A Georgia bank credits equipment it installed a year and a half ago for the customers who are flocking to its branches.
What is this miracle device? An oven.
Tracy Grant, the marketing director at Fidelity Bank of Norcross, thought the smell of fresh-baked cookies might lure into its branches people using ATMs, making deposit drops, or just passing by. Inside they could be exposed to banking products and special promotions.
“We thought about some sort of fragrance but then decided we needed the real thing to get people in the door,” Ms. Grant said. So in March of last year the $1.2 billion-asset subsidiary of Fidelity Southern Corp. installed convection ovens in each of its 20 branches.
Otis Spunkmeyer dough is delivered weekly to each branch, where cookies are baked daily. Some branches bake as many as 200 cookies a day; they are passed out to anyone who walks into the branch.
Fidelity had always given out store-bought cookies, but Ms. Grant said it took the fresh-baked smell to really attract customers. Now there is definitely more foot traffic in branches, she said.
It is not clear how much business the cookies have generated, she said, but a lot more people now know about Fidelity and where its branches — and cookies — are. “If nothing else, they will remember us for the cookies.”
What kind of cookies? Chocolate chip is always on hand, as is a different seasonal cookie each month. For October it is a sugar cookie with orange and black M&Ms; in September the bank tried a new low-carb cookie. (It tasted like cardboard, Ms. Grant said).
Fidelity has worked cookies into its advertising and is now known as the “cookie bank,” she said.
Also, loan officers now bring cookies along when they call on business customers.
