March Madness Baby!

Okay, it's that time of year again. You can watch basketball from about the time you roll out of bed until you turn out the lights...I LOVE IT!

Stay tuned, once the 2011 bracket comes out, fill yours in from 1st round to the finals, send it to me and whoever has the most wins (teams advancing on) will win with MarketMatch, if there is a tie the winning name will be drawn randomly. Up for grabs is a Dayton, Ohio goodies pack, this will include a bag of Mike Sell's potato chips, a box of Esther Price candy and jar of Fricker's hot wings sauce.

Enjoy your Friday. Make it a great weekend and until we talk again.

Debbi

Void where prohibited. This is not a lottery. Must be submitted by midnight, EST, Wednesday, March 16.

Increase Revenue with Increased Experience

A recent Forrester Research report looked at 13 different industries and came to the conclusion that as a customer's experience (CxPi) with your company increases, so does revenue, specifically in the areas of:

• Incremental purchases from existing customers
• Retention
• New sales from word-of-mouth

OK, not really rocket science, but it shows that there is ROI in employee engagement.

According to Forrester, the banking industry was more effected by positive customer experience than all others in the area of retention. In banking, an increase in positive customer experience yields a higher rate of change in attrition than all other industries. In a time when customers are changing institutions at a significantly higher level - this becomes an important finding.

Want to put some hard numbers to customer experience? According to Forrester's report, the banking industry can expect a total annual impact averaging $21.20 per customer by improving your customer experience - with more than half of the impact coming from reduced attrition.

So, increased customer experience equals increased revenue - you can't argue with the logic. But we have some work to do. Credit unions ranked in the Top 10 of Forrester's 2010 Customers Experience Rankings with only 3 banks in the top 50. How do we improve?

• Create written Customer Service Standards for the entire company to follow.
• Relook at your sales process - do you speak "to" the customer or "at" them. Create a process that facilitates a CONVERSATION with the customer - then addresses their needs.
• Relook at your sales materials. Are they benefit oriented.
• Follow-up is key. Call it on-boarding, re-boarding or just doing your job. But the best experience a customer has with you can be out of your branch and in their home. Set standards and create a process to add value-based communication with your customers.
• Consistent training. Customer engagement is a culture, not a program. It starts with a new hire and continues every-day. Your staff must be engaged and understand that we are dealing with people's money. And when it comes to money, a little empathy, understanding and advise can go a long way!
• Talk to them. Before you make changes to your organization, talk to your customers and determine their needs.
• Let them have it their way. Whenever possible, let the customer create their own product. More and more institutions are turning to a build-your-own checking product. If not that, then package your products in a way that looks tailored to them.
• Measure your success. Start with baselines in: Attrition, services per household and average balances. Then track your progress regularly.

A positive customer experience can differentiate you in a competitive market place and generate incremental revenue. It can grow your institution organically and reduce attrition.

Want to chat about your customer experience culture? Call us.

Take care,

Eric

egagliano@MarketMatch.com

866-501-2233, ext. 106

MarketMatch wins at Award Show

MarketMatch wins a Gold ADDY at the 2011 Hermes Awards Show. Every year AAF (American Advertising Federation) holds a competition for advertising/creative firms to submit work completed in the prior year and they are judged in various categories.

In the Southwest Ohio region, Dayton and surrounding, there were nearly 500 entries submitted by advertising firms and agencies covering a wide variety of products and industries.

On Saturday, February 26, 2011 MarketMatch was presented with a Gold ADDY and was named one of only four special Judge's Awards! The judge who awarded his selection was quoted as saying...

"clever and simple, but monstrously ambitious"

"your effort, as big as it was, was expended for all the right reasons"

The next step is our Gold winning entry will now compete at the District level through AAF.

How cool is that? I told you I had a good feeling about the entries a month or so ago...our hard work and efforts definitely paid off!

Enjoy your Friday! Make it a great weekend and until we talk again.

Debbi

What they want you to find...

Logos can tell us lots of things about a business - you just have to see the signs.

The task of every designer, then, is to create a design that will effectively convey this message. Some designers convey a company’s message in very obvious ways, typefaces, imagery, etc. Other designers prefer to be slightly more subtle. This is often achieved by embedding hidden elements or messages within a logo. These hidden elements and messages can be in the form of words, numbers, icons, depictions, or some other markings.

We’ve all seen the designs below millions of times. But how many of us notice the subtle messages they deliver as well? Take a look now. You may be surprised you didn’t notice these before:





The Big Ten collegiate conference has eleven schools but they didn’t want to change their name. However, they used their logo to hide the numerical “11” in the name.

