Category Archives: Retail Banking

Huntington on track to meet small business lending commitment

At the start of 2010, Huntington Bank committed to lend $4 billion over three years to small businesses in its footprint, joining leading banks like Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo in making specific small business lending commitments.

Huntington reported yesterday in a press release that it lent $1.1 billion to small businesses in 2010, with an acceleration in this lending in the second half of the year, which the bank attributed to an improving economy as well as the completion of its hiring of 150 additional business bankers.  Huntington claims to be on track to meet its three-year goal.

This press release follows news in recent weeks that Chase and Bank of America both met their 2010 small business lending commitments.  Wells Fargo fell short of its target, although it still grew small business lending by 15% in 2010, and reported strong growth in loan demand from small businesses in the second half of the year.

It should be noted that small business loan balances for many large banks continue to decline year-over-year, as charge-offs and paydowns outstrip origination.  However, we may be on the cusp of an inflection point , with declining charge-offs and increasing originations leading to overall growth in small business loan portfolios in the coming quarters.

The sales and marketing challenges for banks aiming to capture a share of the small business market include:

  • Positioning themselves as a financial partner to small businesses, providing both financial products and advice
  • Revisiting the small business product portfolio to ensure that it addresses the changing financial needs of small businesses
  • Developing offers and bundles to reflect banks’ renewed focus on relationship optimization
  • Ensuring that all service channels (branch, call center, Internet, mobile, social media, etc.) deliver a consistent customer experience
  • Recruiting, training and developing support tools for dedicated business bankers
  • Implementing programs and process for other branch personnel to sell to small businesses and/or refer them to business bankers

Email Re-Engagement Strategy #3: Email Engagement without the Email

Recent EMI blog posts discussed the growing importance of email engagement and the roles of preferences and pursuing new tactical approaches in re-engaging customers. But it’s also important to remember that there are many people who don’t enjoying reading and interacting with email. They get too many; they find it difficult to scan; they didn’t grow up using email and aren’t completely comfortable with it; they taint all commercial email with the “spam” brush—there are a variety of reasons for non-engagement with emails that are based on the medium itself. In light of this, it’s vital to explore alternatives to the low-cost siren song of email such as direct mail, telemarketing/call centers, and even social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

There are two important reasons to consider these types of media as possible solutions to the challenge of email engagement:

  • Any form of engagement that helps you maintain a viable communications relationship could, at some point, could open the door to email engagement.
  • Demonstrating responsiveness to the implicit media preferences of recipients will make them more favorably inclined to all your communications—if you continue to send them email they will be less likely to mark it as spam.

Obviously, because non-email media generally carry much higher variable costs, it’s necessary to be selective about when and how to utilize these channels. Targeting the highest value email non-engagers would be one logical approach. Segmenting based on the customer lifecycle is another possibility; for example, you could target those whose recent email activity has declined in the hope that they would be more likely to respond and then re-engage by email. Whatever the approach, it’s important to utilize non-email channels to maintain the relationship because the alternative (continued email non-engagement) will only result in a shrinking email list.

Relationship Marketing Is…

A client asked me today when does old-style direct mail turn into relationship marketing? I said…

  • When it’s about the whole relationship—web, emarketing, mail and human channels—and all of these know the customer equally well.
  • When all of these channels are enabled to deliver offers and services that demonstrate that customer knowledge.
  • When the focus is on the customer’s lifetime value, with measurement to match, rather than making a single product sale in a silo.
  • When the lines between service, marketing and sales are seamless and invisible to the customer.