Financial Institution Marketing Blog

Is Your Institution "Safe & Sound?" Bankrate.com's Rating System

2009-02-17T07:00:00.007-06:00

Bankrate.com's Safe & Sound^® rating system allows consumers to evaluate financial institutions on a 1-5 star rating system. Consumers can easily search their city for a bank or credit union with a 5-star rating, alleviating potential concerns of the institution's stability.

According to Bankrate's website, "Safe & Sound^® is a proprietary system designed to provide information on the relative financial strength and stability of U.S. commercial banks, savings institutions and credit unions." The system assesses each institution on 22 tests to measure:

Capital adequacy
Asset quality
Profitability
Liquidity

With 7 million unique monthly visitors, Bankrate.com is a well-known resource for consumers and businesses seeking financial services.

For those financial institutions looking to capitalize on safety, security and stability in these tumultuous times, a 5-star rating from an independent entity like Bankrate.com just may be the tonic.

BusinessWeek Questions Bank of America's Survival

2009-02-08T11:33:00.004-06:00

A current BusinessWeek article questions the survival of Bank of America, given its mounting financial challenges, investor discontent and flight of top talent. Here's a summary:

The bailout to-date for Bank of America: $138 billion
Since October 2008, the bank's share price has fallen 70%
Analysts estimate the bank has $500 billion of problem assets
Top talent is leaving the commercial bank, the newly-acquired Merrill brokerage and some employees are volunteering for layoffs

To read the entire BusinessWeek article, Click Here.

Chase Offering $100 for a New Account

2009-01-29T16:04:00.007-06:00

This week's most compelling marketing offer comes from Chase Bank. I received a direct mail offer to receive $100 when I opened a new personal checking account. Here's the details:

the mail was unaddressed: "Our Neighbor"
with an opening deposit of $100, I will receive $100 within 10 business days
the account must remain open for 6 months
I can open the account online with a provided coupon code or at my nearest branch (the nearest location was lasered onto the direct mail piece)
no minimum balance required
no monthly service fee with direct deposit or five debit purchases
one reward per customer per year
the offer excludes High School CheckingSM, Chase College CheckingSM, Chase Access CheckingSM, and New Jersey Consumer Checking Account

Webcasts & Podcasts Educate BECU Members

2009-01-12T15:18:00.002-06:00

BECU (formerly Boeing Employees Credit Union), the 4th largest US credit union, has successfully incorporated webcasts and podcasts into its member education services. In the past year, almost 19,000 members and prospects visited the Education and Seminars web page to download the seminars, according to Todd Pietzsch, BECU Public Relations.

Todd told Mercury Direct: "As a not-for-profit credit union, our focus is aimed at improving the financial lives of our members. We developed the webcast and podcast to reach more of our members and give them 24/7 access" to BECU's financial education seminars.

The credit union has 3 full-time educators who conduct community education on topics such as home buying, understanding credit reports, household budgeting and other financial topics. Webcasts and podcasts allow the credit union to reach more members. "While the classes allow us to reach thousands of people every year, we were limited in our ability to cost-effectively reach more of our members. The webcasts and podcasts have been very well-received and easy for us to create and keep fresh with up-to-date content", says Pietzsch.

In addition to the content, BECU has captured member feedback on the classes, both in-person and electronic. The testimonial page captures member's feedback and links it back to the appropriate seminar.

BECU does an excellent job of adopting new electronic tools to meet the age-old responsibility of keeping members financially well-educated.

Umpqua Bank Helps Customers Go Green

2009-01-06T08:00:00.002-06:00

Umpqua Bank, a subsidiary of Umpqua Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: UMPQ), and Energy Trust of Oregon Inc., an independent nonprofit organization, introduced low-interest financing for energy-saving improvements and solar energy systems. Their program, GreenStreet Lending, offers financing options designed to help small businesses and homeowners manage rising energy costs by making it easier to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.

All GreenStreet Lending products offer low-interest rate financing, have no loan origination fees or closing costs, and have flexible terms. GreenStreet loan options are available to qualified borrowers on approved credit who are Oregon customers of Portland General Electric, Pacific Power, NW Natural or Cascade Natural Gas.

GreenStreet products can be paired with Energy Trust’s cash incentives and State of Oregon energy tax credits, making home and business energy improvements financially accessible to a broader market.

