Financial Marketing and Cross Selling Blog
A credit union connects with the local biking community
When it comes to content marketing techniques, one of the golden rules is to provide content that isn’t always tied to one of your products and services. You have to know when providing content for the pure sense of being informational to the end user is the right thing to do. For example, many banks and credit unions don’t offer health insurane but it may not be a bad idea if you dedicated some space for content related to the recent changes in health care on your website or in your next newsletter. You may not win new business directly from this approach but you will build your brand as a resource and not just a place to conduct daily banking transactions.
An example of this was well executed this past Friday when Salal Credit Union in Seattle, Washington decided to take advantage of the national Bike to Work Day to connect with the local biking community. The credit union had three what they called “commute stations” setup at various points in their community. They handed out ”refueling snacks” and drinks. The best give away were free bike lights, an important saftey item for those biking home in the dark, especially in a busy city. A tag line they used in their blog post that I thought was creative said “we care for your physical AND your fiscal saftey!”.
While the credit union is by know means selling biking services to their members, they are developing new relationships with each biker, jogger, roller blader or walker that stopped by the stations this past Friday. And knowing that it would be a busy day for such active bikers, they made the smart decision in promoting this event.
It even caught the eye of this here Bostonian. I was a bit jealous and responded to them by twitter that I wished a local financial institution here in Boston was handing out lights because it just so happened that my fiance and I were in the market. Within minutes they replied to me and said “Tell you what. You send me your address by direct message, and I’ll make sure you get a few!” Wow. Here I am on the opposite side of the country, not even a potential member and they’re offering to send me a few lights. And what do they get in return you may be asking? My praise here on our company blog. For those SEO and online marketing folk, you know the importance this has on your campaigns.
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Lost – A lesson in what NOT to do in customer service
The show Lost, which had its finale last night, provides us with some important lessons to be learned. Some scientific, some religious but for the purposes of this post, the lessons are about what NOT to do when approaching customer service at your bank or credit union.
There’s no denying that Lost was a successful show. With the first three seasons reaching an average of 15 million viewers per episode, countless number of fan base websites, forums and meet up groups, this show was a monster when it came to creating loyalty. But looking closer, you’ll realize how the producers went about creating this strong loyal following. In comparison between the producers strategy and the strategy of some of today’s banks, you can see some similarities. For example, they kept coming out with shiny new plot lines (products) for their loyal viewers (customers) to talk about, and just when a new plot line was getting old and losing its muster, the writers (product developers) would think of a new story to tell.
The problem with this model is that when the loyal customers come to you looking for solutions to issues they may have with past products or services the powers that be don’t even know the answer. They’re too busy working on the next new product instead of focusing on making changes to existing ones based on customer feedback.
Spoiler Alert
The finale of Lost has been seen as a let down by its loyal fan base. With so many storylines in place, the end left us with one answer, the survivors of Oceanic 815 were all dead and they needed to find each other in the afterlife in order to continue moving on to ____ (heaven, hell, who knows). While the show was a great ride, ultimately, they left with too many unanswered questions. The producers walked away with both their wallets and egos inflated but left those who kept them going all these years in the dust. Sound familiar?
Plot lines in a story like Lost are by no means a perfect comparison for financial products and services. But with all the potential regulatory changes (most notably Reg E) coming out of Capitol Hill, many institutions I’ve talked to are already at the drawing board thinking up of new products to counteract the potential loss in revenue that this new regulation will most likely cause.
What they should be doing is listening to their customers. By doing so, they may realize that they don’t have to rethink the wheel on their core product set to be successful. By opening up their communications, making it easier to have dialogs with customers and being more transparent, they can avoid a similar backlash that the creators of Lost are experiencing today. This is a simplistic example of what I’m talking about, but in the Banksimple.net blog, there was a post titled “How do banks work?” In plain English, they described perfectly how banks go about making their money. This simple yet effective approach to transparancy goes a long way with your customers.
As for the producers of Lost, they’ll eventually be forced to come out with a movie to make up for their lack of transparency. They’ll be forced to tell us why they introduced a whole group of people that called themselves the Dharma Intiative, what was the purpose of the “Others” and why did they know how to speak Latin, and finally, tell us why the islands survival is so crucial to humanity.
