BankMarketingCenter

You know better than I do that there’s a lot of controversial “stuff” going on right now (and for quite some time, actually) that has (and will) have a profound impact on community banks. One thing, however, that I think we can all agree on is this: Bankers deserve a break.

Just a short time ago, we talked about this; the fact that protecting PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is becoming nearly impossible, that customers want more and more in terms of a digital experience, that competition for banks is coming from everywhere, that compliance is becoming increasingly challenging and costly, that it’s time for banks to replace their core systems… the list goes on and on.

The latest “warning” seems to be about climate regulation, although this really is nothing new. I believe that the notion that climate change could trigger a worldwide financial crisis has been circulating for nearly a decade.  [“Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, warned of financial risks from climate change as long ago as 2015”, according to a September 2021 article in The Economist: “Could climate change trigger a financial crisis?”]

Why, then, are some folks in the banking industry talking about this as if it were something new and, well, fearful, for community banks?  Granted, there’s quite a bit of uncertainty surrounding climate change. But, not so much about whether or not it exists — although there are still some out there that think it’s a figment of our collective imaginations — but the ramifications of it.  

The 2017 TCFD (Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure) Report says this: “One of the most significant, and perhaps most misunderstood, risks that organizations face today relates to climate change. While it is widely recognized that continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming of the planet and this warming could lead to damaging economic and social consequences, the exact timing and severity of physical effects are difficult to estimate.” Which, I believe, is why the financial services industry has been talking about this for years. And instead of making what seems to be concrete progress toward addressing the situation, simply fretting over the impact that the risk management framework may or may not have on a bank’s bottom line.

Sure, there will be costs associated with responding to the challenges that a changing climate poses to individuals, businesses, and markets. But sitting back and predicting doom and gloom doesn’t seem, to me anyway, particularly helpful.

I get the impression that some in the financial services industry see TCFD risk management framework compliance as a time-consuming, error-prone, heavily manual, and therefore extremely costly process. Given that view, I imagine that those individuals must be picturing that compliance as teams of expensive individuals doing massive amounts of research, filling out spreadsheets, and sharing them via the U.S. mail.

That is so 1980.

Here’s a thought. Technology. Let’s instead look to the future with optimism, instead of trepidation. Technology can do that for us. Using 21st Century tech such as AI, ML, AR/VR, banks can lead the way in ensuring that the concerns that were, frankly, raised nearly ten years ago, never become our reality.  Instead of assuming that the TCFD’s framework will be onerous, disruptive, and expensive, let’s continue to keep open minds and look to a future that, at the moment unfortunately, some seem unable to imagine; a future driven by the developments we’re seeing in technology.

The kind of efficiencies that these technologies bring to the gathering, analysis, and validation of data are at this very moment revolutionizing the way banks work. “Scenario analysis”?  With AI/ML, a piece of cake.

The tech that is out there right now can make it entirely possible (and let’s face it, this is going to happen whether banks want it or not) for banks to meet the TCFD compliance framework requirements quickly, easily, and cost effectively. And I don’t pretend to have a crystal ball with Fortune Teller powers to see the future. The Task Force said this nearly six years ago: “Improved practices and techniques, including data analytics, should further improve the quality of climate-related financial disclosures and, ultimately, support more appropriate pricing of risks and allocation of capital in the global economy.” And companies like UK-based Risilience are already making it happen.

Well, that’s my (and the Task Force’s) vision of the future. As always, I welcome your thoughts on the subject.

About Bank Marketing Center 

Here at BankMarketingCenter.com, our goal is to help you with that topical, compelling communication with customers; the messaging — developed by banking industry marketing professionals, well trained in the thinking behind effective marketing communication — that will help you build trust, relationships, and revenue. In short, build your brand. 

To view our marketing creative, both print and digital – ranging from product and brand ads to social media and in branch signage – visit bankmarketingcenter.com.  You can also contact me directly by phone at 678-528-6688 or via email at nreynolds@bankmarketingcenter.com.  As always, I welcome your thoughts on the subject.

SEO, as you know, now plays a more critical role than ever in the marketing content that you create to engage your customer. And Google, as you also know, plays a critical role in determining how and when that customer engages with it. It’s important, then, to keep an eye on Google and keep abreast of the changes they may be making to how they rank content in user searches.

