BancTrac Strategic View™ Customer information Intelligence Report

Although the challenges facing management in today’s financial services industry are constantly changing, one thing remains constant.  Your growth and profitability depend on you understanding your customers and the relationships they have with your institution.

Who are your best customers and what do they need?

BancTrac Strategic View™ delivers a detailed understanding of your business along with your best opportunities for growth through a comprehensive and clearly organized package including maps, charts and tables.  By harnessing the power of customer information, Strategic View™ delivers concise analysis and provides you with information to develop action plans that grow revenue and profitability.  We even provide a six-month snapshot analysis to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Get the answers to these key questions:

Product & Service Planning

• Which products and services are most important in terms of accounts, balances and profit contribution?
• How can understanding product usage patterns and service combinations lead to new profit opportunities?

Customer Relationship Planning

• Who are your best customers and what characteristics do they share?
• How can you leverage customer behavior data to develop more targeted sales strategies?
• How can you expand customer relationships and make them more profitable?
• What can you do to improve customer retention?

Market Planning

• How do your branches compare on key performance measures?
• Where is your growth coming from? Which target groups should you attack?

For information on BancTrac Strategic View™ and customer intelligence, contact us.

Paint a portrait of your customer using the product
Put your customer in the middle of experiencing your product with your storytelling. Describe for them the feelings they’ll experience, the time they’ll save, how they’ll be more beautiful, whatever benefit your product has.

Provide testimonials
Third-party emotional validation is powerful.  Your customers will think “If it worked for them it could work for me, too.”

Tell where your brand came from 
Sometimes the story of how a product came into existence can speak volumes to a consumer.  When you meet a couple you admire, at some point you’ll probably ask them how they met. That’s their origin story.  Use your origin story to inspire fondness and identification. 

Need help telling your brand’s story.  Contact Electrum Marketing to create a message that will resonate with your audience.

Having Ineffective Subject Lines – Your subject line should promise short, digestible information that is likely to be of interest like “Avoidable Email Errors.”

Not Properly Identifying Yourself – Few people are likely to open an email if they don’t recognize the sender.  Be sure to use an email address that uses your company’s domain — a Gmail or Yahoo address hints that the company is small-time.

Blasting Irrelevant Content – Make sure your emails are relevant to the audience.  If they begin to get emails with unwanted information, they will likely delete the occasional email containing useful information.

Not Looking at the Numbers – Be sure to check your email reports to see how many were opened.  Conduct A/B Testing on subject lines and send times to determine effectiveness.  Correct or delete bad addresses. 

Having No Purpose –Is your reason for emailing to establish yourself as a resource?  To start a dialogue?  To inform your consumers of news and events in the industry?  Having a clear purpose will dictate your content and prevent you from selling, selling, selling.

Need help implementing an email marketing campaign that will establish you as a trusted resource to your target audience.  Would you like to start an e-newsletter to  communicate with your customers?  Contact Electrum Marketing today!

False advertising – your “special offer” to get the customers in the door will surely backfire once they feel they’ve been duped. Instead, focus on the valuable benefits you offer that no one else can.

Billing and fees – Alerting customers in advance about any rate or fee changes will give you the opportunity to explain the reason for the change. No one likes to be surprised with increased charges for no reason.

Unfinished or shoddy work – The golden rule has never been more appropriate than here. Always provide service and work that you would want to receive yourself. Always under promise and over deliver.

Service problems or billing disputes – Frustration over service or billing issues only escalates when the customer gets lost in a phone maze or is passed from associate to associate. Diffuse their frustration as soon as possible by giving them personal attention and listening to their issue.

Spamming – Do not send unsolicited emails to people without a connection to you or your business (see below). You’ll only be viewed as an annoyance. The email may be quickly deleted but your attachment to this nuisance will remain with them.

Need help developing and/or implementing your business plan?  Contact the brand strategists at Electrum Marketing today.

Often, businesses attempt to “refresh” their brand, rather than doing what’s really needed – a total brand overhaul. Change is always a risk, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do, if:

• Your values have changed. YMCA became the “Y” to become more inclusive and shed its religion/sexist bias.
• You have a crisis. Tylenol’s tampering recall was a marketing disaster. A confident packaging program helped to re-ground the brand.
• You are the leader but you look like the underdog. Federal Express changed its identity to FedEx, surpassed its competitors and never looked back.

Brand reinventions fail when the plan to reinvent turns into tactics that are more like tweaks. Here’s how to avoid the tweak:

• Ban “design by committee.” Involve all of the influencers up front then assign one person to lead the project. Every brand needs a champion.
• Do smart research. Conduct research early, thoroughly and often. Talk to consumers before you start. Loyal and potential customers can provide surprising gems of insight.
• Test new designs against new positioning. Consumers will often be more comfortable with the current look, but if your objective is to reposition the brand, beware of playing it too safe.

Are you ready for a brand reinvention? If so…

• Make sure that your product is good. Restaging a brand to compete with an innovative new competitor will only go so far if the product itself is weak.
• Anticipate roadblocks and deal with them ahead of time. Get the decision makers involved early on and keep the project moving fast.
• Measure success by measuring brand relevance and sales. Sales may not rebound overnight, but gauge if your sales team is more motivated and your buyers more interested.

