The Element Group’s Rudiger Merz,

former CMO for Nevada State Bank/

Zion Corporation

The average consumer is

overwhelmed with choices, filtering out

thousands of advertising messages a day. It’s

the same situation with banks, with

approximately 1000 households per

institution and no differentiators, customers

are essentially shopping for the best rate

instead of a long standing financial

relationship. Therefore it’s becoming

increasingly necessary for branches to

strategize in order to attract the ideal client

for growing profitability. Having worked

with banks for almost 20 years in the retail

space creating digital displays, way finding,

wall signage and more, the Element Group

finds the biggest challenge facing bank

executives remains how to direct new

customer’s in-branch. Marketing campaigns

are ready and waiting to appeal to the senses

but uncovering prospects to experience these

displays can be a bit trickier when everyone

is offering the same services.

! Understanding these challenges are

paramount, The Element Group has

identified some quick tips you can

implement today in order to attract a greater

percentage of qualified leads for the long

term. Divided into core segments, the plan

focuses on virtual marketing for an

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How Can Community Banks Differentiate and Attract

New Customers?

influential inbound lead generation

campaign with a goal to bring measurable

and quantitative results to any branch

marketing program.

Step One: Define your ‘right’ customer

The very first step to attracting new

clients, before you even send out that email

campaign is to perform a thorough analysis

of who are your most profitable and loyal

customers. These are the clients who

purchase the most products, maintain longer

tenure, and remain the most actively loyal.

We recommend reviewing your current

database for these individuals and businesses

by overlaying behavioral data and

physiographical profiles to develop an

essential personal file. Most banks have basic

customer data including a name, address,

and age inference, but when it comes to

closing a deal and bringing a new customer

onboard, there remains a wide gap between

engaging beyond demographic data and

delving into more behavioral analytics.

Vendors such as Experian, ESRI, First Date,

or Raddon Group can be used as resources to

assist in this first step.

Understanding life situations will

greatly affect who you reach out to and how

you do so. Attracting customers is easy, but

you want to find the right customer for better

close rates. Here are some key factors to

consider:

• How do your potential customers

prefer to communicate with you?

• What do you know about their life

cycle stage? Discover where there

is inconsistency in data quality.

Therefore, investigate your current

database and see how deep your

demographic layers go. Perhaps you are

already on top of this first initial step, and

that’s great. But for many banks, while the

contacts are there, not much else is known

about these customers. We challenge you to

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take your existing list and really get to know

the people behind the name and e-mail

address. How do you do this? Phone calls are

old school we suggest subscribing. It will be

an expenditure but the ROI will be apparent

with your higher response rates not to

mention a much more tangible marketing

message spread out across your various

demographic groups.

Step Two: Identify your right prospects

by minimizing your risk profiles

Performing an accurate customer risk

assessment will help the community bank

acquire the most profitable consumers while

minimizing risk since every Prospect is not

created equal.

During this step, question who your

most profitable customers and what do you

know about their core characteristics in order

to overcome the data gap? By now you may

be saying well that’s easy to say, but HOW

do you identify and group these customers?

There could be thousands of contacts within

your database, and it’s anyone’s guess what

their greatest need is. This is the reason many

e-mail campaigns fail because they go out

blindly and have low success rates.

Score your consumer prospect list

with relevant credit information (i.e. credit

score, bankruptcy), according to your bank’s

risk profile. There is nothing worse than

sending out a credit card offer to a sub-prime

prospect who would not qualify according to

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your risk profiles. Alternatively, for banks

looking to acquire business customers,

determine which businesses are well-

capitalized and financially suited for

customer acquisition. It is worth the

investment to

have an

enriched

customer

profile to

better

understand

their needs

because you can then craft a different

message for each group. For example, most

of the segmentations you will find are Gen Y,

X, Baby Boomer, and the Retiree. Each of

these groups has very distinct needs when it

comes to their neighborhood bank. Some of

these customers will prefer online and mobile

banking, while others only trust transactions

within the branch. The point is there are

various channels and you want to

understand that so you can rightfully target

your audience and act on the information. If

you have the insight and act on it, you will be

ahead of the competition.

An example of randomness when it

comes to

marketing are

hot money

deals which

are often

conceived at

the bank level

and appeal to

the masses via billboard and radio spots. So

while the bank is receiving publicity there is

a downside as your net interest margin (IM)

goes down, and the campaign usually

attracts disproportionate customers chasing

the best rate. No one wants low loyalty

which is why identifying your ideal customer

and knowing where to find them is necessary

to building customer relationships and not

just one off hot money places. When you take

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the time to invest in identifying the right

customer, you are answering the question of

why they should bank with you, and very

few banks understand the why. The

opportunity for lower retention rates will

greatly improve when you know why a

customer chose your bank over another one.

Visualize the segments, and capture more

data to expand to other branches.