If you’re a content marketer — and you better be — those changes involve algorithms, which have a profound impact on the type of content you distribute and how it is viewed. Today, we’re going to talk briefly about the content trends driven by the late-last-year algorithm changes at Google; the “Helpful Content Update” and the “Spam Update.”

For years, and Google would be the first to admit it, their content ranking algorithm was less than perfect and, as a result, fairly forgiving.  As a result, when it came to optimizing content such as web sites and web-based articles, blogs, white papers, infographics, and ebooks, etcetera, marketing content developers could get away with things. They’ve been able, for instance, to get away with optimization tactics such as keyword stuffing and link farming (a set of web pages created with the sole aim of linking to a target page, in an attempt to improve that page's search engine ranking). In short, writing to the search engines instead of the human being. As of this year, however, the ability to get away with “faking” SEO is no longer an option. This is good news for bank marketers who adapt, bad news for those who don’t.

Not surprisingly, Google continues to get smarter over time; artificial intelligence can do that.

It’s time for banks to become smarter about creating search engine optimized content that can truly leverage what Google is prioritizing when it comes to the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and the recent algorithm updates.

Why bother with algorithm updates, you ask? Well, Google is a business, too, and the path to growing their business is to serve their users the best possible content as quickly as possible.  The Helpful Content Update (HCU) and the Spam Update will both enable Google to enhance the search engine’s ability to offer users the best content quickly and, in the end, increase their revenue.

Here is what Google’s HCU is intended to do; validate and rank content with a greater emphasis on author authority… and trust. And they’re doing this not only by validating the trustworthiness of sources/authors. So, moving forward as a content marketer developing content for the web, Google suggests that, in order for that content (site page, ebook, whatever) to be recognized as valued content, you should position your author as a subject matter expert, ideally linking the blog to their LinkedIn page where the reader can learn more about the author’s experience and industry credentials.

Google is also concerned about the growing popularity of  AI generated content, via providers such as Chat GPT and Longshot. Industry experts theorize that it won’t be long (potentially) before the internet is flooded with AI content, i.e., websites and blogs crafted by writing “bots.” Google’s updates are the company’s way of protecting what it views as legitimate content, making sure that the content it ranks high in SERPs is developed by individuals who are truly qualified to do so; subject matter experts in their field and not “AI writing assistants.”

This is where the Spam Update comes into play. The update is designed to determine whether the content was, in fact, created by a trusted, expert source.  If not, the algorithm will identify the content as spam. So, tempting as it may be to use an AI platform such as Chat GPT or Longshot to generate your blogs instead of a trained writer with industry expertise and credibility, you may want to resist that temptation… or, face the wrath of Google’s algorithm updates.

In addition to the steps that Google is taking to validate content, the company is also taking a less favorable view of “all text content.” In Google’s opinion, there’s much more to content than text… and it’s true. The manner in which people consume information has been changing for quite some time and Google has been watching very closely. Specifically, they’re watching YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok. And, the fact that all-text content engagement is on the slide while short-format video engagement is on the rise; and the numbers prove it. Fun fact: There are roughly 250 million hours of video viewed on YouTube every day and last year, young people globally spent 56 minutes a day on YouTube. According to Forbes, “YouTube Shorts now claims 1.5 billion monthly viewers — more than TikTok has at 1 billion viewers a month — and gets 30 billion views a day.” Instagram Reels has proven to be a powerhouse player as well. “In an October earnings call, Meta reported that Reels gets 140 billion plays a day across Instagram and Facebook.¹ As you look to create engaging content that Google will crawl and rank highly on its SERPs, consider short videos, either standalone or embedded in your text content.

So, as you move forward with content creation — keeping in mind that Search Engine Optimization plays a critical role in the effectiveness of that content — it will pay to also keep in mind that Google has an ever-watchful eye on the web.  Remember: How, when, and even IF your content will be viewed online is in Google’s hands, not yours. 

About Bank Marketing Center 

Here at BankMarketingCenter.com, our goal is to help you with that topical, compelling communication with customers; the messaging — developed by banking industry marketing professionals, well trained in the thinking behind effective marketing communication — that will help you build trust, relationships, and revenue. In short, build your brand. 