Gen Y Gets a "Virtual Wallet"

2008-12-16T13:37:00.013-06:00

PNC Financial Services of Pittsburgh is attracting 130 new customers a day with its "Virtual Wallet" program.

Developed specifically to attract Generation Y customers (defined by PNC as ages 18 - 34), the program has signed up more than 20,000 Virtual Wallet customers since July 2008. 65% of these customers are new and 70% are in the Gen Y demographic.

The online program offers 3 account types - Spend, Reserve and Growth accounts. Customers use a financial calendar to track bill reminders, account balances, and hi-light "Danger Days" that alert the customer to overdraft risk. The Money Bar and Savings Engine allow customers to drag and drop money from one account to another, pay bills and set savings goals.

Profit comes in different ways. The bank charges a fee if more than 3 checks are written on the account monthly. The account pays 0.1% interest on checking accounts vs. the national average of 1.25%. They do pay 3% on the Savings Account, but limit deposits to less than $25,000.

With a cost of $15 million, PNC expects the project to break even in two years, compared to a three-year break even for their new branch locations.

Japanese-style Mobile Banking

2008-10-16T11:05:00.015-05:00

3 million customers. 195 employees.

No branches. No ATMs

Japan's eBANK Corporation is raising the bar for Mobile Banking. Their vision of providing each customer with a hand-held branch is quickly taking shape.

With its origins as an Internet Bank, eBANK quickly adopted a mobile banking platform to capitalize on mobile phone usage in Japan. With IMS Research estimating that there will close to a billion worldwide mobile banking users making about 62 billion transactions by 2012, eBANK is definitely ahead of the curve.

eBANK provides ATMs to customers through access agreements with other financial institutions.

New accounts can be opened using a mobile phone, with the customer sending their driver's license picture or other ID via their phone's camera - eBANK uses optical character recognition and digital data to confirm identities electronically.

With over-the-air (OTA) transactions already commonplace in Japan, the phone even serves as a payment and money-transfer vehicle.

The future is calling and eBANK is there.

Bank of America Hunkers Down

2008-10-07T00:04:00.014-05:00

Citing "the most difficult times for financial institutions that I have experienced in my 39 years in banking", Kenneth D. Lewis, Chairman and CEO of Bank of America stated that the bank is aiming for an 8 percent Tier 1 capital ratio target.

Yesterday, B of A announced 3rd quarter earnings, along with initiatives to raise capital levels. With 3rd quarter net income dropping from $3.70 billion a year ago to $1.18 billion this year, the bank will be cutting its dividend and selling common stock to raise capital.

Despite the turbulence of the past two months, Bank of America gained $21 billion in retail deposits during the quarter as consumers moved money to safety (excluding the impact of the Countrywide acquisition). That gain was almost three times the industry average.

Savings Accounts meet Social Networks

2008-09-24T09:52:00.010-05:00

SmartyPig.com is using social networking to create a Web 2.0 savings account.

An online savings account, SmartyPig lets the account holder set specific savings goals, suggests contributions to meet the goals and enables the account holder to engage friends and family in the process.

Once the account is established (via West Bank of Iowa www.westbankiowa.com), SmartyPig's social networking platform allows the account holder to invite friends and family to contribute to the savings goal. It also provides a widget that can be added to the account holder's MySpace or Facebook page to encourage contributions.

The account holder receives even further value if they convert their money to a gift card from a participating retailer, adding as much as 5% to their savings amount.

Truly a new way for piggy to get to market...

Blogging all the way to the Bank...

2008-09-18T11:15:00.004-05:00

or Credit Union.

It seems that blogging is slowly creeping into the marketing toolkit of some financial institutions. A recent Universal McCann "Media in Mind" tracking study indicated that 10% of US adults publish a blog.

Nowhere near 10% of financial institutions publish a blog - but there are some notable exceptions. Below are two of the most acclaimed financial institution blogs today.

Verity Credit Union in Seattle, WA has a blog called "Our Voices", with contributions from executives, staff, members and friends.

Wells Fargo has been the most aggressive bank blogger with an extensive collection of blogs on its site.

The links above will provide some good examples of how blogs can be used by financial institutions to establish a dialog with their customers or members.

Email Usage Grows with Financial Institutions

2008-09-10T09:11:00.000-05:00

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) recently released 2007 statistics on the direct marketing expenditures of financial, banking and credit institutions.

Not surprisingly, "financial services companies’ advertising expenditures for commercial email is expected to have the largest growth among all media types between 2007 and 2012, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.5%."

