Strategic Growth:
Elevating Success With Deposit Gathering Strategies

In any rate environment, relationship banking has an untold number of benefits. Target your most loyal customers — those who haven’t bolted for slightly higher interest rates — and analyze which products they’re not taking advantage of. These customers likely have had plenty of opportunities to jump to a fintech for higher returns, so don’t be afraid to use promotions, rewards and other offers strategically. 

Tighten your marketing campaigns to more specific demographics and make every outreach more relevant and intentional. Everyone receives thousands of pieces of marketing outreach a year — and when you send an email, mailer or ad that doesn’t apply to them, you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars and creating below-average interactions that can hinder your reputation. 

Use all consumer data analytics to deliver applicable marketing to the right customers. When your marketing team can reach out to a subset of customers with similar demographics, needs, wants, and goals, their jobs get easier as they build a foundation for repeatable campaigns across your entire potential customer base.

It sounds simple, but if your online banking tools or digital account opening processes take too many steps — or don’t support enough of the ways your customers want to manage their money — you’re already behind. Use your competitive intelligence to identify how easy your competitors make account management for their customers and do your due diligence on the features, vendors and costs of getting ahead technologically.

One dissatisfied customer doesn’t warrant a full-scale change, but take advantage of what your customers tell you they like and don’t like about your systems. Ensure you’re reviewing your customer feedback often and that the appropriate departments are aware of compliments and complaints that could drive positive action. Customer surveys are great, too, especially if you can reach customers who utilize multiple financial institutions. 

Keeping your rates high might seem like the easiest of all deposit growth strategies, but those new deposit accounts might fly back out the door when they find a better rate — and as fintechs and neobanks continue to surge in popularity, they will find a better rate.

There are plenty of other ways to incentivize deposits and produce more customer lifetime value in the process. Consider rate increases for customers with an existing number of products or services, tiered rates incentivizing larger deposits and limited-time cash bonus offers. Market these offers through your typical channels, but don’t downplay the effectiveness of personal outreach.

You know more about your customers than your competitors, so when you segment your audience, make sure the content is relevant, appropriate and as personalized as possible.

Personalized messaging typically performs far better than default broad messaging and builds trust with consumers, too. Consumers have plenty of options when it comes to impersonal banking relationships. But when developing a deeper relationship with a bank or credit union that knows them and considers who they are and what they need, they’ll often turn to a familiar institution that’s shown the effort.

If you’re a community financial institution, here’s where you have a significant advantage over the big banks. Work to develop deeper connections with local businesses and school districts by supporting their causes. Create financial literacy programs, sponsor local events and engage with local customers and businesses on social media to show people in the areas where you operate that you care about them and their causes.

Maybe you wouldn’t be surprised by how many people type “banks in (your town/city)” into their preferred search engine, but you would be shocked at how many new customers you’d net by implementing ad campaigns that target those keywords. Quickly and effectively entice customers with relevant, valuable and timely messaging on platforms like Google Ads and Facebook, supplement your webpages with relevant SEO and watch new deposits roll in.

The more you can do to ease the administrative and logistical strain on your business customers, the better. They’re likely using many tools to accomplish tasks that you could integrate into your systems — and making their jobs easier would instill a level of loyalty that’s hard to top. Research integrations you can make to your systems to benefit business owners but prioritize individual outreach to see precisely where your customers could use a little help.

Pair your local community outreach with appropriate accounts and programs for kids, teens and college students, and you could build loyalty and customer lifetime value at a higher rate. Gone are the days of kids receiving cash allowances, and too many financial institutions overlook the importance of educating and facilitating healthy family financial relationships. Consider adding rewards-based savings programs for kids, college savings accounts, and checking account/debit card allowance programs to keep entire families in-house and happy at your institution.