About a month ago, I visited my neighborhood branch office on a Saturday to open a few new accounts and was surprised to see the vast difference in customer traffic outside the branch compared to inside the office. More specifically, it was clear that the traffic outside the office was almost entirely for the ATM, since during my 30 minute visit only 3 people were served through the drive-up window while no less than 25 customers used the ATM. The manager even mentioned that she had offered the drive-up lane to the long line of ATM users, only to be told that, "we only need to make a withdrawal" (I guess many people don't remember the purpose of withdrawal slips).

While I realize the primary advantage of using an ATM is speed and convenience, are bank marketers missing an opportunity to expand communication through this channel? Having a captive audience, if only for a couple minutes, provides the opportunity to both target communications as well as collect insight.

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For my whole career, both in marketing and sales, I have understood the concept and importance of the sales funnel. Conceptually speaking, the traditional sales funnel starts with awareness being generated at the top of the funnel (the widest part) and then having the prospect work down the funnel through the stages of interest, consideration, commitment and eventually having a sale made at the narrowest part of the funnel. The funnel framework worked fairly well in providing the foundation for understanding what metrics should be concentrated on and where resources should be deployed.

But what happens in a world where prospects have so many more tools at their disposal to evaluate your offerings on their own or where they skip stages of the process all together?

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While the BAI Retail Delivery Conference in Las Vegas doesn't officially begin until today, hundreds of attendees participated in a series of pre-conference workshops, including a session entitled, "Improving Acquisition, Onboarding and Cross-Sell Effectiveness with Multichannel Communication" which I was lucky enough to present with Matt Wilcox from Zions Bank and Tal Harry from Richter7. The workshop was attended by representatives from banks of all sizes and in various stages of multichannel marketing development.

During the session, we had several formal and informal surveys to determine where this limited cross section of the banking industry was with regard to their marketing mix.

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As banks continue to innovate around the use and rewards structure of both debit and credit cards, the penetration of smart cards in the United States has lagged other countries. That may soon change, however, after Pittsburgh-based Dynamics, Inc. won the first prize (1,000,000ドル) 'DemoGod' award at this week's Demo tech start-up conference in Silicon Valley.

Leveraging a programmable magnetic stripe that can be changed at any time (but still able to be read at today's magnetic stripe POS readers) the MultiAccount card can carry different card accounts on one piece of razor thin plastic.

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In the past, bank marketers have relied on models based on demographic, geographic, psychographic and purchase variables to better understand their customers and prospects. Some financial institutions even use attitudinal, lifestyle or customer value segmentation to improve the targeting of their marketing communications.

As consumers are provided more and more options as to how to transact business and make payments, however, a better way to segment may be achieved by using advanced behavioral segmentation based on payment decisions. In other words, when consumers open their checkbook, reach for their wallet, turn on their computer, or use their phone, what payment option they choose may help bank marketers improve targeted engagement, channel and relationship expansion communication.

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