Border State Taps a New Web Profile

Bank Technology News | December, 2009

To shore up a Web presence that had become difficult for consumers to navigate, Border State Bank deployed a site that features centralized demographic profiling to improve targeted marketing.

The Minnesota-based bank hired T8 Webware, a strategic Web development, management and hosting firm to tackle a challenge faced by many institutions—mixing increased targeted Web functionality with ease of use.

So instead of juggling three separate sites built off of templates to address different business segments—each with separate design and functionality, Border State’s landing page now offers student, young professional, family, retiree, agricultural business and commercial profiles.

“Our older website had navigation issues; it was hard to find things, we needed something that was easy, that combined all demographics and allow us to segment those,” says Allison Harder, marketing manager for Border State, which says the bank has seen an increase in online banking usage recently, though Harder did not release specific site usage numbers linked to the new site. “We wanted our site to be the ‘MSN’, if you will, for our customers people. We want it to be where they go in the morning. That’s why we’re happy, for example that the weather forecast is also on the site.”

Once a consumer chooses a demographic and visits the site, all calls to action are tailored toward that specific demographic. “For a CD, for example, the marketing perspective will be different based on the demographic,” says Lon Gretillat, vp of sales for T8, adding the product has attracted about 20 financial clients.