Book Review: The Referral Engine – Take aways for financial marketers
John Jantsch is the perfect example of someone who practices what he preaches. About a month ago I stumbled upon an offer to receive a free copy of his new book, The Referral Engine, if I agreed to write a review at some point during the week of May 10th. I don’t remember the exact source – Twitter, Email, Blog, etc. – but this is just one of many referral techniques that he highlights in this book.
John is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing, a marketing consulting practice that has certified consultants throughout the country. You may even have a Duct Tape Marketer in your back yard. The concepts that John talks about both with his Duct Tape and author hat on are not mind blowing or revolutionary (that is, if you’re hip to the new rules of marketing and PR). By now I think we can all agree that the Internet, just like the TV, has changed the game of marketing for a long time to come. Instead of talking to our customers, we now have to listen and make them an integral part of how we craft our communications and even develop our products. John lays out in this book that the age of the 4 Ps – Product, Pricing, Place, and Promote – is no longer viable and has given way to the age of the customer. In this new age, we now have the 4 Cs – Content, Context, Connection and Community.
A resonating theme throughout the book is the concept of education. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to the development of content. The goal of this content is to educate your clients and prospects. Oftentimes this content will include tips on how someone might go about creating their own solution just like the one you have to offer. In the case of a banker or financial professional, this might be content that explains the home buying process – from placing a bid to hiring a lawyer - or perhaps the best types of investments to make when you’re in your thirties and have a particular amount of savings available.
How this content is delivered takes on several forms and John does a great job of outlining the many different approaches. As John states, “An educated customer will always be a better customer.”
But perhaps just as important as educating our clients, we must ensure that our own employees are educated as well. Educated on the status of the company, educated on the type of clients “we” work with, educated on their role and how it plays an integral part of marketing – whether you’re in the IT department or in sales. In fact, John goes on to state that the sales departmet is perhaps the most important part of your marketing team. It’s often during the sales process that determines the future of your customer relationships. If they had a good experience during this process, the chances of them becoming a source of referrals is much higher then if they received poor service. You may be saying, “Well, if they received poor service, why did they buy from us?” Why people buy is not often about customer friendly service. Sometimes it’s about convenience (i.e. you may be the closest bank to them) or about pricing (i.e. you have the best rates). If this is the only reason you’re winning accounts today, chances are you’re not receiving many referrals from your customer-base.
Hands down, this book is well worth the read for the ideas and references alone. John isn’t just a talker, he’s a doer and he helps show you that by “doing” the steps talked about in this book, you’ll be rewarded with more referrals and more business then you can handle. For example, the second to last chapter, “Snack-sized Suggestions”, takes a look at three different professional categories – Retail, Service Business, Independent Professionals. Real-life examples of how to implement the ideas brought about in this book are shared for each category. Here’s one of my favorites from someone in insurance sales:
This insurance agent turned his business-owner clients into stars. He interviewed some of his highest-profile clients on what it took to be successful in business. He recorded these interviews and eventually turned them into a very useful business-building library. Then he sought out potential interview guests to include in the series. These business owners didn’t see him as an insurance salesperson; they say him as a member of the media who had the ability to offer their business lots of free publicity. But, eventually, many of these featured businesses bought insurance from him and, in all cases, they promoted his business when they gave away or sold the library of interviews.
So, are you ready to let go of those traditional marketing models? Are you ready to dive head first into this new approach? If you ask some of the worlds best sales representatives, they’ll let you in on a little secret – none of this is new - it’s just new to most marketing departments.
The path to more fee income for financial institutions
It’s been discussed time and time again – banks need more fee income to remain stable in this volatile market. For the past few years this type of revenue has been mainly based on fees from debit card use and overdraft protection. According to a recent Gonzobanker article, 80% of fee income comes from these two sources.
It’s no secret that these two sources are now in danger of falling off the cliff. In this same Gonzobanker article, they suggest taking an account analysis approach to retail customers, similar to how small business accounts are handled to determine if certain fees will occur or not based on the accounts activity every month. While I’m not against this approach, I feel strongly that growing out a relationship versus changing up the way a customers existing services are priced has greater potential for both the bank and the customer.
One of the greatest opportunities for banks and credit unions to continue generating new revenue is by effectively moving existing clients into new products and services that go beyond the typical product scope. Services such as investments, insurance or trust. Done right, a well managed brokerage insurance program can add significant revenue to an institutions bottom line. According to Michael White’s recent Bankinsurance.com News report, Oneida Savings Bank in Oneida, New York, had 4.24 million in insurance brokerage fee income in 2009 which was 76.7% of non-interest income at the bank.
