Targeting New Movers for Enhanced Growth

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the national mover rate declined from 13.2% in 2007 to 11.9% in 2008 - the lowest rate of moves on record. Still, over 30 million people changed residences during this one year period, representing a powerful opportunity for new customer growth. In fact, even though the demographics of movers has skewed younger, with a higher percentage of renters moving, this segment continues to outperform all other prospect universes from a new customer acquisition perspective.

While many of my clients continue to focus on checking offers for the new mover segment, more banks are realizing the benefits of promoting products such as money market accounts and even equity credit and investment services.
This is because people tend to more thoroughly evaluate their financial position during the three months surrounding their move, with more than 50% changing and/or opening new financial relationships during this period. It is believed that the process of portfolio evaluation has even increased over the past 18-24 months as the mortgage process has become more stringent.

The keys to reaching this transitional segment include; 1) being first in the mailbox of the new mover after their move when there is less competing clutter, 2) building a system for efficient and ongoing processing of new names and delivery of offers, and 3) measuring the impact of your new movers program and testing offers and timing.

Historically, many retailers such as Bed, Bath and Beyond, Pottery Barn, and local welcome wagon programs filled mailboxes with postcard format offers immediately after a household's move. Recently, however, many of these same retailers are opting to send much larger catalogue style communications 1-3 weeks after a move is completed. I also have seen some financial firms improve their ROI by using Standard Class mail as opposed to First Class since the difference in delivery dates by the post office has narrowed significantly over the past few years while the difference in cost has skyrocketed.

If a new movers program is not part of your neighborhood marketing process, you are leaving money on the table and losing out on a great opportunity for account and relationship growth. As the mover rate begins to rebound over time, a strategy for reaching this transitional segment will pay off.

Chase Introduces Instant Action Text Alerts to Allow Customers to Avoid OD's Immediately

In the February 2010 Javelin Strategy and Research report on financial alerts, some of the major flaws of current alerts included difficulty of setting alerts up, lack of timeliness, not actionable enough and poorly marketed. In addition, the research found that one of the highest utility features from both a customer and bank perspective is the ability to alert and respond to potentially insufficient funds.

Expanding on their very popular low balance alert mobile banking feature, Chase Bank just introduced a new feature that addresses many of these flaws by allowing customers to easily respond to a low balance alert from the bank by immediately transferring funds through text messaging.


The new feature will allow customers to transfer funds from any eligible checking, savings or money market account simply by typing the letter "T" followed by the dollar amount of transfer desired (for instance, to transfer $100, the customer simply types "T 100"). If the customer has more than one eligible account with adequate funds, both accounts with the balance available to transfer will be shown, along with the option to use either account to fund the low balance account.

To be eligible for this service, a customer simply needs to be a Chase Mobile customer, have the ability to send and receive SMS texts, and sign up for the Instant Action Alerts. As an added benefit, the customer can even set the time they want to receive notification during the day.

While not promoted on the Chase homepage as of this writing, an animated landing page (shown above) is being used in conjunction with Google AdWords using search terms like "overdraft alerts" and "mobile banking alerts".

Payments innovation is becoming more and more commonplace with Chase Bank as indicated in several of my Blogs this year, including the introduction of Chase Blueprint. These innovations in most cases enhance the customer experience while also reducing operating costs. It will be interesting to see what other innovations are on the way from Jamie Dimon's team.