“Shaina is excellent with strategic planning, content, communication and everything in between. She is a pleasure to work with, and her creativity inspires me to think outside the box. Making our messaging more consistent and taking the customer experience to a new level has had a substantial impact on our overall performance and paid dividends well beyond expectations.”

Industry

Financial Services

Services

• Brand messaging

• Content strategy

• Marketing strategy and execution

• Web and print copywriting

• Email marketing

• Workshop facilitation

Collaborators

Five Sigma Studio, Design and Development

Goals

• Maintain a consistent marketing presence in the community to increase loan volume and deposits

• Improve the customer experience to increase satisfaction, retention, and referrals

Helping a local bank compete with the big guys

How does a local bank compete with big, national brands to win and keep customers? With heartfelt, personal service and a dedicated marketing and design team. 

After working together while I was part of the Forty team (a branding and design agency that was later acquired), Gateway Bank reached out years later to reconnect and see how we could collaborate again. They missed having a partner who could help them be consistent and proactive with their marketing efforts in order to attract new customers, provide a positive experience for existing customers, and grow their business. I brought in the incredible Niki Blaker of Five Sigma Studio, a fellow Forty alumnus who also worked with Gateway before, to “get the band back together.”

Start with strategy

Since we were going to be helping with Gateway’s marketing and design on a long-term, ongoing basis, Niki and I began by facilitating a strategic planning workshop with the executive team to understand the bank’s current state, future goals, and steps needed to achieve them. During this session, we revisited Gateway’s branding and messaging to ensure it was still effective, then mapped both their customer and employee journeys so we could pinpoint the greatest marketing and design opportunities.

Small bank, big wins

Coming out of the strategic planning session, Niki and I had a long backlog of initiatives and tasks that we have made progress on every month. Over two years after reconnecting, we continue to serve as Gateway’s outsourced marketing and design team, managing everything from their website and email marketing, to sales collateral and campaigns, to resources for current customers. 

Some of our biggest wins include:

• Developing new drip email campaigns, marketing materials, videos, pitch decks, and more, which contributed to Gateway achieving record-breaking months and their most profitable year yet

• Redesigning a new, modern website based on usability research to make it easier for current and potential customers to quickly find the information they want and need. In the first few weeks since launch, traffic is already up over 50%, and the bounce rate has decreased by 16%.

• Optimizing their former website to increase organic search traffic by almost 20%

• Creating a popular monthly newsletter, which now has open and click rates that are 3-5x the industry average