How do you integrate this stuff? Mobile banking? Social media? IPhone apps? All of these technologies should be included in an overriding electronic delivery channel plan. Otherwise, you risk missing your primary marketing objectives.

• Author: Trammell, Kelly

SMARTPHONES. Emerging payment systems. Web 2.0 developments like social media. These are new technologies. Now, throw in a trend like demographic shift. What does the convergence of these technologies and changing demographics foretell for the industry?

Will traditional retail branch banking be replaced by virtual delivery channels and disappear into the same black hole that free toasters went? Stop me if you have heard this before (see: interactive voice response (IVR), ATMs, and the mother of all supposed branch killers, Internet banking). Even if this again sounds like Round 4 of the "Death of the Branch," it is a question worth asking yet again, since some of these technologies, like mobile computing and social media, are being adopted at unheard of speeds. And these technologies are already weaving their way into the fabric of retail banking and influencing how bankers deliver their products and services--regardless of whether bankers have formally adopted them or not.

Making the e-service decision

Prior to even contemplating a partial shift to using next generation electronic channels--like adopting and integrating social media--you need to have an enterprisewide electronic channel strategy. Such a strategy needs to identify your objectives, complement and integrate your strategy into your existing delivery channels, and plot out a roadmap for the future--allowing for updates as trends and demographics change. Doing one-off initiatives like experimenting with social media for customer support or developing an iPhone app and not integrating those initiatives into a broader plan will likely result in those initiatives not being successful on their own and not doing much, if anything, to advance the institution's objectives of customer retention and lower cost of service.

An enterprisewide electronic channel strategy should detail the use of each delivery channel, and the products a services it would deliver, and answer a fundamental question: Does this advance your bank's strategic goals, and if so, to what extent? The process of going through this strategic planning will assist in making a decision about the direction your bank is best suited to take.

Many institutions conduct social media experiments for the wrong reasons:

* It's popular, hip, and would improve our image with the Gen X and Y.

* As a knee-jerk, defensive maneuver against the competition across the street.

* It's part of your information technology (IT) strategic plan, which happens to be getting ahead of the bank strategic plan.

An enterprise-wide delivery channel strategy

If time...