We recently surveyed a group of financial institution clients about the status of their digital marketing programs. Twenty one community financial institutions were emailed invitations to participate in this survey during May and early June. Nineteen participated and fifteen of those who completed the survey identified themselves as the person responsible for overall retail marketing in their organization. 50% of the respondents are financial institutions with assets of $500 Million to $999 Million. Most are community commercial banks.
This Chart summarizes their use of various digital marketing tools:
The scores shown above are combined weighted average scores for “plan to use” and “currently use.” If every respondent was currently using a tool, the score would be “2.”
While almost everybody has a website, significantly smaller numbers of these financial institutions are using digital media and social websites to direct traffic to the primary sites, and delivery of services through mobile devises is still rare for community institutions. While the survey sample is not large enough to be statistically representative of the industry, the findings beg some questions. Will smaller banks and credit unions be able to compete for the customers of the future; the folks who never come into your office and do everything on-line or via mobile technology? How do you cross sell services in this new environment, when you never see your prospect?
We believe that there is still time to “get in the game,” but the new generation of customers/members is forming banking habits now that will be “sticky” for a long time. It is imperative that community institutions figure out how to communicate with young customers, what they want and how to deliver those services in a safe and convenient fashion.
