Banks Need to Build Foundation for Effective Multichannel Marketing

While the BAI Retail Delivery Conference in Las Vegas doesn't officially begin until today, hundreds of attendees participated in a series of pre-conference workshops, including a session entitled, "Improving Acquisition, Onboarding and Cross-Sell Effectiveness with Multichannel Communication" which I was lucky enough to present with Matt Wilcox from Zions Bank and Tal Harry from Richter7. The workshop was attended by representatives from banks of all sizes and in various stages of multichannel marketing development.

During the session, we had several formal and informal surveys to determine where this limited cross section of the banking industry was with regard to their marketing mix.

Using Social Media for Financial Services Marketing

As I travel across the country, more and more banks are dipping their toes in the waters of social media. While the banking industry has been slower than most industries to embrace social networking, the tremendous growth in social networks, the need to better monitor and participate in social network conversations that are taking place, and the value of reaching customers and prospects on popular social networking sites has banks using Twitter, YouTube Facebook and other sites. This almost instantaneous communication comes with new challenges for banks, however, including informality of communication, higher customer service expectations and another venue for customers to voice discontent.

Nate Elliott from Forrester Research has decided to research and write a report on how financial services marketers can most effectively use social media. He is hoping to include data on how different types of financial customers engage with social media and is also hoping to collect more insight from the bank marketers' perspective.

He is looking for financial services marketers willing to walk him through examples of how you've used social media, talk to him about how you manage risk and work with your legal and compliance departments, and share with him some of the lessons you've learned in social media marketing. He can be reached at nelliott@forrester.com.