In addition, Internet direct marketing advertising spending is projected to grow at the second-highest rate, at a CAGR of 17.8%, from 2007 to 2012.

CLICK HERE to see complete details of the DMA study.

Deposit Checks - From Your Cell Phone!

2008-08-28T09:21:00.000-05:00

Forget the ATM or the branch - Amplify Credit Union in Austin, Texas has just made it possible to deposit a check via your cell phone!

Amplify launched their Instant Deposit Online service in April 2008, allowing members to deposit checks from any computer with access to the web. On June 13th, the service was extended to cell phone users with a web browser.

A quick glance at Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Wachovia mobile offerings turned up no comparable capability, making this a truly innovative solution for Amplify's members.

Kent White, Vice President of Marketing at Amplify, says "With Instant Deposit Online, you can now deposit checks literally from the palm of your hand. It's a real reflection of our 'Bank Less, Live More' approach to banking."

The software that drives the service was developed by Austin-based Jwaala, a financial services software developer. Jwaala is currently in negotiations to offer the service to other credit unions outside of Texas.

Amplify, founded in 1967, is a $450 million credit union serving more than 40,000 members in the five-county area surrounding Austin, TX.

Email Opens & Clicks Increase for Financial Institutions

2008-08-21T09:36:00.000-05:00

MailerMailer recently released its Email Marketing Metrics Report for the second half of 2007. The report revealed several insights into email marketing usage for Financial Institutions.

Open rates* for Banking/Finance emails in the second half (H2) of 2007 were 28.84%, increasing from first half (H1) rates of 28.07%. Compared to overall average open rates of 13.98% in H2, consumers clearly give high priority to Banking/Finance emails.

Click-through rates** for Banking/Finance emails showed a similar increase in H2 at 6.98% vs. 6.52% in H1. The report also details performance by list size, bounce rates and other valuable information.

* Unique open rates are calculated as the number of addresses which were tracked as having viewed a message divided by the total number of HTML messages sent. Each address, even if it opened the message more than once, was counted only once; hence, showing unique opens. Open rates are becoming less accurate with many people reading email from hand held devices and disabling image downloading. The fact that click rates remained fairly steady suggests that people are still reading the messages even though fewer opens are being reported.

** Click through rates record how many times the links in an email message were clicked. It includes clicks from both text and HTML format recipients.

Here Comes Mobile Banking

2008-08-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

Recently, we provided a prospective client with research on the current state of mobile banking. A few things stood out:

Big banks are leading the way. Bank of America acquired 500,000 active m-banking customers within 6 months of the launch of its free mobile service. With 23 million active online users, however, Bank of America still has room for growth.

Citibank, Wachovia, SunTrust and BancorpSouth launched their m-banking programs later in 2007, offering account balances, funds transfer and bill-pay services.

Community banks and credit unions are jumping in too: BankAtlantic in Florida, American Bank of Texas, N.A., Patelco Credit Union in California and Amplify Credit Union in Texas are just a few m-banking leaders.

Sophisticated new mobile devices like the iPhone and the Blackberry are enabling a positive user experience.

A 2007 Forrester Research study estimated that 10% of US mobile users were prepared to adopt mobile banking, compared to the 35% adoption rate of online banking in the US.

New 2008 research from Harris Interactive indicates that 16% of mobile phone subscribers already use mobile banking services, with 60% of this group using the services at least once a week.

The US is behind the adoption curve. South Korea made m-banking services available several years ago and currently has over 5 million users. Japan and Europe are three years ahead of the US in launching mobile banking services.

What does it all mean? If history is any guide, mobile banking is here to stay. And think of the possibilities - a low-cost branch in your customer's hip pocket...

FTC Updates CAN-SPAM Act

2008-08-07T09:34:00.000-05:00

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently made changes to the CAN-SPAM Act, outlining new regulations for commercial email distribution. You can read the FTC press release here and the full FTC rule change here (see May 12, 2008).

The changes, at a high level, address the following four topics:
(1) Make unsubscribes/opt-outs easy for consumers
(2) Multiple "senders" within a single email, under certain circumstances, may identify a single company as the "designated sender" of a commercial email
(3) a post office box or private mailbox can now be used to meet address requirements
(4) a definition of the term “person” was expanded to include companies and other entities

If you have any questions on these rule changes, please contact Mercury Direct.