Step Three: Determine your best offer

Not everyone is in the market for a

banking product so understanding who is

more likely to buy certain products or who is

in the market for them. Achieve step three

using data augmentation and scoring tools to

determine the most likely prospects to buy

specific products to optimize your order.

Once you understand who your ideal

customers are and how to communicate

through emotional and product triggers, it’s

time to think about owning the mile around

your bank. Perhaps your mile will actually be

20 and beyond, especially for B2B customers.

Proximity is a major factor because once you

have the demographic profile you can start

buying targeted lists through media, the post

office, and more at the block level. Once you

have established your immediacy, laser focus

these clients by understanding their media

behavior, what kinds of places do they hang

out so you can explore and create the

awareness to open an account with you.

Step Four: Initiate Lead Generation and

Repeat the Process

At this point you have an understanding of

your most profitable customer, you know

their likes and dislikes when it comes to

media marketing, and you understand why

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they need your banking services. Now it’s

time to be relevant and remarkable. With

your demographic data in hand, it’s time to

process leads through the engagement loop

and establish a sales funnel with upper,

middle, and lower level strategies. There are

two ways of thinking of lead generation; one

is classic

push

marketing

which

includes

direct mail

with an

offer and

certain

calls to action. The downside of push

marketing is the constant clutter, low

response rate, and higher frequency

requirements. Then there is contextual

marketing which must occur to capture

someone’s mind set. This is where you create

split messages which funnel out to the Gen X,

Y, and Baby Boomer group separately

including variable incentives. Automated e-

mail campaigns either through a third party

marketing service, ad agency, or CRM

platform can help you achieve conditional

messages.

Social media is a bank’s friend

because this is

where

conversations

can be

initiated to

support search

engine

optimization

(SEO). Quality

content will appeal to the crawlers and

allows your bank to turn up high in Internet

rankings. So when your Gen X and Y

customers log on line to search interest rates

on a new home, your bank will turn up first.

Content can include social media sites,

blogging, and turning up fresh website

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content in the form of white papers, articles,

and free information. There are two ways to

do this as we mentioned – go directly to a

CRM company, or partner with a third party

agency. The benefit of working with a third

party is they will research the right solutions

for your bank and not try to outsell your

needs. This partner will also manage the

entire project, from writing e-mails, blogs,

and social media posts to analyzing the data

and reporting back on an action plan.

Repeat the process

In order to have a successful lead generation

program, your bank needs to be repetitive.

The typical consumer gets between 3,000 to

5,000 brand messages every day.

Subconsciously we filter much of this

information out of our brains so it becomes

very challenging to cut through the clutter

and make sure your message makes it

beyond the recycle bin. When it comes to

lead generation you want to build dialogue

and create ongoing communication so the

client returns to that home equity page for

example. Your marketing partner will have

the chance to witness client behavior through

their keystrokes which are tracked with

cookies, and develop a plan to better

understand where these leads are in the sales

funnel. Knowing the exact landing pages

visited, what forms are being downloaded,

and loan information being reviewed will

leave you ready to bring a much more

concrete offer to these candidates.

So, when thinking about lead generation,

be relevant toward the products and

standing out. Talk to your customer, address

them, and get to know them so they see you

as a likeminded person.

Step Five: Measure and optimize

Go beyond the call center or your

website when it comes to customer

conversion. Highlight the preferred means of

communication and appeal to all channels.

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For example if a client starts engaging

digitally through blogs, remain with their

digital medium. Then, track their response

rate using core metrics, testing, and optimize

the approaches that work. If they don’t

respond you look at behavior and go back

with more information for an ongoing

dialogue.

Convenient, Easy, and Enjoyable

In addition to being virtually

accessible, be prepared to merchandise, talk,

track and convey your bank brand across all

branches. You want to meet the customer

expectation of being easy to do business with

and enjoyable at the same time. Train the

staff to ask how their clients heard about the

bank.

When opportunities come online, be

ready to track behavior. Landing pages are

great for directing customers to a particular

site designed just for them, but many people

leave and don’t fill out an application

completely. We recommend establishing a

good process for collecting information with

follow up messaging such as, “Sorry we

missed you….” People get stuck and they

will on your website, so be sure to optimize

the web design with additional customer

service elements. Offer online chat if people

get stuck, display a 1-800 number, or call to

connect feature and let the customer know

they will get a call back within 15 seconds.

You want to do everything humanly possible

for them not to leave the page. The abandon

rate is super high.

Develop a partnership

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! Partnering with a provider, we

encourage our customer to consider three

major aspects:

• Understand who are the right

customers with regard to

segmentation and profitability

• What is the response to your

brand story and how do you ?

• How to engage. Making sure to

open the door as wide open as

possible – eliminate all the

hurdles along the way by meeting

customer needs.

• Making it easy and make it

enjoyable.

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