Taking it a step further, if you use industry assumptions and take into consideration your branch network as the main referral source, the revenue opportunities start to look rather promising.
Assumptions:
- $2,000 Gross Revenue per Sale (based on all products and services)
- 75% of appointments are qualified
- 40% of those appointments make a purchase
- Every lead = $600
If you assume that every branch has six employees who are potential referral generators (based on Truebridge survey conducted in 2009) and each employee generates just one more referral per month, you will have 72 referrals from that one branch in a year. If you take the above value of every lead into consideration, this branch would generate $43,200 of additional revenue just by simply increasing the activity by six new referrals every month. But don’t take our word for it. Plug in your own figures and see what comes out.
Imagine the revenue you can generate if all your branches can make this happen. There’s no question that asking a branch to generate referrals and actually having them generate referrals that are qualified are not one and in the same. For referrals to be qualified, you have to do more then just open up your list of maturing CDs and provide your sales represenatives with the names of each customer. You need a strategic process that involves a customer service approach employees are comfortable using on a daily basis. If it’s not simple and repeatable, then it’s not worth implementing and the account analysis approach Gonzobanker speaks of is perhaps your best option.
But if you’re willing to explore new approaches to both your marketing and customer service processes, then there’s no question that cross selling more services to existing customers will make you a much more stable and profitable financial institution for years to come.
Can Foursquare be the saving grace for a banks fading branch traffic?
If you follow social media news then you’re most likely aware of Foursquare, the latest location-based service that rewards you for frequent visits to near by retail shops, restaurants, churches, night clubs and most recently, banks. Like Twitter, I was a little hesitant about Foursquare when I first started “checking-in”. I didn’t quite understand the badges or why I would want to take my phone out every time I was at a bar or restaurant to check in. Then my colleague shared an article from TechCrunch that discussed the way Foursquare is rewarding users directly through retailers that are on the site and I’ve been intrigued ever since.
An introduction to Foursquare
To have your business show up within Foursquare, users can enter your location in manually if it’s not already listed (take a minute to enter your location). There is no charge for having your business on the site. To “check-in” at your location, users simply open the application through their smart phone and all locations within a certain radius pop up. When you check in you can add personal messages such as “hanging with friends and having cocktails on this beautiful spring day”. Most users connect their activity to their Twitter and Facebook accounts. You can also add tips to the location you’re at so that other users can see your advice when they check in at the location – “Try the house martini with blue cheese stuffed olives. It’s to die for”.
So, what’s all the hype about?
For some, they just like the idea of letting people know how cool they are for going to lots of different places throughout their city. If they’re really active, they’ll get the “adventurer” badge. There are tons of badges that you can win but the most sought after reward of all is being tagged as a “mayor”. You receive this reward by being the top visitor to a certain location on a consistent basis. If you stop going for more then a few days, someone can claim your mayor position. Up until I read the article sent from my colleague, I still didn’t have any clue why this type of service would catch on to a larger audience beyond the self-indulgent.
As I see it now, the true nature of Foursquare is the ability for retailers to connect with their customers on a more personal level. By tapping into this online social world, Foursquare can be the ultimate “word of mouth” tool in an online marketers bag of tricks. And with the addition of offering mayors and other badge winners with coupons and discounts (i.e. a free beer at The Middle East in Cambridge, MA if you show them that you’re the current mayor) then the possibilities are endless for creating loyal customers.
How North Shore Bank is making use of Foursquare
I recently spoke to Tim Gluth and Kate Knox, marketing managers for North Shore Bank, who mentioned that unlike other retailers, banks are not currently able to offer coupons or discounts directly through Foursquare. The company is only exploring relationships with retailers at this time that are your typical social hangouts (bars, coffee shops, nightclubs) and banks, unfortunately, didn’t make this cut.
This didn’t stop North Shore Bank, headquartered in Brookfield, WI from rewarding those who checked in to Foursquare at one of their branches. In a recent Twitter message, they rewarded someone who became a mayor at a branch with a gift card to Subway. After receiving the individuals mailing address, they shipped out the card along with a certificate (see picture on the right). They’ve been using Foursquare in this capacity for a little over a month. The promotion of Foursquare is currently limited to their online activities (Twitter, Facebook, Bank website). “It has been difficult to manage and track the activity,” said Tim Gluth. “This is one feature we feel Foursquare has yet to develop.” And while they currently can’t determine if the people checking in are existing customers or just people stopping by their ATMs, they see every opportunity to connect with people who frequent their locations as a huge advantage.
