Small Businesses were hit hard by Covid-19, which presented enormous challenges in the US and beyond. As the global economy reopens, the needs of entrepreneurs have changed. Here are 5 ways your institution can help.

By: Rich Givone, SVP of Digital Marketing Strategy, CS3 Marketing

https://www.cs3marketing.com/

25-June, 2021

The CBO’s projection is that the U.S. GDP will grow by 5.6% over the course of 2021, then ease to a still-above-trend 4.5% in 2022.  Risks have shifted to the upside:  instead of being worried about meeting payroll, employers are worried about finding enough employees to pay.

But one persistent question remains: what about America’s small businesses? The ones that are the backbone of employment and economic growth, yet had thinner margins while withstanding the disruptions of 2020?

There are signs for concern, and also places where the banking industry can make a difference.

For one thing, small businesses often run on thinner cash cushions. Pre-COVID, just 14 percent of small businesses with employees said they would use cash reserves to cover a two-month revenue loss, according to the Federal Reserve. Far more small firms said they would tap the owners’ personal funds, take out debt, lay off employees or downsize operations.

Based on broad economic data, PPP – the “public bridge” through the crisis – largely worked. According to the latest survey from the National Federation of Independent Business, nearly three-quarters of small businesses received a Paycheck Protection Program loan. (https://assets.nfib.com/nfibcom/SBET-May-2021.pdf)

Business owners held on, and with demand now picking up, they’re optimistic and prepared to capitalize on the recovery. The NFIB small business optimism index was 99.6 in May 2021. 6 of every 10 small business owners made a capex investment in the past 6 months, and 3 in 10 are planning on additional capital outlays in the next 6 months. Financial institutions can obviously play a big role in funding these investments.

But what else can bankers do to ensure small business owners can benefit from the bounce-back? And how can banks best support entrepreneurs who are ready to get back into the game? Here are 5 elements to consider:

1. A New Generation of SBA Lenders. Bankers can grow their familiarity with resources like small business development centers and SBA loan programs. It helps that virtually every bank in the country is now an SBA lender because of PPP; there were just 2,000 active SBA lenders pre-COVID, but thousands more became SBA lenders to support their clients with PPP.
   • Tip: Be sure your participation in SBA is well-understood by your staff, and well-communicated to local business prospects and current customers.
2. Support M&A. There is a surge in M&A as a lot of small companies are actually selling themselves to larger companies.
   • Tip: Proactively communicate via a regular cadence of text message and email to all business owners serviced by your institution about the areas where you can provide assistance: valuation guidance, placing a local spotlight on the business for visibility, financing options – whatever your products or local team can do to assist should be clearly articulated.
3. Provide flexible resources for the rebound. Six in 10 small businesses reported figuring out new ways to get by, according to a Santander Bank survey from earlier this year. Providing capital as businesses figure out their new operating model is one thing: but what about alerting businesses to best-practices?
   • Tip: Use your pulpit to communicate, educate, and reengage. Cultivate relationships now through a series of educational messages through multiple channels. Make sure small business owners know what tools are available to them as they pivot.
4. Leave no business owner behind. Bankers have become sensitive to concerns that some minority-owned and women-owned businesses may have missed out on early rounds of PPP relief. This heightened awareness needs to continue. One obstacle to solve: many minority entrepreneurs were Schedule C filers—sole practitioners and self-employed individuals—who faced eligibility challenges early on during the PPP. (The Small Business Administration notes that roughly seven in 10 minority-owned and women-owned businesses are sole practitioners.)
   • Tip: Be sure your message is clearly articulated, and work to gradually build trust within the community – a process which you can expect will be solely based on your actions, not based on your brand marketing. Be sure you use geo-location targeting to promote messages and ads to all locations, as email alone will not by read all intended recipients.
5. Jump-starting the next wave of entrepreneurs. The first step is for bankers to make sure they are connected socially and professionally with entrepreneurs—even if their startups aren’t ready for anything more than a checking account to start.
   • Tip: Hosting in-person or Zoom-based educational sessions for entrepreneurs, joining networks and associations, and sharing “Did you know?” information can all play a role. Have a local team member will visit a local business to spotlight it and promote it on social media – these are simple things can help startups get traction. Get the word out about these events with social media posts and with a nominal social media ad buy.