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This famous logo is extremely clean and simple but this arrow might not look like more than a smile to you. Before, coming to any conclusions I would like you to know the concept behind this…it says that amazon.com has everything from a to z and it also represents the smile brought to the customer’s face.

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You would say you have seen it thousand times but just to make you notice an arrow formed between the letters “E” and “X” conveying speed, direction and reliability of this amazing courier service.

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At first glance, it looks like your basic lettered mark, but if you observe this hidden logo, the letters ‘My’ shows a human hand.

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Most people don’t realize that the smiley face at the top of the logo is also a lowercase ‘g.’ Known as the “Smiling G”, it is used to represent both the company name and the smiles that come from helping people help themselves.

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If you look at the two ‘Ts’ and the ‘i’ in between, you can clearly see two people enjoying a Tostitos chip and bowl of salsa.

Until next time,
Jeremy

QR codes add flexibility and access to your direct mail and traditional advertising message delivery.

Want to justify your Marketing budget?

A new J.D. Powers & Associates report on shopping and switching rates can not only justify your Marketing budget, but it should also put you on the offense ... and defense.

Here are the highlights:

• 8.7% of customers said that they switched their primary financial institution in the last year (up from 7.7% the previous year)
• Shoppers consider 1.9 banks while shopping (up from 1.6)
• The most common reason to switch is life circumstances
• Advertising/awareness & convenience drives their decision
• Less than half (43%) of customers who purchased an additional banking product did so with their PFI

So what does all this mean?

Go on the Offense

We've been saying it for about 2 years ... their is money in motion! People are switching financial institutions. You need to be in the 1.9 institutions that they consider.

Life Stages: You can differentiate your institution and speak directly to your customers needs through life stage messaging. Click here for more life stage information.

Get them to know you: Awareness drives consumer's decision ... and you're in the awareness business. Use your budget wisely and be on the radar of those folks most likely to be your best customers. Use segmentation and mirror modeling to locate your best opportunities - then focus your budget on them. You likely can't battle Chase, PNC, Wells Fargo and Bank of America dollar-for-dollar. It's not about getting EVERYONE to know you, it's about getting the right people to know you.

Go on the Defense

We can no longer assume that our PFI customers are safe or loyal. Assume that less than half of them will come to you for their next product and more than 8% of all your customers are looking to leave. Pretty scary stuff huh?

Focus on cross sells, strategically bundle your products and focus on your team's training - are they prepared to facilitate the customer conversation?

Not to be a fear-monger, but this report should both scare you, energize you and justify the importance of marketing now, more than ever. Share this with your management team and show up prepared with a plan based on ROI.

Good luck and take care,

Eric

Oh, How We Like our Awards

'Tis the season for award shows. Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, Golden Globes and the Tonys. We sure do enjoy our annual award shows. In Washington, DC, we have our own awards for theatrical excellence--the Helen Hayes Awards--which just announced their nominations last night. It reminded me that as marketers, awards present us with a significant question--how aggressively should we use these awards in our marketing campaigns?

You might be thinking that the answer to that question is relatively easy. Why shouldn't you celebrate your nominations and trumpet your awards? A few things to consider:

When you market an award...

• you are willing building the brand of the award. It is said that smart lawyers only ask witnesses the questions they know the answers to. That way, the lawyer is in control of the situation, and there are no surprises. In my relatively short time in the DC market, I have seen numerous companies trumpet their large number of nominations and awards year after year until the inevitable year comes when they are left out in the cold. By building the brand of an award, performing arts organization's leave their perceived success in someone else's hands. They are no longer in control of their own destiny. When you say to a consumer over and over again that an award proves your artistic excellence, what does it prove when you are left out? were you artistically insolvent that year?


• you are publicly endorsing the validity of the award. You should ask yourself if you have any serious misgivings about the awards process. If you do, then you should not prominently market them, as doing so implicitly gives your endorsement of the process. One cannot market the awards, and then second guess the process.


• you are sending a signal to the artists who work at your organization. And what might that signal be? Is an artist's work not as important to the institution if it isn't recognized with a fancy award? Should an artist take less risk knowing that the results of the risk might lessen his chances for public acknowledgement? Is one artist more important to a production than another simply because of a nomination?

Awards are fickle. They will come, and they will go. And most of the time, you'll have no clue as to why. The one thing they are good for is bringing together the artistic community one time a year for a great big party. So if you are a winner this year, enjoy your glass of champagne, because if there is one thing I can guarantee, it will be that you will get screwed in the future.