When collaborating with our bank and credit union customers, many of them ask:
How are other banks and credit unions successfully increasing ancillary product adoption?
So, in response, we’ve collected some strategies and success stories from different financial institutions that we hope will be helpful in increasing your ancillary product or sticky services adoption.
Ancillary services are important for a couple of different reasons. They can be an additional source of revenue for banks and credit unions. But more importantly, they provide additional value for your account holders. Services like bill-pay, eStatements, and online or mobile banking help with customer or member satisfaction by adding convenience factors to your products and services.
Here are 5 suggestions to get your customers or members on board with your ancillary products:
Onboarding Programs
Onboarding new relationships is standard practice for most banks and credit unions. You’ve probably heard before that the first 90 days after acquiring a new customer or member is critical in establishing the new relationship. This time greatly sets the tone for the remainder of the relationship and is the perfect time to start promoting your ancillary products and sticky services to your new customers or members. Most of our successful customers begin cross-selling ancillary products to their new account holders on the 30, 60, and 90-day marks of a new relationship.
How Core iQ Can Help
Core iQ allows financial institutions to automate their onboarding programs, including promoting their ancillary services. By utilizing the cross-sell priority matrix, banks and credit unions can automatically send ancillary product offers as part of their automated onboarding schedules. Core iQ uniquely identifies which customers or members have yet to sign up for different ancillary products, and queues up relevant ancillary promotions to be sent automatically.
Monthly Reminder Emails
While it would be ideal if every new customer or member adopted all ancillary products within the onboarding process, we know that’s not always the case. This is why we recommend sending monthly, or quarterly, emails reminding them of the benefits of the additional services that are available to help enhance their banking experience.
Messages like “Don’t forget to sign up for Bil Pay to help make keeping up with your finances a breeze” or “Did you know you can now deposit checks straight from your mobile device?” are a good way to get the message across and increase ancillary product adoption at your financial institution. Sending these on a monthly, or even a quarterly basis to customers or members who have yet to sign up for these services is a great way to continue promoting them and adding value for your account holders.
How Core iQ Can Help
Core iQ allows you to easily set up monthly or quarterly communication schedules that will promote your ancillary services to those who have yet to sign up for them. Since it updates on a nightly basis with data straight from your core banking system, it always knows who to send the right communications to.
Holiday Branch Closure Notices
Sending holiday branch closure notices is already a meaningful way to communicate with and engage your customers. It’s a good practice and a perfect opportunity to promote your ancillary services.
We have a great use case of a credit union customer who decided to use their holiday branch closure notice emails as a way to promote their mobile app. In fact, they were able to generate 543 new mobile app downloads with one simple email. This is a creative and very effective way to increase your ancillary product adoption and to simply remind your account holders of the additional convenient services you offer. Be sure to check out exactly what they did, here.
How Core iQ Can Help
Core iQ customers can easily set and forget their holiday branch closure notices for the entire year. Setting up the schedule takes minutes, and Core iQ comes with preloaded holiday email templates for all federal holidays for your convenience.
Offer Incentives
And sometimes, your account holders may need a little extra push. Sending campaigns to promote different ancillary products can sometimes be helped by adding a little incentive. Offering statement credits or a “chance to win” a gift card or small gift are proven ways to get more conversions on your ancillary product promotions. Message ideas can include things like, “Sign up now for eStatements and get $5 automatically credited to your account” or “Log in to your online banking account and automatically be entered to win a brand new grill”.
How Core iQ Can Help
Core iQ comes with tons of reports that can help you identify opportunities to promote different products to a group of customers or members based on their current product mix. You can then turn these reports into campaigns with the click of a button, queue up your ancillary product promotion template and watch the conversions roll in. Since it’s updated nightly by data from your core banking system, Core iQ easily tracks your conversions by knowing who received a specific product offer and whether or not they then opened that particular product.
If you’re in need of boosting ancillary products at your bank or credit union, be sure to give some of these strategies a try. Interested in learning more about how Core iQ is helping financial institutions drive conversions and reach loan and deposit growth goals? Sign up for a quick demo to learn more.