Whatever tactics the banking industry employs to cultivate startups and support existing small businesses, there’s fresh opportunity in the sector. Small businesses are the backbone of the economy for a reason, and now is the time to get creative in how you communicate your ability to support them.

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Rich Givone is SVP of Digital Marketing Strategy for CS3 Marketing. Having begun his early career in banking, over the past 20+ years Rich has held senior leadership positions serving the banking vertical in companies specializing in digital publishing, digital marketing, adtech, and martech.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-givone-89b1882/

https://www.cs3marketing.com/

What makes you different? What sets you apart from the competition? The reply is often quickly delivered with conviction – “It’s our people that make us unique.” But how? And… do they really?

Customer service is more than a handshake or a quick smile, and recent studies show that customers are craving a more personal touch from their banking institutions. With everything going digital these days, it can be hard to maintain and build a working customer relationship if those customers never interact with branch staff, forcing banks to connect with their customers in new ways to keep business growth steady.

Savvy bankers are turning to new data sources which encourage a more customer-centric approach to marketing and customer service, one that is driven by the life-events their customers are experiencing. Life events such as a new job, the birth of a child and retirement are stressful, and play a role in how and where the individual chooses to live, shop and bank.

During important life-moments, individuals seek out those they trust for advice and guidance and their financial institution is often at the top of the list. By properly engaging with these customers, a bank or credit union can redefine what “personalized service” truly means, and benefit by building institutional trust, heightening customer experience, providing additional products and services and reducing attrition.

The data is now available to make the bank aware when these critical events are happening in the lives of their customers. Timing is everything. It is important to be flexible and patient because some life events push customers to make instant changes while others may take months to find the right solution for their new life situation. In order to provide the highest level of service, the bank needs to be present when the event occurs and be resourceful as decisions are made. Utilizing the data and being aware of these life events sets a bank up to truly provide a level of customer service that is greater than the competition and build a loyalty that lasts a lifetime.

Please contact CS3 Marketing for more information on making Life Event Triggers part of your marketing strategy.

Referrals can be extremely powerful when it comes to accelerating a customer acquisition program.  The relationship between your customer and their friends and family is the most credible relationship a financial institution can leverage.   This makes the financial institution’s current customer the perfect middleman to help cultivate new, high quality relationships.

Studies show that word-of-mouth marketing is more trusted to the average consumer than traditional tactics.  One of the easiest ways to increase incremental revenue and build trust is to reach out to current customers to encourage usage of their accounts or cross sell of additional products or services.   This will provide increased profitability per household but will not increase the overall new household growth rate.  Once trust is established, it is critical to dig into your customers trusted network of family and friends to bring referrals to your banking institution.  The Harvard Business Review found that referred customers are 20% more likely to stay with a bank and generate 15% more profits.

Providing a simplified referral program with an incentive and a means of measuring performance has proven to be the most successful.  Not surprisingly, the value of the incentive will have a direct impact on success. Your referral program can also extend to your employees, which will serve to keep them engaged with the program and encourage more customers to participate.

With technology and digital media becoming so prevalent in today’s society, the authenticity of face-to-face interactions and referrals mean more and allow new customers to feel a greater connection to the brand.  A brand that grows from a foundation of trusted relationships is built to last.

Please visit our website or contact us for more information on our Royal Referral platform.  The Royal platform is designed to capture referrals and drive them to the branch.

By: Patrick Grosserode- Chief Innovation Officer

I remember my first day of travel at my first real job.  I was going to a bank in New York City to work with a team on implementing a large-scale customer acquisition program.  About half way through the seminar we started working on the Refer-A-Friend part of our program.  We talked about branch participation, passing out paper sign up forms and trying to create some buzz with the customers.  This training occurred in the spring of 2004.  Almost 13 years later, many of the Refer-A-Friend programs in existence today still function in the same way as the program that was invented in the mid-90’s.  Let’s get real, the reason why it is in existence is because it works.  When the program (the 90’s version) is executed properly, it is able to drive new accounts at a fraction of the cost of new customer acquisition programs.  Pretty much every FI in the country has some sort of Refer-A-Friend Program in place today, but almost all are from the past.  Here are a few ways to give your current program a much-needed update.

