Financial institutions are steadily gaining new deposits as consumers continue to flee risky investments. With increased liquidity in the industry, financial institutions are actively looking for ways to maximize the performance of their new loan marketing programs to help improve their loan-to-deposit ratios.

Register for this webinar to:

• Learn about current trends in new loan marketing and review research
• Discover 10 initiatives that can help improve the growth of your loan portfolio
• Look inside the structure of a successful loan program

Presenters:

Susan Wolfe, Vice President of Financial Services, Mintel Comperemedia
Stephen Nikitas, Senior Strategist, Harland Clarke Marketing Services
Karen Benedetti, Vice President of Marketing, Service Credit Union

Event Details:
Date: Wednesday, May 9
Time: 1 p.m. EDT

Click HERE to register for this webinar.

Presented by Mintel Comperemedia® and Harland Clarke Marketing Services

E-Mail Marketing Best Practices Webinar

According to the Direct Marketing Association, e-mail marketing ranks as the most productive marketing medium with a return on investment of $41 for each $1 spent.

Please join us on Tuesday, April 17 at 10 am ET as John Joseph, VP Operations and Client Engagement for industry leading email firm SubscriberMail, a unit of Harland Clarke, leads an engaging discussion about:

• Best practices for FI e-mail marketing
• E-mail metrics and benchmarks
• Strategies to increase customer engagement

For those who are unable to attend on April 17, we will conduct a second email webinar on Tuesday, May 8 at 3 pm ET.

To register for the April 17 webinar, please click HERE.

To register for the May 8 webinar, please click HERE.

Using Data Analytics to Accelerate Account Holder Acquisition

Meeting your financial institution’s revenue goals by attracting and acquiring new account holders can be a complex and expensive process. Successful account holder acquisition is not only about attracting new account holders – it is also about attracting the right account holders to generate revenue for your institution. Account holder analytics can help financial institutions meet this challenge.

Join Srividya Sridharan, senior analyst at Forrester Research® and Sandeep Kharidhi, vice president of analytics at Harland Clarke Marketing Services, as they discuss how to use analytics to increase the performance of your financial institution’s acquisition programs. Register now to learn:

• Practical methods for identifying which consumers will be profitable for your institution and which will not be profitable
• How analytics can drive account holder acquisition campaign results
• The limitations of the traditional approach to acquisition-based analytics

This webinar will be held on Wednesday, April 4, 2012 at 1:00 PM EDT. To register, please click HERE.

Building Stronger Account Relationships With Onboarding

A regional bank with more than 130 branches in two Western states began offering consumers the ability to open accounts online. However, the bank encountered challenges in terms of creating a centralized, automated mechanism for communicating with these new online customers in a reliable, efficient and relevant fashion.

The bank asked Harland Clarke for a solution to help decrease overall new account attrition. At the same time, this solution needed to improve existing communication with new online customers, as well as facilitate the procurement of necessary print documentation, such as a signature card, for internet-based accounts. The ultimate goal was to better understand and meet each new customer’s banking needs.

Harland Clarke recommended implementation of its onboarding solution, an ongoing integrated process that builds long-term relationships by engaging new account holders and growing them into profitable and loyal account holders. Our onboarding solution allows for a multidimensional strategy that connects financial institutions with their account holders through multiple channels, delivering the right message at the right time.

Harland Clarke targeted both internet- and branch-based customers with deposit-related accounts such as checking, money market and savings. The next step was to devise a communication strategy based on the accounts each customer opened. The goals were to thank customers for their business, educate them about using their new accounts and suggest complementary products.

The onboarding program launched with three separate direct mail communications. A welcome packet thanking new customers was mailed within seven days of account opening and included a signature card for online customers. This package was followed by two more mailings — one after 30 days and another at 60-days. The content of each was highly relevant and engaging, and was tied directly to the type of account the customer opened.

The welcome letter came with a tear-off side coupon that offered products to complement the account. At 30 days and again at 60 days, a letter arrived in a standard business-sized envelope with a tear-off coupon offering services to further engage the customer.

Harland Clarke’s onboarding program produced a statistically significant account retention lift of 6.7 percent and household retention lift of 2.5 percent compared with a control group, as well as an average of 95 percent account retention for new customers. In addition, the program generated considerable increases in incremental balances and delivered a statistically significant balance retention lift of 6.4 percent.

