Westfield Bank in Westfield Center, Ohio, has come a long way since it first started in a double-wide trailer set up in a parking lot. Now the bank has more than $2 billion in assets, seven branches and almost 200 full-time employees.
“As a community institution, Westfield Bank is committed to investing in the communities in which we serve,” said Chris Van Ausdale, Senior Vice President and Marketing Leader of Westfield Bank. “We specialize in providing lending and deposit solutions to small businesses, and we work to understand each business and how it functions to provide the right solutions it needs.”
Van Ausdale said when she started at Westfield Bank, much of the bank’s marketing efforts focused on mass media, like outdoor billboards and newspaper ads. While these can be very effective marketing methods, it’s difficult to track their ROI; and even harder to accurately attribute revenue gains to these channels.
“My challenge was figuring out how to provide super-regional bank marketing solutions with a community bank budget and a smaller team,” said Van Ausdale. “Just because we’re smaller doesn’t mean we don’t need the same marketing capabilities. But how do you scale all that?”
Marketing from Square One
The marketing overhaul began when Westfield Bank, a COCC core customer since 2004, implemented COCC’s Marketing Analytics in 2018. The new solution, which directly integrated into Westfield Bank’s core, helped the bank take full advantage of its most valuable marketing resource: customer data.
“We have a very strong relationship with COCC and consider them one of our most strategic partners,” said Van Ausdale. “Our partnership helps us be strategic about the investments that we make. So, when they introduced us to Marketing Analytics, I knew it was what we needed to get access to our customer data.”
Creating Effective Direct Marketing Campaigns
Once integrated into the core, Marketing Analytics gathers detailed customer information regarding accounts, lifestyles, needs and preferences. The solution standardizes and aggregates all core and transaction data into categorized data tags known as Key Lifestyle Indicators (KLI). These KLIs help the marketing team at Westfield Bank identify specific segments of the client base, enabling the bank to create targeted ad content that performs better than more general, static content.
It didn’t take long for Westfield Bank’s marketing team to learn how to use Marketing Analytics to create strategic, targeted marketing campaigns. The team met with the bank’s different lines of business to gain a better understanding of their specific needs and goals. Using the customer data and KLIs in Marketing Analytics, the team built direct marketing campaigns designed to perform well across multiple channels, including their website, the open internet, online banking and Westfield Bank’s mobile app.
Westfield Bank’s website is a good example of KLIs at work. When a user visits the website, they are served a dynamic ad based on their relationship with the bank. If the user is a Westfield Bank customer with KLIs in Marketing Analytics, they will see a website banner promoting a specific product or service tailored to them and their banking habits. Conversely, if the visitor to Westfield Bank’s website has no prior relationship with the bank, they will see a more generalized ad. Those same ads are retargeted on the open internet to promote brand recognition and becoming a customer of Westfield Bank.
Van Ausdale said one of Marketing Analytics’ most important functions is refreshing customer data on a nightly basis. This ensures current customers don’t see ads for products they already use. It also allows the bank to run targeted marketing campaigns that are designed to inform and educate customers on how get the most value out of the products they already have – creating golden cross-selling opportunities in the process.
The Right Product at the Right-Time
Now that Marketing Analytics has helped Westfield Bank tap into the full potential of its customer data through successful marketing campaigns, Van Ausdale has her eyes on the next step: integrating Marketing Analytics data into the bank’s CRM to create a more unified way to execute omnichannel campaigns.
This integration will enable the marketing team to share useful information and insight with the bank’s sales team to drive revenue, nurture growth and enhance customer relationships.
“Marketing Analytics helps us make informed decisions based on client data. And the more you can do that, the more that you start to win in the marketing space,” said Van Ausdale. “This solution had everything right out of the box. It was the right product at the right time for us.”