Get out of the branch and go mobile

One of the most telling qualities of a traditional Refer-A-Friend Program is the reliance on the branch for success.  The branch was the main source of distribution of the referral mechanism (typically a card of some sort) and the branch personnel were the main drivers of the strategy.  According to almost every article from the past 6 years, there seems to have been a decline in branch traffic and a large increase in mobile adoption (see this study and this one too).  The key to success for any user platform is to create a system that can be accessed and used in the mobile environment.  Not just distributed online, but able to be used and redeemed within the same platform.  A platform that includes text, social, e-mail, gamification, and a user experience that is modern and accepted.  The branch referrals will never go away, but the concentration of customers has migrated, let’s give them a way to participate.

Manual processes stopped in 1993

There are very few processes in the banking industry that are still done by hand.  Even in the late 2000’s there were still a few but they have since been replaced with systems or software to create lean process.  These processes not only improve operational efficiency, but also create more accurate and real time output.  The Refer-A-Friend program is one of the last remaining dinosaurs from the past.  Because the programs are primarily paper based, both the referrer and referee need to be looked up and processed by hand in order to reconcile the referral.  When one or two referrals come in per month, this process is easily managed, but when executed at scale, this program becomes a monster for the back office.  The only way to operate at scale is to automate the referral data processing.

Paper, QR code, account number, seriously?

Paper, pen and a friend were the only necessary items to execute the traditional Refer-A-Friend program.  There have been a few innovators that have tried to bring the program out from the 90’s but didn’t quite have the success they were hoping for.  The primary reason previous efforts fell short of the traditional pen and paper is that the programs were designed for ease of use for the bank and not for the end user. Here are a few examples:

Refer-A-Friend Online

I was at a credit union site a couple of months ago and a drive by pop up flashed across the screen inviting me to refer a friend and earn a reward.  I clicked on the link and it brought me to a landing page that explained the program.  I was then prompted to “Click Here” to get started.  Upon clicking the link I was taken to a PDF of a paper Refer a Friend card.  The instructions were to print, fill out, and give to your friend.  Part of the magic of the 90’s program was the branch had to support the program by handing out the paper.  Putting the paper online may check the digital box but certainly did not change the experience for the user.

Please insert your account number

I was doing some browsing on a bank site and noticed they had a refer a friend link.  Upon clicking I was pulled into a registration portal that asked for information such as my name, address, and account number.  One of the first rules of fighting phishing is to never give your account number to anyone.  If the bank is really calling you, they have your account number and should be able to read it to you.  I have also seen an iteration of this method using your debit card number (without an SSL key).  As a product designer, I understand why a bank would require you to enter information like your account number or debit card number.  It is because they need some way to flag you as the referrer within their systems and an air-tight way to do it is using the account number.  As a potential user of the product, I have no clue why you think I know my account number or debit card number or why I need to enter it on a site that already has it.  These examples had the right intent to bring their programs out of the 90’s but forgot about the user experience.

Bring in a QR code

I was visiting a bank last year and noticed that each of the branches was outfitted with a QR code reader.  I asked what these were used for and they said they were used for their Refer-A-Friend program (shortly after they laughed and said they had only used it once).  The first step in the program is for the user to request a QR code and then e mail it to their friends.  Once the friend had the code they could print it or pull it up on their phone when they came in and opened the account.  Although this process was good for the bank from a data management perspective, the user experience was not much different than the paper version and the mechanism (QR code) is really designed for instant use and alternative media.

Track it, measure it, own it

It has been said that traditional Refer-A-Friend programs, when executed correctly, can provide up to 20% lift on top of business as usual traffic.  While this metric can be easily proven by looking at redeemed coupons, more telling metrics are virtually impossible.  For instance, it is impossible to measure the amount of your customers who are actively trying to refer, or see how many referred people have the information and have not opened an account.  These metrics can show where opportunities lie and show the true value of the referral program.  The new accounts are one benefit but customer engagement and viral marketing also need to be included in the ROI equation.