To view our marketing creative, both print and digital – ranging from product and brand ads to social media and in branch signage – visit bankmarketingcenter.com.  You can also contact me directly by phone at 678-528-6688 or via email at nreynolds@bankmarketingcenter.com.  As always, I welcome your thoughts on the subject.

¹Forbes. “In the age of TikTok, YouTube Shorts is a Platform in Limbo. December 22, 2022. https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2022/12/20/youtube-shorts-monetization-multiformat/?sh=6ffc04116f41

If you’re anything like me and try to stay abreast of the latest bank marketing “happenings,” innovations, trends, etcetera, you’re probably just as tired as I am of reading about “digital transformation” and all that comes with it. You know, I get it.

I get that we in the banking community need to worry about cyberattacks; that the compliance landscape is changing every day; that we need to improve our “omnichannel customer experience;” that we’ll surely go out of business if we don’t figure of out how to compete with our digitally-savvy, loosely regulated nonbank competitors. And that is just the tip of the “innovate now or die” iceberg of threats that face financial institutions, especially smaller, local community banks.

Sure, tech innovations are hard. They’re also costly, time consuming, and disruptive. But, they’re also necessary. Finding the right tech partner and a solution that will solve at least some of the challenges banks now face is not easy. It’s certainly challenging to address a more demanding online customer, the growing threat of ransomware cyberattacks, costly data breaches, and building a “digital CX” that can compete with not just nonbanks and neobanks, but retailers, as well.  And how do you get everyone to agree on what your tech stack needs, especially when technologies, the marketplace, the regulatory requirements, and the threats to personal customer data are not only growing every day, but evolving, as well?

My point is this: Given all of the hullabaloo about digital transformation and all of above, it’s easy to lose sight of what I think is the big picture. I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying, “you cannot see the forest for the trees.” It means that a person or organization cannot see the big picture because the focus is too much on the details. I’m starting to think that, perhaps, we’re losing sight of the forest because we’re too focused on the trees. What is “the forest” here? For community banks, it is their brand, their reputation, their USP (Unique Selling Proposition, in marketing terms). The “trees” are the tech-driven “enhancements” we are told banks need to invest in in order to survive. The result? Community banks are forgetting that, at the end of the day, they are about community.

When it comes to leveraging that USP, in my mind no bank does it better than Citizens Bank of Edmond. Is this surprising to many (or frankly, any) of you? Probably not. Citizens Bank of Edmond has been on stage for quite a while now, due in no small part, as you know, to the leadership of Jill Castilla. This from the bank’s website and it’s absolutely true: “Under Jill's leadership, the one-branch community bank in an Oklahoma City suburb became a major player on the national stage and now sits alongside banking industry heavyweights.”

Now, I have no intention of diving deeply into what makes Citizens the community bank to emulate. There are probably a number of reasons and I’m not going to go into them here. What I do want to focus on is the bank’s “community-ness.”  Go to their website (click here), but please come back after your visit!  What do you see, first thing?  “Citizens Bank of Edmond Celebrates 120 Years of Serving the Edmond Community.”  Scroll down the home page and you’ll learn about the events that the bank supports, the community organizations, as well as the local businesses it supports. Ironically, and quite sensibly in my opinion, you actually need to do a bit of surfing around to learn about their products and services.

Now, I’m not suggesting that banks ignore their need to “transform” digitally. It needs to happen. But, with tech decisions being hard to make, and often — subsequently — taking a fair amount of time, banks should not lose sight of the transformation (if needed) that they can make right now.  And that is to take full advantage of what makes them unique… and valuable; their community-ness. Of course, we’re always here to help, with campaigns like this one that will remind your customers, and potential customers, that banking locally is what it’s all about.

About Bank Marketing Center 

Here at BankMarketingCenter.com, our goal is to help you with that topical, compelling communication with customers; the messaging — developed by banking industry marketing professionals, well trained in the thinking behind effective marketing communication — that will help you build trust, relationships, and revenue. In short, build your brand. 

To view our marketing creative, both print and digital – ranging from product and brand ads to social media and in branch signage – visit bankmarketingcenter.com.  You can also contact me directly by phone at 678-528-6688 or via email at nreynolds@bankmarketingcenter.com.  As always, I welcome your thoughts on the subject.

