Small Community Bank Uses Traditional Offline Marketing to Grow Online Accounts

CHALLENGE
David Munroe, Vice President of Marketing for Danvers Savings, says the small community bank was never Web-phobic. “Our principal concern was having a party and no one showing up.”

Danvers Savings had its Web site http://www.danverssavings.com up and running back in the summer of 1997, but it was mainly brochureware. “Our main priority with the first Web site was not transactional,” Munroe explains. Then things changed fast in November 1999 when the bank was ready to put transactions online. Munroe needed a cost-effective marketing campaign that would make sure enough clients used the online services to be worth the cost of implementation.

CAMPAIGN
When the new site launched, the bank wanted to cover all customer touch points. First, they developed a new, unique logo, rolled out in September 1999, instantly giving the bank and its new online property its own brand identity.

To ensure that everything had the new logo on it, “We developed print ads, lobby posters, counter cards, direct mail pieces to all households, and a ‘carpet mailing’ to our communities,” explains Munroe.

As an initial promotion, DanversSavings.com offered the first 6 months of bill paying free for retail customers, with 3 months free for business customers. Three different advertisements were created, each for a different customer segment. One was for entrepreneurs. A second was aimed at the corporate/business customer, and the third was for retail.

Danvers Savings also wanted to use the site to foster local goodwill by stressing its community-focus. So, it created “Partners in Progress” a site area dedicated to all of the charitable community work in which the company is involved. All of the information is built into a searchable database and includes news clippings of past events and benefits. Munroe says, “It is important for people to understand that community banks -– even those of us who operate online -- are doing good deeds and are a real force for change in the communities in which we operate. We aren’t ‘slash and burn’ banking. It’s wonderful to be involved in a community bank.”

RESULTS
As soon as the campaign launched for the new online transactional services, there was an instant acceleration of site traffic. After a little over a year, DanversSavings.com represents 20% of the bank’s retail customers with respect to demand deposits and checking accounts, and 15% of its clientele on the commercial side.

TECH NOTES: Rather than build the technology from scratch, Danvers Savings tapped Austin, Tex.-based Q UP to provide the back-end technology. Q UP’s sophisticated Cash Manager product was integrated into the bank’s online service. Munroe explains that the bank did a fairly extensive vendor search project, bringing in about ten different providers, starting in January 1999, and then eventually selected Q UP.