It may feel as though the digital marketing scene is taking over. However, direct mail marketing is still an effective, low-cost way to keep in touch with your customers. But as with any marketing effort, it requires a special touch to reach out to new customers without feeling impersonal.
A successful marketing campaign depends not only on your strategy but also on how it’s executed. Finding the right partner for your creative marketing services is key to getting the results you’re after.
Promotional products from banks often feel less than personal. Every business has money, so you need to show a face that exhibits why they should entrust that money to you. These are real people seeking a real connection. But how can you show them that your bank is full of real people they can build relationships with, and not just a higher being looking down from above? It may seem that you need to spend thousands of dollars data farming to learn about the businesses around you before you connect, but that’s not the case. See how a bank in Chicago changed the game and how they were seen.
How MB Financial Made New Connections
Do you always need lots of data to make your mailings seem personal? No. Take the example of MB Financial, a Chicago-based financial institution that used segmentation to achieve great results. It’s a formula that any company can follow to make its mailings feel more personal and increase conversions without personalizing them down to the individual level.
MB Financial wanted to target more than 430,000 small companies in the Chicago area. MBF has 86 branches, but it wasn’t connecting well with its audience. Small businesses saw the bank as an old, stodgy institution like all others. MBF wanted to put a more friendly face on its branches and make banking at each location seem more inviting and accessible.
To do this, MBF developed a four-pronged messaging strategy: “We deliver the personal attention you want, the banking services you need, business advice you can use, and business connections you wouldn’t expect.” The heart of the campaign was direct mail, but it also used radio and digital media ads.
- First, MB Financial used customer modeling to identify 30,000 small businesses that were its most likely prospects.
- Second, it broke its mailing into highly versioned segments, one for each local branch.
- Third, it created targeted postcards that appeared to be coming directly from the bank manager at each SMB’s closest branch.
Each postcard included a photo of the branch manager, a personal message from the manager, and an invitation for the recipient to call their direct line. To sweeten the pot, MB Financial included an offer to receive “bonus cash” for opening an account or line of credit.
The results? High visibility and a 205% increase in sales leads attributed to the direct mail campaign alone. What a great way to make a large business seem small!
Let PMI Help Your Bank Achieve a Personal Feel
Something as simple as putting a face with a name makes a huge impact on bringing personality to a sometimes impersonal venue. By reaching out and making those small connections, the clients then come to you because they want to interact more with the person they’ve seen, rather than a bank logo. There’s no better time to step away from the stuffy, uptight persona that banks are often labeled with. With our team of design-driven experts and over twenty years of experience, PMI provides quality creative marketing solutions to businesses, and our team of professional experts is ready to help you find new ways to connect with businesses in your area. Contact us today for high quality digital printing in the Bay Area.
