The Savings Bank of the Finger Lakes said yesterday that it had received a 528 percent return on investment from a direct mail campaign for its home equity loan program.
The bank is a $350 million community savings bank with seven offices throughout the Finger Lakes region of New York.
The bank used King of Prussia, PA-based Sedona Corp.'s Intarsia Web-based customer relationship management system for small and mid-sized financial services companies. It has been using the Intarsia system for less than a year.
The bank used Intarsia to profile its existing home equity loan customers, then took that information and applied it to its other customers and prospects. Based on the selected customers and prospects, the bank mailed the home equity loan promotion to 3,000 customers and 6,000 prospects.
“As a result of the campaign, we brought in $1 million in new balances,” said Leslie Zornow, senior vice president of retail banking. “This was a 528 percent return on investment. We have done direct mail campaigns in the past, but have never gotten anything close to this kind of response.”
The bank is planning to do another home equity loan campaign in the next few months. It will use the results of the first campaign to determine what customer profiles had the best response, and then apply that profile criteria to its customer and prospect database for the second campaign. “We're really going to be able to optimize our targeting efforts,” said Zornow. “I'm optimistic that we'll do even better with our next campaign.”
