now you have the fear of not wanting to go outside, which drove people to try it for the first time.”

Bank Innovation Build, which will take place Sep. 9-10 as a virtual experience, is a must-attend industry event for professionals overseeing financial technologies, product experiences and services.