Mission Impossible?

I witnessed an interesting test at a financial institution – a group of private bankers were given offers by their supervisor at 8:00AM one morning. Inside the envelopes the manager had the script and the offer details; the bankers then proceeded to call their customers and prospects regarding the offer.

The team met again at 10:30, seven bankers sat with their manager reviewing the responses to the offers. To my surprise (not theirs) each banker had been given a different deal to carry to their customers; during their time together, the team settled on three of the seven offers and modified scripts to strengthen these top offers.

The call center manager was then presented with these three tightened offers and the private bankers spent time with the call center staff training them on both the offers and the possible responses. Over the next two days, the call center pushed the offers to their prospects. I suggested incorporating email into the mix – sending a personalized offer to customers/ prospects that the call center was unable to reach by phone as well as a last chance email to those who had initially passed the offer. These emails included testimonials from prospects that accepted the offer and were streamlined to provide three succinct reasons and a single call to action.

In the end, the entire process proved very successful in customer growth, marking/ brand strengthening through multi-channel communication and (importantly for the bank) team unity – the call center even got email stats for recipients who had clicked through for one last attempt via phone.

What’s in a PIN?

In your typical ATM transaction, you walk up, stick in your card, key your PIN and choose your transaction – the same ole series of transactions come up… deposit, withdrawal, inquiry, etc.

Why can’t the bank acknowledge you or serve your pre-determined/ favorite transactions. My brother Sanjay has been working with a financial institution for the past year; his work has helped banks change things – after you enter your PIN, the screen welcomes you and offers your top transaction.
For example, Sanjay has personalized his experience to always be served in English and offer $60. During the course of the messaging, Sanjay is offered a coupon to one of the adjacent stores, an offer to go talk to a banking representative or a simple note about his account – maybe prompting him to check his inbox for his electronic statement or a receipt for the current transaction. The bank can now track what he does via email and fine-tune future offers.

As marketers we want to personalize, we spend so much energy trying to personalize our Batch & Blast emails; yet for those we know everything about we try our hardest to appear as impersonal as possible. So think about pulling a small list of your best customers and try to talk to them as individuals – it might seem like it takes too much time, but the ROI will amaze you.