Marketing Personalization Is More Than Adding Names to Emails

At its finest, a personalized marketing campaign is one so calibrated to an individual customer that the customer walks away feeling like their community bank really knows them. As Elyse Richmann, AVP and director of professional services at the banking CRM platform provider 360 View, puts it, “Personalized marketing is not a blanket campaign but a campaign catering to a particular customer and making [that individual] feel special.”

The goal may sound straightforward enough, but the question of how to make such a warm, fuzzy and relevant impression a reality is not so simple, and the difficulty is compounded by the very nature of community banking. “Customers go to the smaller, community banks because they [want more personalized service],” says Richmann. “They don’t want what the larger banks are doing.”

For Mark Hanna, president and CEO of The Bank of Glen Burnie in Glen Burnie, Md., finding a way to personalize digital communications is a growing imperative as the $365 million-asset community bank’s branch traffic declines. “We’re using our website and emails—as well as some new and different media—to stay in front of our clients,” he says. “Face-to-face banking is not dead, but it’s taking on a different meaning.”  

Hanna notes that the bank’s website is becoming the thing that drives a majority of its personal conversations. “After we pique people’s initial interest, they do more fact-finding,” he says, “and that leads to a phone call or a meeting to discuss how we can support their financial needs.”

According to Juliet D’Ambrosio, chief experience officer at Atlanta-based branding consultant Adrenaline, community banks are now investing in their own data and technology to clean up and merge customer data, as well as consolidating duplications from email and other customer lists into a workable dataset.

It’s all about data

Bravera Bank in Dickinson, N.D., is a case in point as it expanded beyond its traditional geographic footprint into Minnesota and Montana. As part of its growth strategy, the $3.2 billion-asset community bank is investing in data and technology so it can compete with larger financial institutions, says chief marketing officer Kelsey Dahl.

When it comes to identifying what types of data matter most for a successful marketing campaign, approaches differ. Some banks rely on demographics, placing a premium on knowing what life stage a customer is in, explains Richmann. Demographic data might include whether a customer has children, owns a home, has a business or is saving for a particular goal like retirement. Others place the emphasis squarely on financial data, such as the types of accounts owned and balances carried.

Increasingly, banks also rely on predictive analytics, which may be driven by AI, to use this “matrix of customer data,” as Richmann calls it, to identify the most appropriate products for a given customer. “You can create campaigns or journeys specific to a customer’s needs based on all that information,” she says.

One of the enormous advantages enjoyed by financial institutions is the abundance of relevant data within their grasp. Banks could know far more about spending patterns than, say, retailers or hospitality companies, notes Crystal Steinbach, director of digital marketing for Des Moines, Iowa-based firm Mills Marketing.

“Half the battle is getting the data,” she says. “And when we can get the data, we’re going to use it [for personalization purposes].”  

A hyper-personalized approach

Over the past decade or so, marketing has evolved at warp speed. “Back in the day, it was the batch and blast. You had all these customers, and you sent everyone the exact same thing,” says Steinbach. “Pretty quickly, you saw massive numbers of unsubscribes [and low engagement].” From there, marketing progressed to incorporating first names and other easily acquired personal information into emails and other communications. 

The next leap forward is hyper-personalization. “Hyper-personalization is using data to speak to you about only the things that matter to you,” says Steinbach. “With hyper-personalization, we send far fewer emails, but instead of a 20% open rate, we see 40%, 50%, 60% open rates. We see higher engagement, more clicks and better closing rates.”

When Steinbach designs a hyper-personalized marketing campaign for a community bank, she starts with a wish list of more than 100 data fields to be populated with information residing within a bank’s core. Relevant data ranges from whether a customer has set up online banking to whether that customer receives e-statements. Other crucial information includes when that customer’s last account was opened and whether they have used Venmo in the past 90 days.

Thanks to the granularity of the information being gathered, the goal is that no customer will be sent an off-the-mark email introducing, for example, online banking if that customer is already a user.

Richmann reiterates that what matters most is offering the right product at the right time. “We live in a fast-paced world,” she says. “The whole key to hyper-personalization is that whatever’s put in front of a customer needs to hit home, then and there.”

