We recently sat down with Jason Henrichs, founder & CEO at Alloy Labs, to talk about how banks and credit unions should be approaching deposit growth and retention. This blog includes key takeaways and excerpts from that conversation, but you can watch the full video here >
It’s hard to argue with this simple statement: The banking industry has seen and will continue to see incredible volatility – the type that demands integral changes from the way things work today. Cutting rates isn’t a long-term growth plan. Savvy banks and credit unions see this, and they’re working on a pivot strategy. A viable long-term strategy will mean building up your organization’s knowledge and strengths to compete on value instead of rates.
Instead of simply trying to buy deposits with higher interest rates, forward-thinking banks and credit unions are focused on creating highly personalized value that will keep account holders—and their deposits—in-house for life.
A new approach for a new market
This need for building a new kind of value framework has wide-reaching effects. To succeed at bringing unique value, banks and credit unions need to bring their data together into a powerhouse resource that will give them deeper insights. But the need to display value also extends to products and services themselves. Each customer or member is likely to have a specific combination of needs, which gives you the opportunity to “bundle” products and services in a way that differentiates you from competitors. Another bank or credit union might offer HELOCs, but they don’t know the exact equity your customer or member has in their home, if they have kids going to college, if they’re nearing retirement, or if it’s time for a new car.
The value of that level of personalized service and product offers—through next-level management of customer data—is likely to be so differentiating that account holders won’t move their deposits for a marginally better interest rate.
“Right now, we complain quite a bit about advertising and cookies and how they follow us. But I’ll be honest, if by tailoring the cookies in the experience, I’m only served ads that are relevant to me, I’m all for it. So why don’t we, as financial institutions that have tons of data, use those data to tailor the offers […] we’re bringing to our customers?”
Jason Henrichs, founder & CEO at Alloy Labs
The ability to retain accounts and deposits is the short-term payoff for this kind of strategy. The long-term payoff is loyalty that grows the lifetime value of each customer and member. The more you learn about people and leverage their data to bring them more and more value at each phase of their lives, the more likely they are to stick with you—and provide you with ongoing opportunities to cross-sell your full portfolio of services. This isn’t a one-and-done campaign or service offering. It’s an ongoing process. It’s a perspective shift that says, more than anything, your marketing strategy is to learn everything you can about each account holder—and use that knowledge to serve their needs and goals.
“Total Expert allows you to build unique user journeys and then scrap them if they don’t work. This is entirely different than our typical approach, where we focus on the ROI—and the emphasis is on the ‘R.’”
Jason Henrichs, founder & CEO at Alloy Labs
Inevitably, your customers’ and members’ needs will change. What worked before will stop working, and you’ll need to be nimble so you can adapt to their new situation. This kind of flexibility is how high-performing financial institutions provide continuous value.
You need a purpose-built platform
The strategy of building highly predictive journeys and delivering perfectly timed, customized offerings is powerful, but you need the right platform to make it work. Standard CRMs don’t offer the specific capabilities that modern banks and credit unions need to extract full value from their data, combine it with information from third-party sources, and fine-tune sales and marketing activity based on ROI.
Total Expert is the purpose-built customer engagement platform trusted by more than 200 financial enterprises. Total Expert unifies data, marketing, sales, and compliance solutions to deliver the perfect customer journey across every financial milestone—in any market. Total Expert turns customer insights into actions that increase loyalty and drive growth for modern banks and credit unions. And deployment is much quicker and less painful than a standard CRM. Most organizations can get up and running in a matter of weeks.
If you’re ready to level up how you engage and nurture prospects, customers, and members, check out our Banking Guide to Life Event Engagement.
