When Is A 33% Confidence Rating A Good Thing?

Gallup recently released a summary of Americans' confidence in banks. While overall confidence in banks has fallen to 18%, on a more positive note, many Americans have confidence in their primary bank where they conduct most of their banking business, with 33% saying they have "Quite a lot" of confidence in their primary bank.

It's pretty abysmal when the majority of banks have a confidence rating that is lower than the final approval rating of George W. Bush (who had the lowest approval rating in history of any politician who was not indicted for something).  While 33% have expressed "Quite a lot" of confidence in their primary bank, it's the other 67% that should be keeping us up at night.

The greatest casualty in this whole financial debacle has been the loss of trust in financial institutions.  Now, more than ever, banks need to step up their efforts to project a message of safety, soundness and stability.  One of the keys is through financial education, which a lot of banks do not do well.  People are scared--how to pay their mortgage, send their kids to college, and have enough for retirement--and they are being overly protective of their precious few resources.  Banks need to do a much better job of outreach to retail and business customers in an advisory capacity to outline financial options that are in the best interest of the customers.  

This seems to be the ideal path to regaining consumer and business trust one institution at a time that will inevitably begin to raise the status of the financial industry as a whole.

7 Ways to Stand Out From The Crowd

According to a recent J.D. Powers and Associates and Novantas study, customer service drives 15%-20% of growth performance at the branch level - accounting for a differential of $50,000 - $90,000 of additional annual earnings per branch.

As a firm who conducts market research and secret shops for banks and credit unions across the country, we empirically know that customer service will provide the differentiation that your institution is looking for.

How do you standout from the crowd?

• Know your competition – what are their strengths and weaknesses?  Who is providing outstanding service in your market?
• Know your markets – your market needs may be different from branch to branch.
• Focus your efforts – don’t expect your staff to be good at all things.  Find your niche and maximize it.
• Train and set expectation levels – communication with the staff is the key.  Tell them what you expect and how to be successful.
• Offer the right products – Do you provide “value meals” that bundle key products together?  Do you offer product packages based on life stage?
• Provide the right tools – relook at your sales process and sales materials.  Remove obstacles and provide targeted benefit-driven materials.
• Track, recognize and reinforce – your team should know, at all times, how they are doing against their goals and be rewarded for success.

With a focus on customer service, you will cost-effectively:

• Support your brand
  
• Increase share of wallet
• Reduce customer attrition
• Increase revenue
• Increase staff retention

But it takes a commitment.  

From the senior management down, every level of the organization must support this effort.  Often, it's best to look to a third party for an objective perspective and to focus on the plan while you manage the day-to-day institution operations.

Take care,

Eric

Capture Information

First off, I am amazed at the number of organizations that don't want to invest in data hygiene. Most likely, your database is the most valuable thing in the office. If my building was on fire, it would be the first thing I would try to protect. If your database gets corrupted or is out of date, it will compromise your ability to hit both earned and contributed revenue goals. So invest in data hygiene so that your database is as clean and up-to-date as possible. Send out your data for in-depth hygiene services and appending at least once a year, and go through the NCOA process quarterly.

That being said, don't let opportunities to capture information go by. I just got back the data hygiene reports for Arena Stage this past week, and we had roughly 20,000 bad addresses (which isn't surprising since we have such a large database). However, when I looked at the report closer, almost half of those bad addresses were due to missing contact information. So I did some investigating, and realized that when we were processing complimentary ticket requests, we were not asking for contact information. If we are going to give away a free ticket, I would like to be able to at least contact the recipient for a donation later in the year. So we now have a new policy -- to process a complimentary ticket request, we must have your contact information. This goes for contest winners, promos and donations as well.

We have also recently engaged Target Resource Group as consultants, and in our initial meetings with them, they encouraged us to find ways to collect contact information for all members of group bookings. Group bookings can be a very large source of revenue for Arena Stage. For example, 34% of our revenue on single tickets for Crowns came from groups, which means that most likely 20% of our houses were group bookings (when taking into consideration our subscriber base). But we only have the contact information for the group leader. Knowing that the best prospects for subscriptions and donations are individuals who have been to the theater before, not capturing contact information for all group attendees is a costly mistake. So now we are devising incentives for group leaders to provide contact information for every person in their group.

Leveraging "Linked In"

For those of you that haven’t established a presence on LinkedIn yet, I strongly recommend that you create a profile and linkaway!

LinkedIn is on of the top 5 social networks on the Web and focuses on linking professionals to one another through networking opportunities, business discussions, information exchanges, Q&A’s, industry news, professional Groups, and more.

It’s easy and free to get started. You simply go to Linkedin.com and create a profile. You can information on your education and career. And through your account settings you can chose what information you’d like private and what you’d liked displayed for others to view.