Imagine a world where Refer-A-Friend Programs were digital, processes were automated, user statistics were available and pen and paper were a thing of the past. If you would like more information on the Royal Digital Referral Program please click here or contact us.

In boardrooms all across America, teams are collaborating trying to answer age-old questions, “How do we grow core checking accounts?” “How do we drive a younger demographic?” And finally, “How can we reduce last year’s spend by 10%?” The two answers that are uttered most are, “we should invest in building a sales culture” and “we should send targeted direct mail with an offer.” The correct answer is not more of the same, it is simply more touches. “Always on” is the new “free toaster.” Here are a few tactical elements to consider for a checking acquisition campaign.

Goal – The success of customer acquisition programs is often measured in the number of accounts opened (a misleading stat) vs. new households acquired (most accounts in traditional mail programs are actually opened by current customers). This is the driving factor for ROI, but can be skewed based on how the analysis is conducted. As marketers, our primary goal is to drive leads to the top of the funnel, nurture those leads, and ultimately try and drive them to an opening opportunity. To think that 1 piece of mail (as a stand-alone) can accomplish each of these stage gates is ridiculous.

Offer – Offer is still a vital part of any acquisition program. The days have come and gone where a $10 toaster can drive activity. The mega banks are offering $200 – $400 for a new account, but you don’t have to be the market leader. Data suggests cash is king, listen to the data.

Direct Mail – In conventional direct mail programs, around 50% of the response comes from the top 20% of the ranked carrier routes. There is still a place for targeted direct mail, just not in the same volume as the old days. This should be less than 25% of the overall budget yet still produce results. When quantity is reduced and better targeted, both response and ROI will increase dramatically.

Targeted Pay Per Click – PPC is the key to the top of the funnel. “Always on” is the new buzzword in bank marketing and PPC is the workhorse. A proper PPC campaign can drive qualified leads, enhance SEO efforts, and out market the mega banks without breaking the bank. This tactic should be a constant for checking acquisition.

Social Media – Social media, when executed properly, is the best channel to drive prospects to the offer. The reason is because people that will see your offer or your content are friends of your customers. Meaning, they live in your markets and have some connection to the bank. Social takes some time to build, but the investment is worth it.

Digital Referral – Most of the marketing effort is usually focused on driving pure prospects through their most shopped channels. Marketers seem to forget that there is an army of loyal brand advocates who are happy to drive in business if provided a good platform and incentive. A successful referral solution is both mobile and digital, uses social media, allows your customers to refer through every channel possible and is 100% automated.

E-mail – Email is the key to lead nurturing. Once the interested party is captured, email can be used to provide relevant content, enhance offers, or keep the offer top of mind with repeated communication.

Retargeting – Retargeting is the other “always on” piece of the puzzle. Retargeting is the workhorse that provides multiple exposures to interested consumers. According to the Financial Brand, the average buying cycle for a checking account is 30 days from search. Retargeting is the missing link for most promotions. What if you could see every person who opened your direct mail, and then mail just those people every day for a month? In digital, you can!

Commercial Content – Content is the missing tactical link in the marketing funnel. As marketers, much attention is focused on channel and targeting, but once you have them… what do you tell them? A good content plan will provide information around products and services (using the channel your prospect is most likely to utilize). At CS3, we call it commercial content because if you have 30 seconds of screen share, why not show them a video rather than a white paper?

Click here for more information regarding new customer acquisition with CS3 Marketing.

Checking account acquisition is a top priority for most financial institutions and it’s expensive. The average cost of acquiring a new account is now nationally over $450 including incentives, and north of $250 even where no incentive is factored in. Worse, the national 1st-year attrition rate is hovering around 25% and the first 90 days of a new account holders’ time with the FI represents half of that attrition.

A properly designed and executed onboarding solution can protect that investment and accelerate relationship engagement and growth to ensure that you realize the full potential of your new checking customers.

