Abstract: PC-based Marketing Customer Information Files offer community banks a way target households for cross-selling Community bankers have heard this advice for years: you can't be all things all people. But zeroing in on customers most suited a particular product or service isn't easy, especially with limited marketing dollars and an even more limited marketing staff. Even so, with more and more PC-based marketing customer information files (MCIFs) entering the financial marketplace, banks now have an alternative costly, time-consuming, third-party market research reports. latest generation of MCIFs very simple, says Scott Hansen, vice-president, MPI Marketing Profiles, Inc., a Maitland, Fla., marketing firm that offers such a product. We're talking about a printer so that you can generate reports and direct mail, a desktop tape drive that allows your system actually build its own database of external and internal information, and a personal computer access the information, Hansen explains. That's quite different from just a decade ago, when banks quarterly shipped reams of data out market-research firms for analysis, the former banker recalls. Without an MCIF it virtually impossible know a new customer, because your databases are separate, Hansen says. When that person walks into [a branch] you never know if that account he wants open the first account, or if there's already one lurking out there in the car loan system. Meet the Jones'...all of them MCIFs can do the for a bank's marketing staff. The process of account householding combines all banking accounts by household after standardizing the name, address, Social Security number, and product records for all of a bank's customers. A bank then can track and analyze entire bank relationships across any individual in the Jones family, for instance, as well as across any household in its database--all on a PC. The Jones family household may include a checking account for Mrs. Jones, a savings account for John Jones Jr., and a mortgage loan, credit card, and Individual Retirement Account in Mr. Jones' name. The MCIF links information on all these accounts in one file, so the bank knows they're related. Such easy access customer information is key for community banks, which operate with limited marketing budgets and small staffs, Hansen says. Without a system that can tell you who your customers already are, and who cross sell what items to, you'll have a hard time doing so. With that in mind, Hansen offers the following tips maximize the potential of an MCIF system: Segmentation: Maximize profits, not relationships. Look at me and my grandfather, Hansen says. Both would be likely respond a bank's offer for a home-equity line of credit. What's the difference? We both get the credit, the bank spends a couple of hundred dollars book the loan, and my grandfather takes the little book that they send him and sticks it in the safe deposit box, Hansen says. He says, 'If we ever have a national calamity I've got some extra money spend'. Hansen, on the other hand, would use that same money right away, to buy a CD player or a jet ski maybe, he quips. In all seriousness, going use that money right away, and I'm going carry a balance. I'm profitable the bank, my grandfather not. An MCIF can be used segment grandfathers from grandsons, so speak--to identify which customers are most suited for which financial product offerings, by analyzing individuals' profiles, incomes, and needs. …
Publication Year: 1994
Publication Date: 1994-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
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