From You Get What You Measure: Adjusting Prospecting KPIs for Success in the New Consumer Deposit Market, a webinar presented by Curinos on February 12, 2025, that featured Laura Hanley, Executive Director, Marketing at Synovus and Hank Israel, Managing Director at Curinos.
Changes in the economics of acquiring core deposit customers coming from both environmental factors that are reducing revenue as well as the cost of acquisition are changing the return-on-marketing investment (ROMI) calculation for many organizations. At the same time, data and analytics provide larger institutions, those with sufficient wherewithal, with insights that allow them to target customers based on value rather than response, which creates adverse selection in the deposit-acquisition space.
In this webinar, presenters laid out the metrics of success, challenges organizations face in changing these success metrics and the solutions required to counter adverse selection and maximize an organization’s investments in customer acquisition. Here are some of the key takeaways:
1. Marketing is playing a bigger and bigger role in acquisition, which is getting more and more expensive.
Marketing has overtaken branches in acquiring new checking customers. Meanwhile, the share of new relationships available to branch banks has shrunken considerably because of the rise of direct banks, and it now stands at just over half of all new relationships. At the same time, the cost of acquisition has skyrocketed and has contributed to today’s marketing arms race.
Primary Checking Acquisition Drivers
For Branch-Based Banks Over Time
Marketing Analyzer Benchmark
Checking CPA | 2018-2024
Note: CPAs calculated using Brand, Consumer Checking, and Sponsorship spend
Source: Curinos Marketing Analyzer | Curinos Analysis
2. There are several ways to measure acquisition efficiency, and all come with pluses and pitfalls.
Cost per acquisition (CPA) is common, but it drives units with no allowance for the value of those units. Cost per funded/activated customer embraces customer value but assumes the same value for each customer. Cost per acquired customer–those retained and activated after 180 days–may indicate a higher-value customer, but it doesn’t assess the customer’s actual value and it takes time to determine. Cost per balance acquired aligns more closely with an FI’s business objectives, but it focuses on value, not unit volume. Return on Marketing Objective (ROMI) after five yeas is highly accurate, but it takes time and considerable data and effort, and it can stifle experimentation.
Common Metrics in FI Marketing
3. Customer mix matters: Small shifts to more affluent segments can make a big difference.
One affluent customer can be worth as much as 22 paycheck-to-paycheck (P2P) customers. That means investments in marketing and incentives need to be calibrated to the potential that each customer segment represents. High earners not rich yet (HENRY) are outnumbered by P2Ps by 12x, but they’re moving into affluent territory and could be worth receiving what may now seem like an outsize cash incentive. This kind of early intervention may not only pay dividends down the road but it also takes these high-potential customers off the table for competitors, who will have to invest all the more in high-value customer acquisition in the future.
Note(s): Paycheck to Paycheck: Consumers with less than 1 month of income in liquidity; Stable Mass: Consumers with less than $100K income who are not within the Vulnerable Mass segment; Emerging Affluent: Younger than 35 years old, have $100K+ income, and are not part of the Vulnerable Mass segment; Affluent: Consumers 35 or over, have $100K+ income, and have $100K+ in investments | Sample sizes greater than n=50 for each segment
4. The volume of outreach has a negative impact on response rates – but a positive impact on customer and balance outcomes.
While response rates decline with greater outreach overall, outreach does drive marginal deposit growth. This dynamic illustrates the inadequacy of measuring success through simply cost per acquired customer. With the right targeting, marginal balances can continue to grow even as acquisition rates decline. A more useful metric is cost balances acquired even though it trades volume of customers for value and its success takes longer to evaluate.
Outreach - Response Curve
Source: Analysis by Curinos, Data from Jen Clark
5. Incentives have a dramatic impact on response rates, improving the efficacy of outreach.
Incentives are especially valuable in marketing to segments that tend to display inertia. Well-executed incentives can also drive retained relationships. Not surprisingly, among all types of incentives, cash is king, even more than rate and certainly more than offers of free financial-planning advice. But administering incentives can be cumbersome and fussy, requiring a sometimes unexpectedly significant investment in people and processes.
Incentive Impact on Response Rates
Source: Curinos Incentive Research