Here are a few ideas to make an impact:

1. Centralize and automate program execution.

Most bank marketing teams understand the importance of structured communication to engage new account holders, but often leave the execution of this critical step to chance; tasking branch staff to execute a series of actions such as phone calls or perhaps a “Thank You” card a week or so after the account has been opened.

Centralizing the data processing and communication flow ensures proper execution. What’s more, it also makes it easier to quantify program performance.

Impact: You’ll boost your productivity and reduce your spend.

2. Engage early, in a defined cadence with prescriptive, value-oriented messaging.

Research from J.D. Power has found that the optimum number of communication messages during the first 90 day period from both a customer satisfaction and relationship growth perspective is at least seven ‘touches’ across various communication channels. Proprietary data also shows a 70% successful communication rate when that first communication occurs in the first 24 hours of opening the account. Be prescriptive in your messaging, providing the customer with an easy path to get the most from their banking relationship, while building trust.

Early stage content should focus on securing core checking-related services to complete the shift from the former FI before advancing to core product cross sell.

Impact: You will increase the likelihood the new customer views you as their primary financial institution.

3. Leverage many channels.

Today’s consumer uses many channels to run their lives and your onboarding program should offer the same —not limited to just a branch touch or direct mail, or solely digital marketing. Consider text, email, direct mail, social media, and retargeting (while & where still an option) as all playing a role to more effectively engage your customers.

Impact: Increases the engagement level.

4. Offer a feedback loop.

Provide your customers with an easy way to offer their input on their experience and preferences, which in turn gives you valuable insight to improve the service levels across all of the financial services you provide.

Impact: You will have increased awareness of how your customers see your FI and provide insight to make better decisions.

How does it look when an FI successfully executes these strategies?

A successfully onboarded new account has engaged with the financial institution within the first 24 hours. They have consumed information helpful and relevant to them in their first 30 days and have remained engaged for another 60 days beyond that. They have increased their checking account balance, added ancillary services, and opened additional accounts to fit their specific needs. And as a result, unlike the norm where every dollar spent in new customer acquisition nets just $3 in deposit balances, every $1 spent in an effective onboarding solution yields $157 in new balances. And— critically — new account attrition is cut by up to 30% from its baseline rate.

8 out of the top 10 banks in the United States offered branch banking by appointment using a branch Online Appointment Scheduler (“OAS”) before the pandemic started. That’s right: before the outbreak started. Why did these technology leaders make OAS a priority, among all of the other channel options they are investing in?

Here are the top 3 reasons banks have invested in OAS:

1. Conversions. Branch Appointments yield the highest conversion % of completed new account applications for both loans and deposit products.

2. Convenience. Customers place a premium on their time allocations and would rather come in at a specific appointed time than run the risk of sitting in a lobby waiting their turn.

3. Cost. It turns out that when a customer requests an appointment, more than 50% of the time the customer’s need can be serviced remotely; requests from “I need a new debit card” to “I need a copy of a statement” can be serviced with a lower-cost-to serve using a remote resource, saving the branch resources for the most valued transactions.

Adding an OAS does not need to be a resource-intensive and expensive proposition, either. For example, many smaller banks are now using solutions which can be implemented quickly (within 24-hours) tested for free, and – due to limited or no integration – cost less than ¼ the annual cost of large enterprise solutions.

But regardless the solution or provider, its evident that OAS is here to stay.

Now that customers have tasted the convenience of such solutions, there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. Customers are not going to put up with calling a call center or branch during limited hours of operation and/or with long hold times: they will demand convenience. Moreover, the “at risk” population will likely only want to engage through an appointment, and branch staff will see OAS as an investment in their safety, as well as one of the most focused ways of driving value into customer engagements.

The Take-Away: Banks and Credit Unions who have deployed an OAS as a digital channel which serves as a gateway to branch banking are seeing specific trends which will continue beyond the pandemic. Namely:

• >38% of Appointments are resulting in the opening of a new account
• Both Consumer and Small Business accounts are being generated by OAS
• >50% of Appointments can actually be handled remotely
• Anecdotal data indicates that account retention is favorably impacted by OAS
• The cost/benefit of OAS makes it a worthwhile channel to invest in most FI’s

For more information regarding appointment setting software, please contact us.