Ready to reinvent or refresh your brand?  Contact Electrum Marketing to conduct your brand audit, facilitate a brand strategy with your decision makers, and train and monitor your staff to delivery it effectively.

Based on an article in Advertising Age

As someone who downloads occasional white papers, I inevitably receive calls to schedule in-depth presentations.  Some I accept.  Others I don’t.  But it almost never fails that the person who leads the presentation will open with – “So why did you contact us?” 

“I didn’t call you.  Someone from your office called me.” 

Rather than providing a reason for us to be on the phone together – “I was hoping you could give us some feedback on our white paper” or “What interested you in our white paper?”– they immediately launch into their sales pitch as if the phone was going to self-destruct in two minutes.  If only I could be so lucky.  The gentlemen leading today’s call spoke for a solid six (yes, six) minutes before stopping to take a breath.   If I were a mayfly, 20% of my life would already be over without anyone asking me how I was or what I needed.  Poor neglected mayfly.

Meanwhile back to the genius who spent a solid 360 seconds talking at me.  I learned that he employs someone with a Ph.D. in cognitive behavior while he asked nothing about my team or my clients.  He listed his core competencies before ever asking me about my needs.  What do I care if you are an accomplished cheese maker if I am lactose intolerant? 

I confess that his mad cheese making skills are an exaggeration used to make my point.  The fact is I had stopped listening to what he was really saying….until he said that they could design websites for our clients since we did not provide that service.  <Insert needle scratching off the record sound effect.>

“Excuse me,” I interjected, “but we do design websites.” 

 “Really?”  <Cue chirping crickets.> “Hmmmm.  But we also……” and he was off and running again for another two solid minutes.

 At minute nine, he actually stopped and asked what type of clients we served and what needs we had.  Really, at this stage in our relationship?  Are you kidding me?  He’s like the husband who turns to his soon to be ex-wife in divorce court and says, “I understand exactly what you mean.  You are so right.  Let’s cuddle.”   Too little.  Too late.    

Before either of us wasted another minute, I ended the call with a polite, “I don’t think we’re a good fit” which sounded better than “You don’t care about me and you never have.”

Since hanging up, I have made it my mission to prevent projectile presentations from occurring.  I vow to educate salespeople on:

1. The benefits of asking prospects open-ended questions
2. The hazards of not reviewing a prospect’s website before a call
3. The risks of spouting a laundry list of services before identifying a need
4. And the stupidity of promoting web design services to a business that designs websites

Gain a competitive advantage and improve the effectiveness and adaptability of every member of your sales team. Electrum Marketing’s Selling with Style® provides a personalized sales profile for both new and experienced salespeople, that will identify their natural approach to the selling process and give them the tools to improve sales performance while effectively communicating your brand.  For more information, please call 954.318.1600 or visit www.electrummarketing.com/.

When many people think of marketing, they think of ads, brochures, websites and newsletters. But the truth is that everything we do in our day-to-day business life can be filed under “marketing.” At Electrum Marketing, we stress that your brand is your greatest asset, and must be reflected in everything you do, say and even send via email. From the appearance of your lobby to the design of your business card, here are five things you may not think are marketing… but are.

How you answer the phone
The way your phones are answered can set the tone for the entire company. Have a real person answer the phone rather than an automated system. Nothing can replace personal interaction. Select a personable receptionist with a pleasant tone. If the receptionist sounds harried or annoyed, you’ve lost the client before the call has even been transferred. If you provide your receptionist with a phone script, it will help keep things consistent.

Your office space
Another simple but effective marketing tool is a clean and well-organized office. Walking into a clutter-free space instantly gives the appearance of organized authority. Keep waiting areas stocked with your brochures and always offer clients water or coffee as they wait. It’s the little things that make all the difference.

Your email
Your email is prime marketing ground. Your emails should always include a signature line complete with all your contact information. You may choose to add your logo and tagline. Branding your email makes it instantly recognizable and gives clients immediate access to your contact information should they have questions or concerns.

Your business card
Business cards are often the first impression clients may get of your company, and should always be clean, clear and concise. Make your logo the center of attention and your contact information complete and easy to read.

Everyday interactions
Remember, you’re always marketing. Potential clients are around every corner, so be prepared with your 30 second commercial or two minute branding message. Both messages should sound unrehearsed but avoid stumbling as if you’re not sure what you do.

1. Decide what fish you want to catch. Who is your target market?
2. Locate their habitat. Where can you reach the right audience?
3. Determine what bait attracts them. What message is going to get their attention? 
4. Use a technique that gets them to bite. What strategy will motivate a response?

Electrum Marketing can help you answer all of the above. And once you know who you want, how to reach them, and get them to respond – what’s to stop you from catching your limit? Absolutely nothing.   Stop telling your “Big Fish” story about the customer that got away. Let Electrum Marketing create a direct mail strategy to effectively get your message in the hands of your future clients.