Digital Marketing in Banking Industry: Shifting from Radius-Based to Digital Marketing

On today’s show, we're going to be talking about digital marketing in banking industry and the shift from radius-based marketing to digital marketing brought to you by One Touch Video Banking. 

Today’s guest is Greg Pellitteri, a former banker, and is currently co-founder and CEO of Bundlefi, a financial technology, and marketing company that helps community banks and credit unions increase new customer acquisition at a low cost. Bundlefi also helps educate consumers about the value of banking with a local community financial institution and the importance of financial inclusion. 

First, there pre-pandemic there was a lot of innovative community banks and credit unions, that we're shifting their marketing focuses, not away from “draw a circle around the branch” radius-based marketing, but they were shifting focus to digital marketing to acquire customers. Then the pandemic hit, this increased the importance of digital marketing in banking to be front and center. With 59% of customers in 2020 opened an account online, digital marketing in banking industry, played a critical role in online account openings.

Carrie asks Greg, how has it been like for you guys in the shift of, digital transformation in banking, what have you seen in new account openings today vs. 12 months ago

Before the pandemic, most of these financial institutions were not doing any digital marketing in banking. Most of them didn't have online account opening capabilities. At the time, I don't think they saw it as a viable option for them because of the technology expense.  However, following the pandemic, we increased so quickly in both customer base and staff size just to keep up with digital marketing in banking industry demand from community banks and credit unions. They realized that they were kind of missing the mark with a lot of their marketing efforts at that time. I think they now realize that there is a much better and more efficient way of marketing to consumers who are actively looking for a new banking relationship.

When you go to radius-based marketing, you kind of just blanket the area and it works to some degree, however, what you want to get to is the people that are looking for a new financial institution. The financial institutions have realized that they were behind the eight ball in digital marketing in banking and needed to build their technology or find new technologies that fit into their business models.