Learn more about Harland Clarke’s onboarding solution, and download our free white paper, 10 Strategies for an Award-winning Onboarding Process, at http://harlandclarke.com/solutions/marketing/financial-services-solutions/onboarding.

Harland Clarke Launches New Standard in Check Packaging

Harland Clarke has officially announced the introduction of CheckFolio™, the company’s new check packaging system that will replace its traditional checkbox.

CheckFolio’s unique design aligns multiple checkbooks neatly in a slim, compact folio — enabling consumers to more conveniently receive, store and access personal checks. This innovation is the result of several years of extensive research and development. The consumer testing and client feedback was nationwide in scope and included focus groups, online video surveys, surveys on check use and storage, as well as security and identity protection research. Harland Clarke further validated the consumer research with financial institutions.

“As we talked to consumers, we learned that they wanted more than what the standard checkbox offered,” said Gwen Cuffie, vice president of product solutions and marketing for Harland Clarke. “So we took an ‘outside-the-box’ approach and developed a new system that delivers a better account holder experience.” Through its research, Harland Clarke determined that 94 percent of respondents preferred CheckFolio to the traditional box and other check packaging systems currently in the marketplace.[1]

CheckFolio addresses three key needs consumers expressed about check packaging:

1)    Organization: All CheckFolio components are packaged together neatly, ready to place in a drawer, filing cabinet or on a bookshelf for easy access and storage.

2)    Security: CheckFolio is delivered in a slim, tamper-evident wrap, plus its unique design makes for discreet and flexible in-home storage options, allowing checks to be “hidden” in the home.

3)    Environmental Efficiency: The compact and efficient design of CheckFolio uses less material, creates less waste
and is recyclable.

Harland Clarke has begun the transition of its check packaging to CheckFolio and will continue throughout 2012. To view CheckFolio and learn more information about it, visit checkfolio.com.

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[1] ^{Harland Clarke CheckFolio research, 2011.}

Harland Clarke Puts Mystery Shopping Feedback at Your Fingertips

 

Imagine the ability to view your financial institution through the objective eyes of your account holders. Imagine having their candid and unbiased assessment of your branch, your customer service telephone line, and your website at your fingertips. Then imagine that you have real-time access to any change in their opinions — all through a secure, web-based tool.

For years, Harland Clarke’s highly trained shoppers have performed customized multichannel evaluations in-branch, by phone and online, providing the insight you need to ensure your brand experience is being delivered to your expectations.

“Mystery shopping offers banks a wealth of information they couldn’t get any other way,” says Linda Schrock, Harland Clarke’s Mystery Shopping director. “Yet, it’s amazingly underutilized.” One reason for this is that financial institutions are not necessarily aware that, when done right, mystery shopping is highly structured and highly measurable, and offers a great return on investment.

With Harland Clarke’s Mystery Shopping service, financial institutions can:

• Monitor and measure interactions between employees and consumers at every touchpoint
• Gain valuable insight from the consumer’s perspective
• Enhance employee training programs by identifying areas of excellence and opportunities for performance feedback and coaching

And, as a service enhancement, Harland Clarke has just developed a new online tool that provides real-time access to mystery shopping intelligence. Harland Clarke’s EnGauge tool, gives you faster insight to your customers’ feedback. EnGauge offers real-time access through a secure web browser, allowing you to put shopping intelligence to work even faster. EnGauge offers users:

• 24/7 online access. Log on anytime using Harland Clarke’s secure web-based tool.
• Real-time shopper feedback. Review your financial institution’s mystery shop entries as soon as they are finalized so that you can quickly identify and respond to customer service strengths and weaknesses.
• Interactive data analysis tools. Graphs and charts enable you to easily compare performance and identify trends across your financial institution.
• One-click drilldown. Quickly obtain detailed shop information organized by branch, employee, function or question.
• Intuitive user interface. The easy-to-navigate interface saves you time by organizing data so you can find what you need at a glance.
• Detailed observations. Shopper narratives provide a rich descriptive account of the shopper’s in-branch, phone or online experience.

Schrock says it is important to note, while there are other companies that offer mystery shopping services, they are generally retail-based. “Because they don’t focus exclusively on the financial services market, they can’t offer the same level of customization, reporting and feedback,” she says.

