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The digital banking space has seen increased penetration for some time now, and shows no signs of slowing down. In 2023, 63% of bank account holders processed bank matters via mobile banking — a 5% increase from just two years ago. Digital banking adoption also transcends generations (half of all Baby Boomers and nearly 80% of Millennials use digital banking). In this environment, digital banking can provide a wealth of customer insights for those companies looking to invest in the right technology.
But without the right technology, marketers can’t capitalize on what makes their customers happy. This was the scenario F&M Bank recently found itself in. “One of the biggest challenges that we face as a community bank is leveraging our legacy systems and data to convert into usable insights and actions,” said Amy Cover, chief marketing officer for F&M Bank.
To address their digital challenges, F&M Bank partnered with digital experience firm SilverTech, to explore new products and solutions that would provide the insights F&M Bank’s legacy WordPress systems couldn’t. In turn, SilverTech helped F&M Bank implement Sitefinity, a modern CMS solution from Progress.
CMSWire recently spoke with Cover and Erin Presseau, vice president of marketing at SilverTech, for an in-depth discussion of what F&M Bank was looking for in a technology upgrade and how they worked with SilverTech to achieve their vision.
Find Yourself a Partner
Thanks in part to the heightened regulatory nature of their industry, many banks are often using legacy systems that don’t have the ability to capture nuanced customer data. F&M Bank’s previous system was one such legacy product. “We weren’t able to glean any actual actionable insights out of our previous system at all,” Cover said.
A trusted partner makes all the difference when executing a complex system upgrade. “We’ve been working on a digital strategy for a couple of years now, and we were really looking for a partner that could truly help us take that digital strategy to the next level,” Cover said.
Once Cover explained her challenges to the SilverTech team, they suggested Sitefinity as a replacement for their legacy CMS. “One of the biggest focuses for us as an institution is building out seamless multi-channel experiences for our customers and prospects,” Cover explained. “Moving to Sitefinity was really step one of this approach for us, as it would allow us to build more engaging content and be easier to manage on the back end.”
Know and Involve Your Stakeholders
Stakeholders come in many forms. Executives aren’t the only ones invested in technology upgrades; customers have a vested interest in any changes that will affect how they interact with the brand. At F&M Bank’s request, SilverTech took the extra step of soliciting customer feedback about proposed changes. “SilverTech went to our more heavily trafficked branches and walked customers through what their new experience would look like,” Cover said. “It was super useful because even before we started the implementation I was able to present the results of that user testing to our senior team. This helped with buy-in among all our stakeholders because our executives could see the visions and be reassured that we were on the right path with our customers.”
“It is important to not make assumptions and include your customers as part of the process,” added Presseau. ”Getting customers involved and doing that user research made a huge difference in the end.”
What Happened and What’s Coming Next
With any implementation comes the mandate to demonstrate a return on investment. But Cover has already seen measurable results from the Sitefinity implementation and their partnership with SilverTech. “There’s a noticeable difference to our website, from a customer perspective,” Cover said. “It’s faster; it loads quicker. We’ve seen increases in all our metrics so far, such as website engagement in new versus returning users. Not to mention we’ve seen a fourfold Improvement in organic search, which at the end of the day has significantly increased conversions at every stage of the sales funnel.”
Cover is excited for the next step in F&M Bank’s relationship with SilverTech and adoption of Sitefinity. “Now that we’ve gotten through the initial launch, we’re excited to explore more of Sitefinity’s capabilities and features and see how we can use them to hit our target KPIs,” Cover said. We’re currently building out our personalization strategy using Sitefinity’s data insights capability to put them into actions so we can really serve the right message to the right customer at the right time.”
Conclusion
Whether delivering products or experiences to new or existing customers, the banking industry has its work cut out for it to make customers feel valued. With many customers using digital banking methods, banks have access to a wealth of information about their customers, which they can use to strengthen their relationships and build trust. “There’s so much competition for deposits and just customers in general,” Cover said, “so we needed something that would really allow us to start personalizing content to specific users and segments so that the customer sees that we understand them and really can meet them where they’re at.”
See what Sitefinity can do for your organization at progress.com/sitefinity-cms.
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