They mentioned one success story from this campaign, “Someone that we reached out to through Twitter who had checked-in at a branch replied back that they were interested in speaking with a loan officer and was wondering who they should speak to”, explained Kate. It’s this level of connection that makes it worth exploring tools like Foursquare, even if it’s fairly limited to a small group of consumers at this point in time.
Another Way to Build Relationships With Help from Foursquare
After you establish contact, whether it’s by sending them gift cards or certificates, you determine first if they’re an existing customer and if so, note their Foursquare account information in your CRM system (if you have one). Depending on whether they are an existing customer or not, include in the mailed certificate some messages about where they can get helpful financial information on topics - not products – that may be top of mind. Knowing that this individual is online savvy, steer them to an online site where this helpful information can be found – preferably under your banks brand. Make sure you don’t push any specific products. As we’ve said many times on this blog, people today are not interested in being sold. Within this site, embed links to contacts at your institution so that when this individual is ready to start talking, they have an easy way of finding the right professional who can help.
With the industry up in arms about the future of branches, Foursquare brings a very compelling rewards program opportunity that could help banks make the case for in-branch activity. What are your throughts about the service? Do you think Foursquare could play a role in steering more traffic back to branches? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
We plan on following up with North Shore Bank (6 months or so) to see if they’ve continued on with their Foursquare activities. Make sure to keep track of our posts. You can easily do so through our RSS feed or by simply signing up to receive email notifications in the right hand side bar of this blog.
The difference between financial literacy and education-based marketing
The NFCC has announced that April is Financial Literacy month. They’re pulling out all the stops by making trips to Capital Hill and launching two new websites, one in Spanish – www.termineconsudeuda.org – the other a blog providing debt advice – www.debtadvice.org. Many banks and credit unions should join in with NFCC in supporting this cause.
I’ve had many people ask me, “Luke, you guys talk alot about using education as part of your marketing initatives. How is that any different then the financial literacy campaigns that banks and credit unions conduct throughout the year?” For starters, one of the main reasons we stopped using the term “education-based marketing” was because of this close relation in semantics to financial literacy. As you may know from reading our company blog, we’ve been using the term Content Marketing to better explain how the process works.
I think the best way to look at it is to think about your days in school. You may have been a go getter and strived to learn but lets face it, the majority of our peers are not all that excited to get up in the morning and take that yellow bus into the morning classroom. No one wants to be forced to learn and terms like “literacy” and “education” bring back those memories.
Don’t get us wrong, people are interested in learning. As the old saying goes, “you learn something new every day”. And it’s this simple yet unassuming process of learning that is essential to an effective content marketing strategy. Instead of encouraging customers to sign up for classes or to read books on financial literacy, your job is to make them WANT to learn about their financial lives. I always say that education or rather content alone is boring. People need a reason to walk into a library, open a book or enter their name into a form to download a helpful guide.
Marketers have been doing this for years only the focus has been on products. Now that the times have changed and the masses no longer want to be sold on products you must refocus your marketing expertise on the content you have stored in your library (that is, if you have a library).
(Picture Source: Wiki Commons)
Helpful content marketing techniques from SunTrust’s retirement section
I was reminded of the LiveSolid.com website during a recent conversations with Jeff Pilcher of The Financial Brand. The site was built by SunTrust Bank in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s a big blue site that unless you look carefully you’d never know it was created by SunTrust. Why a bank wouldn’t want to make it clear that they were associated with such helpful content is beyond me.
But then I took a further look at their own website at www.suntrust.com. As I dug into the retirement section I stumbled upon their retirement microsite. This site is very well put together and is a great lesson in how to create compelling online content that pulls your audience in and eventually can lead them to wanting to meet with one of your professionals.
Lets take a look at what happens when we first enter the site. At first we are met with four personas:
Whose content are you using in your social media initiatives?
Imagine you went to your doctor one day and he/she diagnosed you with a minor sickness but one that required a set of treatments to help cure. Instead of your primary doctor detailing the steps you should take a new person walks into the office and begins to tell you what you should be doing. Now, how would that make you feel about your primary doctor?
