Zions Bank Integrated Strategy Yields Results

I recently spent a couple days at a Marketing Summit with the Zions Bank direct marketing team and their interactive agency Richter7 in Salt Lake City and it was exciting to see the great results of their integrated marketing communications programs.

Not only have they lowered an already industry low attrition rate with their multi-touch onboarding program that uses direct mail, email and phone contacts of customers over the first 90 days of the relationship, but they have also seen a strong increase in account engagement, cross-sales and balance enhancement. Even using very conservative estimates, the ROI of the program far exceeds 400%, with enhancements still being introduced to improve these results.


In addition to a best-in-class onboarding process, they also have seen seen great results from their recently introduced multi-touch customer cross-sell program that scores every household to determine the best product to offer each quarter. This systematic communication based on product propensity and a next most likely product score has enabled the bank to be both efficient and effective in their sales efforts, replacing a multitude of programs that used to be run on an ad hoc basis over the course of a year. Like the onboarding program, the great results for the cross-sell program can be attributed to both excellent targeting and leveraging multiple channels as opposed just one communication medium.

Beyond these foundational programs, the Zions team continues to test new ideas that banks several times larger are not doing. In addition to being close to introducing a new customer acquisition program that leverages multiple channels, traffic generation and the power of their sales force, they are more focused than many in the industry on the power of social media, online and mobile banking (just introduced) and continuously improving metrics. They are even building the infrastructure to expand some of these initiatives to their affiliate network. As a lead player on the Zions team, Matt Wilcox mentioned during the meeting, "I want Zions Bancorporation to be a recognized marketing leader in the financial services industry and to do things that others just imagine".

I want to thank the teams from Zions and Richter7 as well as the people from our team that continue to amaze me by what can be accomplished with senior level approval and with an attitude of partnership and a forward focus. It is always an energizing summit to attend and the results definitely illustrate the value of these planning meetings.

Matt Wilcox has also agree to join me at BAI Retail Delivery 2010 in Las Vegas where on Monday, October 18 we will partner on a half day workshop entitled, Improving Acquisition, Onboarding and Cross-Sell Effectiveness with Multi-Channel Communication . During this session, we will discuss ways to leverage multiple channels in the implementation of successful, integrated marketing communications programs.