You’re sending out emails.  But, are you really getting the response and the return that you want and deserve? Even if you’ve been in the bank marketing business for a relatively short time, you probably understand the power of marketing automation. And when it comes to automating marketing processes (for me, anyway), there’s nothing like using automation to supercharge your email marketing.

Are you still taking a manual, hands-on approach to your email marketing?  If so, it’s time to stop. With ongoing developments in AI (Artificial Intelligence), and ML (Machine-Learning), marketing automation has taken quantum leaps forward in its ability to dramatically enhance certain marketing processes; email marketing, in particular.

Today’s AI-powered emailing is far more effective and efficient than it was just a year or so ago! Automation has taken email from a cost-effective means of getting your message out there into a cost-effective means of carrying on a very personal, timely conversation with both customers and prospects alike.

Unfortunately, here's what many community banks are still doing… and need to stop doing.

1. A staffer manually creates customer and potential customer records/lists from a variety of data sources, often in different formats
2. Using an email program that enables the building and sending of emails, each email is created and manually sent
3. KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) such as bounce and open rate are available, but no real, actionable insights. The assumption is that an “open” signals interest, so follow-up emails are then sent to those individuals. Again manually.
4. The follow-up emails are not specific to the recipient’s wants or needs because that data is not available to the email program. In all likelihood, response is low as it isn’t possible to align an offer, product, or service to a recipient’s need

And here is a great example, courtesy of 360view.com, of the difference that automation can make to email marketing:

“Southside Bank in Tyler Texas remembers their days before marketing automation. Gone are the days where a marketing campaign looked like this: we decide to promote auto loans, we get a list of all our customers, we send them an email, we celebrate that we sent them an email, and that’s it. Now we strategically build each campaign specific to a customer group and track what happens after the campaign—night and day difference.”

When you add the power of the marketing automation tool to your email messaging, you now have the ability to talk to your recipients about products and services that matter to them most at a particular time in their “purchase path” or “customer journey.” AI-powered emailing solutions can tell you when it’s a customer’s anniversary, when they purchased their last vehicle or their current home, the credit cards they use and their payment history… and all of it stored where you can access it quickly and easily… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Just think about how much more personal, and effective, your conversations with customers can be, when you not only know their interests and behaviors, but you also having that information right at your fingertips… right in your email marketing service’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management) database.  Direct access to this kind of recipient data and preferences enables you to create a true “nurture” marketing campaign; one that truly nurtures your relationship by meeting your customer with the right message, in the right place, at the right time…. every time. How? With the help of “triggers.”

HubSpot does a pretty good job of going into detail on trigger marketing here. The short of it is this: “Trigger marketing refers to the use of marketing automation software to perform a task as a result of an event, often an action taken by a prospect or customer. Couple multiple data points through analytics and it increases the precision of your campaign.” For example, lifecycle campaigns might include triggering a communication when a customer reaches a certain age, since different types of accounts are more beneficial at different ages. Couple the age profile with wealth and demographic data, and you can more successfully offer retirement planning or life insurance products. Another example is a balance trigger; it might involve a customer reaching an account balance over $100K, which could indicate that the customer might be interested in a different type of account, such as an investment product that they don’t currently participate in.

Email marketing automation allows you to automatically generate more leads, increase revenue, and retain customers without manually managing your email marketing program. Enhanced analytics will provide you with greater insights into your audience and their needs. Automated tasks will free up your marketing resources. You’ll now be reaching your customers, and potential customers with the right message in the right place at the right time, and more.  In short, you’ll finally be getting the response and the return from your email marketing that you want and deserve.

Lastly, when you’re ready to begin looking at what’s out there in terms of an email marketing tool, there are many, many to choose from — each offering a unique set of features and benefits — at a wide range of price points.  I found this to be a good place to start; ventureharbour.com. Happy hunting!

About Bank Marketing Center 

Here at BankMarketingCenter.com, our goal is to help you with that topical, compelling communication with customers; the messaging — developed by banking industry marketing professionals, well trained in the thinking behind effective marketing communication — that will help you build trust, relationships, and revenue. In short, build your brand. 

To view our marketing creative, both print and digital – ranging from product and brand ads to social media and in branch signage – visit bankmarketingcenter.com.  You can also contact me directly by phone at 678-528-6688 or via email at nreynolds@bankmarketingcenter.com.  As always, I welcome your thoughts on the subject.