Avenues for personalization

Community banks market through multiple channels, but here are four in which personalization is proving a game-changer:

1. Direct mail. Among Adrenaline’s community banking clients, direct mail is the channel of choice for personalized marketing, says D’Ambrosio. “Even though it [may seem] like a retro channel, direct mail has high engagement rates,” she says. “When people get an offer in the mail, they’ll hold onto it longer, and they’ll recall and remember it in more detail. They’re also more likely to engage and act.”

Mills’ Steinbach contends that direct mail, which is more expensive than email, “never really died.” Some banks, she notes, are surprised to learn that a message printed on paper and delivered by postal carrier makes an impression on even younger people. 

In fact, a recent survey from Hydrate Marketing found that 90% of millennials—those 28 to 43 years of age—prefer direct mail over email when receiving promotional items.

2. Email. The Bank of Glen Burnie recently began using email marketing as an additional marketing tactic, a strategy that Janet Kim, director of marketing and public relations, describes as “risky” given the multitudes of people frustrated by their clogged inboxes. 

Kim believes the key to customers’ receptiveness—her bank’s open rate for email is above 50%—lies in the content of marketing messages. “We don’t want our customers to feel spammed,” she says. “We try to make sure there’s value in the messages we send.”

3. Websites. Community banks have recently begun getting into the act by hyper-personalizing their websites, says Mills’ Steinbach. For example, banks can alter their marketing presence by choosing one of five or 10 different home pages and online banking experiences, depending on who visits or signs in. Posting an ad or banner with the most attractive savings-account rates for customers most likely to engage in those products or who are lacking such accounts is also website hyper-personalization in action. 

Beyond displaying custom offers, savvy community banks are making sure that the website images selected resonate with the audience they’re targeting. Paul Tonelli, VP and creative director at Manchester, N.H.-based firm Pannos Marketing, points out that for one Midwestern community banking client with branches primarily in agricultural communities, “presenting the right style and imagery” is key to being relevant and building lasting relationships.

What’s more, for some banks, a kind of DIY personalization can boost a website’s appeal. Take The Bank of Glen Burnie, which has 50 financial calculators in its Online Education Center, ranging from mortgage payoff tools to a “cool million” calculator designed to show when your current savings plan will make you a millionaire. “Our goal is to make sure we’re anticipating our customers’ [financial] needs,” says Kim.

4. Branches and call centers. Personalized marketing campaigns need not be executed solely via remote channels. Highly targeted marketing intelligence can be furnished to bank employees, who then directly present customers with only those product suggestions that are a strong fit for their unique needs.

Richmann of 360 View notes that it’s particularly powerful when a banker sends a customer a handwritten thank-you note or reaches out on an anniversary of doing business together. “Showing you care about a relationship and the accounts a customer is in is what separates community banks from larger banks,” she says.

Kim agrees. “To us, personalization is primarily people,” she says. “Our staff, we’re building up our digital technologies and putting all that information in tutorials and calculators [for customers to use], but Mark [Hanna, president and CEO] is still often the first one to pick up the phone and directly call a customer with a concern.”

Walking a fine line

Personalized marketing is increasingly what customers have come to expect. Even so, bankers need to proceed with care, advises D’Ambrosio.  

“Just because banks can take a look at your Amazon data to deliver more personalized offers to you, should they?” she asks. “How much is too much? When do you cross the line?”

For her, the question boils down to one of consent. “Customers of community banks are happy to have their data used to give them more personalized offers, but they want to be asked,” she says. “They want to opt in to that type of relationship and not just be targeted willy nilly.” 

Kim raises a similar point, warning against the risks of relying on and overusing digital tools so that marketing efforts tilt toward what she terms “impersonalization.” She suggests that “there’s a real need to balance the automated personalization experience with true ‘we know our customer’ moments.”

“Our customers are our friends and neighbors, and so community banking is the essence of hyper-personalization,” says Kim. “Even though we want to give our customers a full digital experience, we don’t want them stuck in an automated loop, trying to get hold of a human. Connecting with the customer in a truly personalized way is still essential.”