I’m often asked to provide my elevator pitch on what’s special about Kasasa, the retail banking program delivered by Kasasa. When doing so, I often call it a “success formula.” I suppose “recipe for success” would do just as well. What I like most about including the word formula or recipe is that, by definition, a formula is about mixing multiple ingredients in just the right way to achieve a desired result.
Formulas require research, testing, learning, and refinement. The fabled formula for success is what we all are aiming to achieve in many aspects of our businesses and lives.
The Kasasa Success Formula is singularly aimed to create sustainable success in acquiring, retaining, and growing highly profitable consumer relationships for community banks and credit unions. Period – end of story.
That formula for any financial institution is always a challenge as it requires orchestrating multiple departments, budgets, and capabilities. It requires contemporary competitive knowledge of best in class account products. A front-line support staff that is motivated and knowledgeable. A marketing team loaded with skills and experiences — from outfitting a branch, to building the right online presence, to knowing about the design and placement of advertising. Let’s not forget the ever-increasing pressure of marketing regulations and compliance rules.
Too little emphasis on the right consumer account offering, even with the world’s best front line staff and marketing, and you flop. A really cool new account offering that’s seems a guaranteed winner won’t work either if absent the right staff support and marketing. Too much fine print? Not so good. If you want to create a great consumer result, finding the knowledge, time, and energy to bring all these ingredients together is essential and exhausting.
I once worked for a company whose motto was, “it’s how we put it all together that sets us apart.” Kasasa is not simply an account; it is a well-orchestrated program that follows that motto. We study the wants and needs of consumers. How they react to certain offerings. What are the best promotions? Where are the young shoppers? Where are the families? We’ve built a knowledge base of the best approaches in balancing the product offering, enabling the front line staff, marketing tactics, and appropriate compliance in every market we serve. We have data for what works where and when. We build and execute an integrated plan customized to each financial institution with their specific definition of success in mind. Then we provide the ingredients, in the right amounts, optimized for that outcome.
That isn’t a one-time event, it is ongoing. And the results show it, for much less time and expense than any institution could do on their own. After more than three years and hundreds of clients, we find that institutions using the Kasasa program average a 50% lift in new accounts and 2X the annual profit per account (compared to standard free checking). Most impressive is the consistency of results. I’ll admit it: I watch Nutrisystem® commercials when they are on TV. This program, which is a “success formula” for weight loss, has helped Dan Marino and Terry Bradshaw, but I’m not sure that their customer base consistently averages 2X better results.
And the power of the Kasasa Success Formula is that we will continue to learn from consumers, our clients, and our staff. The Kasasa knowledgebase of winning tactics continues to expand. The formula gets more successful because we build on prior success. With 210 Kasasa institutions in 44 states (as of this writing and growing), we are increasingly bringing Goliath scale to the Davids of the financial industry. Since Kasasa only serves community financial institutions, the Kasasa Success Formula helps overcome the disadvantages their smaller size creates, while enhancing its advantages.
By Marty Sunde, President