Benefits. Advantages. They make strong selling points when you’re promoting your financial institution’s products and services.
But when you go about your daily routine, you often forget the information you take for granted is new or unusual to your customers or members or prospects.
That’s why a little explanation about one of the current hot products could make that product more popular and help your bank or credit union open more accounts.
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After I opened the envelope package, it was like the way you feel when you get underwear as a Christmas gift.
That blah feeling. You should feel happy, but you’re simply let down.
Out of my mailbox came a bulky envelope package. Certainly, I was excited to see what was inside.
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It’s been a standard rule of marketing for generations. I’ve made references to The Rule many times in my blog posts and when talking with clients. But is it time to revise The Rule, at least for financial services marketing?
I’m talking about the 40-40-20 Rule. You should know it well. It says every direct mail marketing promotion consists of… Read more…
Be careful what you say. Some people are paying attention.
As you know from reading my blog posts, I encourage financial services marketers to focus on the benefits a customer or prospect gains by doing business with your bank or credit union.
For instance, point out your free services. When you don’t say something is free it gives many prospects the impression it’s not. Besides, “free” is a key word for marketing.
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Word of mouth advertising, where customers tell others about your bank or credit union, is an important marketing factor.
“Word of mouth” is simply defined as people telling other people about their experiences. An oral testimonial. A recommendation that’s positive or negative.
I came across a couple of statistics released by the White House Office of Consumer Affairs. The study says if a customer has a problem that gets resolved, that person will tell four to six others about the experience. On the flip side, the study says a dissatisfied customer tells between nine and 15 people about the bad experience, and 13% of those dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people.
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Why does your bank or credit union have a website? I know the real answer is, “Because all the other financial institutions do.”
That’s apparent when I visit some FI websites, as I do every week.
Certainly, some financial institutions have great sites. Full of useful information. Easy to use. Well designed.
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The fundamental banking account for consumers is the checking account. When you ask an individual where he or she banks, the name of the bank or credit union you hear is the one where the person has a primary checking account.
So it’s logical that you want to gain new checking customers or encourage current non-checking customers to open a checking account.
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You won’t be surprised when on the last day of the year I take a look back at the past 12 months of the Financial Marketing Insights blog.
The obvious high point and a great honor was the Bronze Medal our blog was awarded in The Financial Brand poll for financial marketing blogs. We feel privileged to be included with such a select and expert group. Thanks to everyone who voted for us.
We try to post at least four times each week. For 2012, that means 219 individual posts. That’s a lot of reading for you, and much more writing for us. Thankfully, it’s fun. After three-and-a-half years, I still enjoy preparing posts and I think I speak for my blogging colleague Steve Topper when I tell you he enjoys it as well.
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When a prospect sees banking as a two-way relationship, it can be easier to recruit them as accountholders. How do you accomplish that? Here are a few “educational” ideas.
Ocean Spray accounts for 80% of all raw cranberry use and holds a 65% share of the U.S. market. That doesn’t mean the Massachusetts-based company is content with its status. It continues to promote its products and uses one unique idea that shows ingenuity and its ability to strengthen bonds with current customers and influence prospects.
It’s the Ocean Spray Bog-osphere, a life-size moveable cranberry bog the company takes to venues like Walt Disney World and Rockefeller Center. The 1,500 square feet bog is packed with one ton of fresh berries and visitors can see how the berries are harvested, why they float, and attend demonstrations by bartenders and others. The actors who appear in the TV commercials also meet and greet the folks.
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Whatever media you use to promote your marketing campaigns, use as many response options as possible.
Consumers have preferences, or biases, for how they want to respond to your promotional offers. If your campaign includes one of their preferences as a choice, a convenience, you improve your chances of generating response.
Here’s one example of how the elimination of a response channel severely depressed consumer action for a historically successful program.
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Intuitively, most of us know that there’s a big difference between the products and services acquired from banks and credit unions and those purchased from traditional retailers like Walmart, Target, amazon.com, grocery stores, and restaurants…to name just a few.
It’s because of this difference that I wrote last Tuesday’s blog, “Your Branch is Not a Store,” available below.
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Besides your current advertising, you also have a chance to make an even greater impression on prospects by inserting your corporate name into activities where people have fun.
Maybe you’ve seen the Dos Equis beer commercials with The Most Interesting Man. His exploits would make James Bond envious. Riding the popularity of the character and theme, Heineken USA, maker of Dos Equis, launched The Most Interesting Academy. The promotional campaign includes a fleet of seven different, highly stylized food trucks that visit major cities and offer very non-traidtional munchies like jellyfish baguette and alligator tail empanadas.
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We’re coming to an important time of year for financial services marketers.
I was talking with some friends and one of the guys complained he’d been in a store a few days earlier and saw sales clerks stocking shelves with Halloween merchandise. It was mid-August.
Of course. The stores need to sell out those items to make room for Christmas merchandise that go on sale after Labor Day weekend.
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Here’s an opportunity to learn from experts about an important marketing topic, and you can do it without leaving your office. You can even have colleagues join you.
The Five Key Elements to a Successful Customer Acquisition Strategy is a free webinar scheduled for Wednesday, August 8, at 1:00 p.m. EDT.
The agenda includes these timely and important topics. Read more…
If you read this blog regularly, you probably know I believe good marketing campaigns target the right prospects. But sometimes, some targeting isn’t good or effective. Here’s why.
During a conversation with a financial services marketer about a project I was scheduled to write for her organization, she mentioned the types of people she wanted to target. She obviously knew lists with specialized categories of consumers are available. I had to explain that wasn’t what we intended to do.
Why? Because this was a checking account consumer acquisition campaign. It takes a different type of targeting than what she expected.
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My post earlier this week described some of the marketing techniques I found in a promotional letter from Travelers Insurance. But there were so many aspects to discuss that I divided the post into two parts.
My first post covered the front of the two-sided letter. There’s one more feature that spans the front and the back. (Image of the front of the letter is found in Part 1.)
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Do you know how to construct a true and effective direct marketing letter? Maybe you think you do. But do you know there are three parts to a proper direct marketing letter? I’ll be there are many financial services marketers who don’t.
Creating an effective letter for a marketing campaign is different from the way you write a business letter or a personal letter — or other types of marketing materials. Many years ago, this was the formula I was given for these special prospecting letters:
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I expect this post will see more than the usual number of hits. Read the headline again and see if you agree. Of course, many of the visitors won’t be financial services marketers and won’t stay to read the entire post.
Joking aside, let’s look at this important marketing topic. The incentive system your financial institution uses can mean the difference between success and failure for your customer acquisition efforts.
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If you’ve been a financial services marketer for some time, you probably know about Tell A Friend programs. Here’s an example of what a marketing-savvy company does to generate new business through its Tell A Friend (TAF) program.
If you’re unfamiliar with TAFs, or even if you’re using a TAF program, you can pick up some ideas from this marketer.
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Marketers are sometimes too impatient. I don’t mean they’re impatient to make a sale. That’s the reason for the job — selling. Or in the case of financial services marketers, it’s about opening accounts.
I mean they’re impatient with their advertising. Too quick to toss aside good advertising without a good reason.
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