Your organization’s tech team is busy implementing a new digital banking feature that’s going to be a huge benefit to your accountholders. Congratulations!
Now it’s time to plan on how you’ll introduce the new solution to your accountholders, explain how it works, and drive enrollments.
Even if your new solution is in high demand and you know your accountholders will love it, you need to consider your whole audience. Especially since one pandemic lesson was how many people who weren’t digitally savvy before quickly picked up new ways of doing things.
Here’s how one community bank created a simple, multichannel path to success.
Bar Harbor Bank & Trust (BHB&T) is a community bank offering a full range of financial services for individuals, families, businesses, and non-profit organizations. Operating over 50 locations across three states, they offer “big bank” technology paired with personal service to local accountholders.
So, it was essential for BHB&T to offer a person-to-person payments solution that would give accountholders the modern banking technology they expect.
During the kickoff phase, BHB&T’s marketing group worked closely with their in-house implementation project team to make sure the planning phases and the go-live date were clearly communicated.
The BHB&T marketing team also worked with marketing counterparts from their solution provider to get trained on branding and best practices – gaining the benefit of experience from experts and the success of other organizations.
Your goals:
- Increase awareness
- Educate your accountholders
- Motivate them to use it
Know Your Bandwidth
Once BHB&T‘s marketing staff was armed with this information, they could create a plan that made the most sense for their community bank. They chose to create some materials in-house, while also relying on ready-to-use resources from their solution provider to round out their marketing effort.
Based on this knowledge, the bank was able to create a marketing plan to ensure a timely rollout. Considering they wanted to create some materials in-house, and some of those items would need to go through a brand approval process, they anticipated that phase in their timeline.
BHB&T relied on guidance from the solution provider and got familiar with their available resources so they could take advantage of this marketing support.
Ready-made resources mixed with items you create yourself:
- If working with a well-known brand, consider what they offer to support your launch
- Work with your solution provider for marketing support
- Decide what materials you will create on your own based on your bandwidth
Create a Reasonable Timeline
Once you decide what materials you plan to produce, make a plan for who creates what and how it gets deployed.
A soft launch to internal users is typically recommended and should include educational materials that are ready before you go live so your employees are trained and can assist accountholders when that time comes. Making sure your team can respond in multiple channels is part of offering a accountholder experience that lives up to the digital solutions you’re providing.
Don’t forget to include fraud education in your content mix, especially since those who are new to digital banking might be less sophisticated about anticipating these scenarios.
Timeline considerations:
- Content creation
- Approval timelines
- Content deployment
- Go-live date – stay connected with your implementation team in case this affects your timeline
- Soft launch versus big launch
Plan a Holistic approach
In my experience, you get the best results by hitting as many channels as you can. While some people spout that email is dead, I find the contrary to be true in the results. Working with banks and credit unions, I see often how the secret to a campaign’s success is that they included email in their multichannel plan. I definitely advise keeping it in the mix.
For example, the email portion of the campaign helped BHB&T increase awareness, as shown by a significant 39% open rate and a 2% click-to-open rate. The performance boosted BHB&T‘s strategy and helped them meet their enrollment goals.
Eighty percent of accountholders value the experience a company provides as much as its product and service offerings. Consumers want a personalized experience and instant resolution and communication from their banks. Make sure your message finds your accountholders where they are.
Creating a multichannel strategy that blends all the ways you communicate with your accountholders is what I call a holistic approach. Holistic is the philosophy that all parts of a thing are interconnected. Just as your launch strategy should be.
Best practices for a holistic approach:
- Emails to your contacts
- Landing page/website content
- Social media channels and chat platforms
- Print for in-branch, ads, statements, ATM
- Employee education
Get the Best Results
After their multichannel campaign, the results came in ... BHB&T saw a 99.7% boost in their new solution enrollments.
It’s not complicated to create a simple plan for new digital features your organization is launching, but it does take a thoughtful approach and depends on available resources, support from your solution provider, your team’s bandwidth, and your implementation timeline.
BHB&T results:
- Created a multichannel campaign strategy
- Used a mix of their own materials, templates provided by the brand, automated resources, and marketing support
- Resulted in a 99.7% enrollment boost
Learn more about marketing support resources from Jack Henry.
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