Change up this story and instead replace “doctor” with your primary “bank”. With social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook gaining popularity among bank marketers, those in charge have been forced to come up with creative ways to find content that will keep their audiences entertained. And often times this means looking outside the institution to build up a healthy library of content. Now, think back to our doctor story at the beginning and you’ll start to understand where I’m going with this post.
Does this mean that you should never refer people to someone elses site? Of course not. In fact, this helps to show that you don’t just think about “YOU” all the time. A key factor in winning more business from clients. But the more I monitor bank and credit union messages through these social media tools, the more I realize that they almost never link to their own site unless it’s to a micro-site that was setup for a specific campaign. Or they may steer you to branch location pages, contact pages or other service related pages.
A key advantage to linking to your own content is the control you have. For example, you could link to a page of content that talks about how in 2010 clients can convert their traditional IRA to a Roth IRA and then have action steps in the article such as “talk to our financial advisor today” or “download a free guide on this topic”. This opens up the opportunity to generate referrals from your content strategies.
I often hear bankers say how they’re the “trusted financial advisors” for their communities. Wouldn’t it seem counterintutive then to always steer clients to someone else who happened to write an intriguing article around a timely financial topic? If this was under your brand it would have more of an impact on the client and he or she would see you not just as a place to do transactions but also as a place to get answers to all their financial questions.
Yes, there are compliance hurdles for putting financial content under your own brand. But in the long run, it’s worth the time and money to ensure this is in place otherwise you’ll be seen as just the messenger and not the solution.
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Two surveys confirm Americans still ill prepared for retirement years
If you had any doubts about the average American consumer knowing what direction they should take after retirement, two recent surveys conducted by Putnam and Prudential should help shed some light.
In the Putnam survey they found that 52% of respondents were in need of a better understanding of how much income they would need to maintain their lifestyle in retirement. As for the Prudential survey, one figure showed that 47% of those enrolled in 401k plans said they were unsure as to what types of investments are best to generate income in retirement.
Learn more about these two surveys at Financial Advisor
This reinforces the opportunity that banks and credit unions have to help their customer base become more knowledgeable on financial topics. They should be making this type of information easy and readily accessible at all of their touch points – website, branches, email, mail. Those who are their first to help these individuals understand their options without putting product first will be the one who wins over their relationship.
A move towards simpler times in the banking industry is on the rise
Trader Joe’s has come up with a new lager they call Simpler Times. While it may not be at the top of the drinking list for beer aficionados, the name itself is ingenious. People today are in desperate need of a time when life was easier to understand. Today’s complexities have clouded many of our own judgments and one area where people have clearly been out of touch is their own personal finance.
This is why you’re seeing all this talk about Personal Financial Management tools and people like Aaron Patzer, new CEO of Quicken and founder of mint.com, talking about the simplicity these tools bring to ones financial life.
Tomorrow’s State of the Union will surely gain the attention of not only average citizens but also those tied to financial reform. They’ll be looking out for things like “consumer protection agency” and “too big to fail”. There’s also been talk from the Obama crowd forcing banks to offer what they call “plain vanilla” mortgages (Read more about this in the New York Times). No matter what happens, I think that we can all agree on one thing – the simpler the better.
This is not just to please the bounty hunters in Washington but it’s also to please the customer. People want simple, easy to understand answers to questions they have about their financial needs. The more complex a product the more likely they are to second-guess their decisions. And the last thing you want on your hands is a hesitant client. A decision made in the presence of uncertainty leads later on to finger pointing when times are bad. Just ask your investment advisor how many calls he or she received after the market tumbled in late 2008 asking what they did wrong.
This approach of simplification stems from the product itself to the content that helps educate the client on what it can do for them. One of the biggest challenges when writing financial content is how and when to leave the banker jargon behind. There are some terms you can’t leave out but when necessary, make sure to provide a brief definition or have an easy way for the client to see a glossary of terms.
Whether the client is online or in the branch, put this easy to read and understand educational content front and center. Most people have become numb to things like product brochures – unless, of course, it’s a product they know they need and want. But most people are unsure of what products they need. All they know is they want to make sure their families are protected, their kids get a good education and to retire with peace of mind and perhaps an ice cold Simpler Times to enjoy those relaxing years.
(Image credit: @joefoodie)
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