The popularity of social networking Web sites and the rich trove of personal information available on them is attracting banks that hope to link that data to their marketing efforts.
Financial companies have long tried to time some of their marketing efforts to reach people before or after life-changing events, such as a wedding or the birth of a child, but finding people planning such events has been a challenge.
Networking sites, which many people use to tell friends and family members about their lives, can give banks a detailed profile of their users, including the dates of important ceremonies that might prompt people to think about their financial needs.
Bankers say that collaborating with the site operators is a perfect marriage.
"There's a much higher savings mentality by people who celebrate a special event in their lives and have funds coming in at that time," said Moses Krausz, the president and chief executive of Berkshire Bank of New York.
Mr. Krausz noticed that many of his customers were opening savings accounts or buying certificates of deposit after major events, such as weddings. In recent months he also noticed that many of these people were posting pictures of these events at a Web site operated by OnlySimchas.com Inc. of Hackensack, N.J.
OnlySimchas.com calls itself "the preeminent site for announcing Jewish celebrations." ("Simcha" means "joy" or "celebration" in Hebrew.) Like similar sites, it functions as a combination bulletin board, invitation service, and public photo gallery. People create a page to tell the online world, for example, when they are planning a wedding, starting college, or hosting a housewarming party, and they invite friends and relatives to view the page.
Mr. Krausz said that by advertising on OnlySimchas.com, he could attract customers at the very moment they start thinking about saving money. His bank, a unit of Berkshire Bancorp Inc., even created a high-yield Berkshire Bank Simcha CD, which has been advertised on OnlySimchas.com since last week.
To qualify for the 12-month CD, which pays 5.31% interest and is available for deposits of $5,000 to $50,000, customers must show proof that they have celebrated a major life event, like an engagement, he said. A copy of a listing on OnlySimchas.com is acceptable proof, as is a copy of an invitation for an engagement party or a bar or bat mitzvah.
(The bank's standard 12-month CD pays 4.07% for deposits of up to $20,000 and 4.31% for deposits of $20,000 to $1.5 million.)
Mr. Krausz said it is too soon to say how many people have responded to the offer.
OnlySimchas.com does not give its users e-mail addresses to advertisers. Instead, it e-mails advertiser-designed promotions to registered users who opt in to receive them. Berkshire Bank advertises on the site but does not participate in the e-mail promotion.
Yossi Markovitz, a co-founder and the vice president of OnlySimchas.com, said sites like his normally attract ads from such people as wedding photographers and event planners, and they are an ideal way for banks to reach customers who have recently received cash gifts.
"People are coming into money and gifting other people at any life-cycle event," he said.
Mr. Markovitz is quite familiar with the link between personal events and financial services; he is also the operations manager for the wholesale division of First Financial Equities Inc., a Teaneck, N.J., mortgage lender. From 2001 to 2004 he was a loan officer, and he advertised his services on OnlySimchas.com. "It gave me a lot of inquiries, of which a couple actually transferred to leads," he said. (Another First Financial loan officer now advertises on the site.)
Other financial companies have had less success using the Internet to target newlyweds. In 2000, Synovus Financial Corp. chartered Pointpathbank.com, an online bank that it said would be aimed at people planning their weddings and newlyweds. The Columbus, Ga., holding company said the site would include advice, such as how brides could change their names, as well as a full lineup of financial products and services.
The idea never took off, and Synovus shut the project down before the site ever went live.
Sites that allow visitors to upload photos and send messages to one another offer advantages over sites that simply provide magazine-style articles about life events, Mr. Markovitz said; a couple might stop visiting a wedding-themed site with only articles once they get married.
Users of social networking sites such as OnlySimchas.com return even after they tie the knot - first to post photos of the wedding, and often later to post photos of their newborn babies, Mr. Markovitz said. "Because the users are posting the content, people are always coming back to see what's new."
The success of his site has spurred spinoffs. Two weeks ago Mr. Markovitz launched OnlyCelebrations.com, a version of his site without a focus on any specific ethnic niche, and he has already registered the domain names for Latin, Indian, and Asian versions.
According to Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., at least one in five U.S. customers of HSBC Holdings PLC and ING Bank FSB also use networking Web sites, and at least 10% of the customers at many other banks do so.
The Knot Inc. of New York operates a popular wedding-planning site, TheKnot.com, which lets users upload photos and information about their weddings. Though it focuses on a particular life event, the site provides tools that encourage people to visit a couple's site repeatedly. For example, couples can ask guests to RSVP to wedding invitations online.
The site also features a wedding budget planning tool, as well as a rewards program linked to credit or debit cards from Visa U.S.A., MasterCard Inc., American Express Co., Morgan Stanley's Discover Financial Services Inc., or Citigroup Inc.'s Diners Club. Amex also offers a cobranded Knot card.
Jewelers, a thank-you-note writing service, dentists offering teeth-whitening services, and several banks advertise on the site. The Knot Inc. claims that its detailed knowledge of where its users live makes its customer list perfect for community banks' marketing efforts.
Some TheKnot.com users are moving to the recently launched TheNest.com, where newlyweds can post more photos and information about themselves. The site also offers financial advice.
Chris Musto, an analyst with Keynote WebExcellence, a division of Keynote Systems Inc. of San Mateo, Calif., said that not all networking sites are good tools for marketing financial services.
For example, general-purpose networking sites, such as the wildly popular MySpace.com, often include explicit material about users' lives and habits, and because users create the content, a bank's ad could appear on a page where neither the advertiser nor the company hosting the site has editorial control over the content, he said.
Wedding sites are a relatively safe bet, because most user-generated material will conform to the site's theme, he said. "It's the best of Internet advertising, with the opportunity that bankers covet to market to people as they are making financial decisions."
