Customer correspondence: an overlooked brand communications channel.

There is a channel that is often overlooked and underutilized when it comes to communicating brand and brand promise: the customer correspondence channel.

Historically, most banks have treated customer correspondence--in particular, printed statements, notices and inserts--as a routine, albeit vital, back office operation, rather than a highly visible vehicle for carrying the bank's brand and image, according to Terrance Vannoy, founder and chief operations officer at Optria LLC, Orlando, Fla. The company is a provider of customer communications management solutions for financial services institutions.

It was pretty much accepted as a fact of banking life that documents sent to customers (statements, notices, inserts and so forth) were by default, just going to be bland, ASCII text file formats, with virtually no branding, says Vannoy. If the correspondence did happen to feature the bank's logo, it was typically because the logo was preprinted on the paper supplied by a forms vendor.

Today, the technology has evolved and there are a range of solutions available to enable banks to customize both printed and electronic documents with an abundance of images to reinforce their brand--full color logos, graphics, photos, charts, embedded links that provide interactivity, even deliver personalized, one-to-one communications capabilities.

Strengthening two bank brands

Two banks embracing this channel as a means to fully complement and reinforce their brands are Broadway Bank (assets: $2 billion), San Antonio, and American State Bank (assets: $2.2 billion), Lubbock, Texas.

Broadway bank, along with its military division, Eisenhower Bank, is the largest independently owned bank in San Antonio and the Hill Country area of Central Texas.

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"For many of our customers, our regular correspondence, particularly statements, may be the only routine interaction they ever have with the bank." explains Lydia Rodriguez, executive vice president and marketing director. "It's one of the few opportunities we may have to...