For more information on how Harland Clarke Mystery Shopping can help your financial institution, please visit www.harlandclarke.com/mysteryshop, or contact your account executive or Linda Schrock at 1.800.291.6117, ext. 2024.

Celebrate the Season With Targeted Direct Mail Campaigns From Harland Clarke.

From holiday gatherings to winter getaways, account holders need extra cash to meet their spending needs. With Momentum Mail from Harland Clarke, you can help! Use one of our predesigned holiday or winter packages to reach account holders with valuable offers like skip-a-payment or balance transfers to consolidate debt.

Take advantage of our affordable campaigns to meet your business objectives:

• Grow your deposits
• Improve interest or fee income
• Strengthen account holder relationships

Holiday

Sign-up Deadline: September 8, 2011
Earliest Mail Date: October 12, 2011

Winter

Sign-up Deadline: November 4, 2011
Earliest Mail Date: December 2, 2011

Purchase multiple campaigns and receive 10% off a second campaign and 15% off three or more campaigns. Click here to view designs.

Click here to get started now, or call 1.800.753.6109, ext. 7114.

For more information about Momentum Mail, click here.

Harnessing Analytics Across the Customer Life Cycle

Financial institutions are drowning in data. The challenge lies in leveraging this “big data” to drive results.

Harland Clarke Marketing Services, with Forrester Research, presents “Harnessing Analytics Across the Customer Life Cycle,” an insightful, 12-minute slidecast that shares best practices in data analytics and practical steps on how to use this data more efficiently and effectively for your financial institution.

Click here to view the Slidecast.

Solutions for Generating Income Despite Regulatory Headwinds: Part 2 of 3

Background

Regulatory changes and economic factors have taken a toll on financial institutions’ income statements. Non-interest income is suffering from the significant revenue im

pact of Regulation E on overdraft income and the looming effect of the Durbin Amendment on interchange income. According to an October 2010 webinar report from the Independent Community Bankers of America, more than 80 percent of financial institutions expect Regulation E to impact their overdraft revenue by 5 to 20 percent.

In addition, interest income has decreased during the past three years due

to the recent recession and its lingering effects. Financial institutions have been faced with reduced market demand for loans, which has made it difficult to grow their margins, as well as lower federal funds rates.

Opportunity

With some traditional sources of revenue waning, the battle for financial institutions

to grow net income is intensifying — and a multi-pronged approach that includes solutions for both growing income and decreasing expenses is necessary for success. Part 1 of this Strategy Update series discussed ways to grow non-interest income. This Strategy Update focuses on how your financial institution can grow interest income.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Free Small-business Strategy Webinar: Does Your Small-business Marketing Plan Need a Reality Check?

Have you experienced the quandary of deciding which methods and channels to use to reach small-business owners? Is your marketing plan tailored to take a business owner from awareness about your products and services to the conversion that results in a sale?

To help you become more familiar with the channels, tactics and pitfalls of marketing to small businesses, Harland Clarke is sponsoring a free webinar on May 25 from 1 to 2 p.m. (EDT) titled “Demand Generation: Effective Marketing Channels — From Awareness to Conversion.” We’ve contracted with the highly acclaimed small-business research and consulting firm Enterprise Council on Small Business to present its advice, best practices, case studies and in-depth understanding about what is important to small-business owners — and what you can do to help them be more successful.

During the webinar, you will learn if your marketing plan needs a reality check by exploring the following areas:

• Changing small-business media consumption habits. Find out how receptive small-business owners are to emerging media, and how effective or ineffective traditional channels are (and how this may impact your marketing plan).
• Driving awareness to conversion. Get specific information on branding and building awareness (and how that helps you).
• Marketing plan recommendations. Learn how to incorporate traditional and digital channels (and how it aligns with your success).

This powerful 60-minute webinar will be presented by Rufino Chiong, research director at Enterprise Council on Small Business. The council is known for the small-business support it provides to companies of all sizes, including Fortune 500 members AT&T, FedEx, Google, Microsoft and Xerox. Beth Merle, marketing services director with Harland Clarke, will co-present with Rufino and conclude the webinar with specific ways you can apply thisvaluable information to your small-business marketing plans.

Space is limited, so please click this link to register before May 25. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email that includes the dial-in phone number and the access code.