Kerri Madnick And Relatable Bank Marketing

In her Pinchforth interview, Kerri Madnick stated that when marketing a bank you should focus on one of three things to stand out. One was being first, being the best, or being different. Kerri  was very proud to admit that Middlesex was different, and to a great extent, it is in the sense that Kerri Madnick saw the bank she worked for as unique in its ability to market its brand with a more human approach that was more relatable to their consumer base.

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Who Is Kerri Madnick?

Kerri Madnick works for Middlesex Savings Bank in Natick, Massachusetts. She serves as Assistant Vice President, Retail Marketing Product Manager. Middlesex Savings Bank is a $6 billion bank. It holds over 31 branches, and its roots date back to the year 1835. The bank’s motto is their not your average bank, their mutual bank. As the largest mutual bank in Massachusetts, without shareholders to answer to, they can invest in capabilities and make decisions about rates, fees, products and customer service that focus on what’s best for their communities. The Bank serves the entire community with products and services that are fair, while treating every customer of the areas it serves with a sense of respect, which is part of Kerri’s marketing strategy.

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The Challenges Middlesex Savings Bank Faced In 2020

A marketing professional will always face challenges when it comes to creating an assortment of strategies that only continue to change in the wake of unpredictable circumstances. 2020 was certainly the year where marketing professionals were faced with all sorts of challenges, as well as many opportunities. Kerri Madnick spoke highly of how proud she was of her marketing team and how at the end of March and April when the pandemic began, they had truly pivoted and came together to show flexibility.

Kerri’s Advice To Marketing Leaders

Kerri Madnick and her marketing team at Middlesex Savings Bank demonstrated a significant amount of agility and fortitude at the beginning of Covid. This call to action showed their adaptability, as well as resilience marketing leaders could adopt. In Kerri’s case, when it came to the pandemic, her team had the opportunity to reevaluate internal resources as well as delayed projects. Kerri also spoke about an email onboarding program that they used to target their customer base. This email onboarding program operated on specific areas such as the subject line, picture updates, the right messaging, while also analyzing if customers were going to Middlesex Savings’ landing pages. Another thing that Kerri Madnick urged marketing leaders to consider was the subject of revenue generation and how marketers must prove return on investment as part of the strategy. As important as it is for a marketing team to bring in new business, maintaining original stats will help keep a sense of balance whilst implementing improvement for future business opportunities.

How Kerri Views Data

The subject of data is important in the world of marketing. The reason for this all boils down to the double-edged sword of how although marketing professionals require copious amounts of data to perform efficiently from a business perspective, the issue of privacy is still part of the downside. Kerri Madnick understands customer sensitivity, but she also loves that advertisers can access loads of data. This allows for the marketing team at Middlesex to use the data they receive to market their dollars more efficiently, which then provides a better need for a marketing strategy that works in the long term.

When it comes to Kerri's process of reviewing data, she and her team perform quarterly check-ins, and weekly meetings where they evaluate the conversations they have with customers and this can range from calls coming from Middlesex Savings' call centers, bank branches, and focus groups. Kerri also included how part of her team strategy involved reaching out to competitors to understand where they are coming up short, and this allowed for them to reorganize their marketing plan. One example was the attention that many banks give to the yearly period where people buy houses the most. But because people are periodically buying houses all year around, Kerri’s team looked at a marketing plan that would bypass the limitations that mortgage season often has on the relationship between banks and their consumer base.

Another role data played for the Middlesex marketing team was in the evaluation of how people were actively looking at products, and this helped them serve digital ads based on website pages visited, and the stats used focused on what Kerri Madnick regarded as “Lookalike audiences,” where they could determine the average checking customer based on age and yearly income.

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How Kerri’s Marketing Focus Has shifted

Perspective is important in any business-related position. It’s far more constant if you’re as ingrained in marketing as much as Kerri Madnick is. This constant shift in focus grants her the ability to restructure the Middlesex Savings Bank’s campaign to adopt a more human-like approach where the messaging would be more focused on the customer. It beats the regular bank jargon customers are usually subjected to, and using storytelling plays a major role that only proves more effective with a tagline like “We’re right there with you.” Kerri Madnick felt it was important that the story behind the Middlesex brand be in line with the customer, and doing that gave banking, in general, a more relatable feel.

Middlesex Savings And Traditional Marketing

The world of marketing is growing, and as it becomes more digitized, then the topic of traditional vs digital marketing only garners more relevance. Some are more dismissive of traditional marketing, while other marketers comment on how old-school platforms can still be utilized alongside digital marketing. When Kerri Madnick was asked about how she and her team felt about this, she mentioned how in addition to their current strategy, they were also getting back into the television space, which is something more traditional given that most people nowadays simply watch tv on their phones or computers.

Middlesex Savings Moving Forward

The Covid-19 pandemic taught Kerri Madnick and the Middlesex marketing team how they needed to change plans in an agile manner that enabled efficient transition goals and marketing campaigns already in use and in the process of execution. Having this self-awareness along with the digital acceleration the pandemic brought in allowed for Kerri and her team to factor in customer attitudes and preferences into their marketing strategy. Feedback also worked when it came to social media groups, reviews, and focus groups. Kerri Madnick believes that a marketing strategy, although highly reliant on data, should still focus on customers in a way that is both relatable and human, which essentially makes for better campaign decisions that will last both in the long run and in the wake of unpredictable events.

Note: Thoughts and opinions are Kerri’s own and not the views of Middlesex Savings Bank.