It’s also helpful to get and give recommendations, as it helps validate your credentials as an expert in whatever field you specialize in.Once you sign up, you can invite colleagues and business partners to join your "network" as well as join various Groups that relates to the industry you’re in. After you join those Groups, you’ll receive weekly messages from the Group leader regarding Group discussion, news, relevant articles and other useful information. You will also be able to view other Group member’s profiles and invite those you feel could be synergistic to your business to join your network.

Joining LinkedIn can help your business…and your website (and company!) in several ways…

• SEO. You can write and upload useful articles or news as well as start discussions regarding information that will benefit your fellow members. Article should be relevant and value-oriented information. When you do this, you also get to upload a backlink to your site. Not only will this reinforce you credentials as an expert, but it’s also information that is truly benefiting you’re peers. This encourages traffic to your site, which if optimized, you can leverage the traffic via lead gen collection boxes or eCommerce platform. And the traffic is easily identified with Google website analytics.
  
• Advertising. You can easily alert members of your special skills, expertise or services by posing a relevant question and offering a benefit-oriented solution. The opportunity is there to network with responders and gain potential business. Again, the key is to be relevant. You can also post a classified-type ad in the Job section. And here’s where good copy writing comes into play, as for best response, your ad should get people to take action quickly. If done right, I guarantee you will also get a handful of qualified leads that will generate new business and added to revenue growth. In my experience, within hours of my initial posts I received nearly 20 leads for potential clients.
  
• Increased Web Presence. If you’re goal is to improve your website’s presence, then being actively involved in LinkedIn is critical. If you spend an hour or less a day and offer expert solutions to relevant Q&A’s, provide commentary to targeted questions and include your name and website URL -- your "brand" will be prominent to site users. This will not only establish you as an expert within LinkedIn, but also have the potential to drive ancillary traffic to your website from members and referrals. And the more traffic your site gets, the more it will help your organic search ranking and visibility.

Now, some may argue that social media is just the latest craze, but it’s not easy to monetize or measure. I wholeheartedly disagree.

I say, if you’re a creative and strategic thinker, you can not only measure social media efforts, like those in LinkedIn, but also increase you’re business’s bottom line.

Top 10 Ways to NOT Think Like a Bank

To be a better bank, don't think like a banker.

If you want to  ...  no, since you NEED to sell more products, look to the business sector that sells the best ... RETAIL!

What does your favorite retailer do that makes you want to spend so much money?

1. They go to great pains to know you through loyalty programs 
2. They train their sales staff to ask questions before they recommend product
3. They make it easy to buy in the store and on-line
4. Specialty shops become your advisor and product expert
5. They package products in "bundles" that make intuitive sense to you (think Value-Meal)
6. They create advertising with a clear call to action that evokes some emotion
7. They sell the relationship ... not the product
8. They empower their employees to think like entrepreneurs
9. They focus on how the product will make your life better ... not the product features
10. The BRAND is priority #1

For more discussion on bringing retail strategies to the financial world, please register for our free Brown Bag Lunch being held on Friday, May 15 at 1:00 PM EST by clicking here.

Take care,

Eric

Ignoring Fear

I was at the IBA MEGA conference this past week....saw Erik Wahl present again. His message and performance is excellent and always on the mark.

One captivating point, especially in the current times. The concept of FEAR. Erik shared a definition of FEAR....it goes:

• F false
  
• E evidence
• A appearing
• R real

There is a tremendous amount of fear in the market place today...some founded in fact and most built from media hype. The solution?

Communication.

You need to over-communicate, if there is actually such a practice. Communicate to your customers, your best customers, your staff, your shareholders, your market....everyone!

Not the "we are safe and stable" message, but a tangible message that is actionable. I heard a radio spot for a bank in Michigan and it was the president speaking and sharing very tangible ideas on how their bank was strong (facts) and ended the spot with his direct dial phone number. That creates tangible comfort!

Remove the fear, communicate, communicate, communicate!

Cheers!

Bruce

CoReg tips for better conversion

Co Registration can be a cost effective way to bring in names to your file.

However, if done incorrectly, these names will become worthless as well as be a burden to your file by becoming names you payfor to send your message (email transaction fee) and those names will be unresposive or invalid thereby effecting open rate, bounce rate and deliverability rate.

And you need extra baggage on your email list.

Here are some quick and dirty tips for optimal results:

• These names come in from another website after a transaction and people tend to forget what they opted in to receive.
• For optimum results, flag names that come in (segment) and withhold them from eLetter circulation for approx. 5-7 days.
• Use this time to reconnect with them and let them bond with you, your gurus, your pub, or your philosophy. Let them build that "warm fuzzy feeling" for you. Do this by following up with targeted introduction emails.
• After the email series, where you'll also be giving them fantastic editorial, send them a special offer (such as discount, special new subscriber pricing, etc.) to help monetize the names.
• Avg. cost per lead (CPL) for coreg tends to be between $1- $5.
• Implementing the email intro series also helps the LTV (life time value) of the subscriber. They'll buy more frequently, monetarily, and be more loyal.