SPONSORED CONTENT PRESENTED BY ALKAMI TECHNOLOGY
By: Marla Pieton, Sr. Director, Research & Thought Leadership Strategy for Alkami
As reliance on digital banking channels grows, community banks face increasing pressure to compete—not just with local competitors, but also with large national institutions and fintechs. In community banks, you’ll often find that small marketing teams are shouldering the weight. This digital era has given rise to a new class of top marketers, ones that wield technology and data to execute strategies, and deliver exceptional results.
Recently the Alkami team sat down to talk with one such top data-driven marketer: Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Westfield Bank, Chris Van Ausdale. She discussed how a modern marketing toolset has changed how Westfield Bank promotes and measures, without needing to rely on expensive agencies or an inflated advertising budget. Van Ausdale discussed how transaction and product based data analytics in banking have empowered her team to deliver exceptional results without expanding resources, and shared advice for her industry peers just getting started with their shift into this new era of data-centric marketing.
Data has been a catalyst for the practice of bank marketing
With over 25 years of experience in marketing, Chris Van Ausdale has witnessed firsthand the industry’s dramatic evolution. “When I started working, that was the first time I ever had an email address,” she recalls. Fast forward to today, and the transformation has been extraordinary. For community banks like Westfield Bank, traditional approaches such as billboards are no longer a fit. “A billboard just doesn’t make sense for a business our size,” she says. “Digital ads do. They help me maximize my marketing dollars as much as I possibly can.”
The shift toward digital is not just about efficiency but precision. By leveraging real-time data insights, Van Ausdale’s team ensures that every campaign reaches the right customer, with the right message, at the right time. “The data in the background that informs those digital ads is priceless,” she explains. “It’s really helping us keep up with the times.” For Westfield Bank, data-driven marketing has not only modernized their approach but has also empowered the team to stay competitive in an increasingly dynamic and fluid industry.
For Westfield Bank, the journey to data-driven marketing began with a clear challenge: lack of access to insights. “Our biggest hurdle was getting the data we needed to make informed decisions,” Van Ausdale recalls. Marketing teams had to rely on complex, time-consuming processes to request data from their core or from their IT teams. When errors occurred, delays snowballed, impacting campaign timelines.
The turning point came with the implementation of data and marketing solutions. “We can now develop campaigns in real time, push messages across digital channels, and export files for offline use,” Van Ausdale explains. This seamless access to data revolutionized Westfield Bank’s marketing efforts, enabling the team to target audiences more effectively and deliver relevant messaging at the right time.
Can You Compete at Scale Without Adding Resources?
Other bankers ask Van Ausdale this question all of the time, she said during our conversation. For smaller financial institutions, competing with larger banks often means doing more with less. Westfield Bank exemplifies how to achieve this balance. With the right solution, Van Ausdale’s team identifies high-value customer segments and crafts personalized campaigns without adding headcount.
“By leveraging data, we’ve been able to stretch our marketing dollars further, ensuring efficiency while staying competitive,” she notes. This strategy allowed the bank to shift its focus to campaigns with measurable impact, such as promoting digital channels or cross-selling products, instead of relying on traditional, hard-to-measure tactics like billboards.
Data-driven financial services marketing automation platforms offer a clear path to understanding and demonstrating return on investment (ROI), fostering better collaboration between marketing and finance. Automated full cycle attribution reporting identifies account holders who were influenced to achieve the campaign goal as a result of the financial services marketing automation efforts.
Van Ausdale explained that Westfield Bank’s strategies have evolved with the times, eliminating billboards for instance, and shifting those dollars to digital ads. This change has allowed Westfield Bank’s marketing team to keep up with technology, and the need for attribution. “There was absolutely no negative impact when we removed the billboards, because we shifted those dollars to digital ads and even some offline channels like direct mail. By switching to a data-driven marketing strategy, I’ve been able to prove the value of our marketing messages vs. tactics like billboards.”
Small but mighty community marketing teams need to maximize their marketing dollars as much as possible; the ways in which to do that come into clear focus with the right data. “The data in the background that’s informing those digital ads is priceless. It’s making sure that I’m getting the right message, to the right person at the right time – and that’s marketing. The data we now have is really important. It’s helping us keep up with the times,” Van Ausdale continued.
Westfield Bank’s innovative use of data extends beyond marketing to sales and support
While sales-focused campaigns remain essential for business growth, Van Ausdale emphasizes the importance of balancing promotional messages with educational content as a long term strategy. Westfield Bank’s digital banking sales and marketing solution’s integration with their CRM tool has been instrumental in achieving this.
“We make sure not every message is about selling something,” Van Ausdale says. Campaigns include tips on fraud prevention, fee avoidance, and maximizing existing account benefits. The results are telling: Westfield Bank’s email open rates consistently exceed industry benchmarks, a testament to the trust they’ve built with their customers.
“Your bank should be a trusted advisor,” Van Ausdale asserts. By prioritizing helpful, relevant communication, Westfield Bank has strengthened customer satisfaction and reinforced its reputation as a dependable partner.
In addition to sales, Westfield Bank has been able to turn data insights into a service tool. By analyzing deposit patterns, the team identified customers showing signs of financial strain, and rather than taking that knowledge and using it to deploy a one-size-fits-all marketing message, these insights were shared with the sales team who engaged in one-to-one personalized outreach offering support.
“This proactive approach ensures we’re using data in ways that truly benefit our customers,” Van Ausdale explains. “It’s about being thoughtful and delivering value, not just pushing a product.”
Chris Van Ausdale’s Top Tips for Bank Marketers to Embrace Data Insights
- Start Small: Focus on using data to solve one or two key challenges before scaling efforts.
- Prioritize Value Over Volume: Avoid overwhelming customers with marketing messages. Instead, share insights that genuinely help them succeed financially.
- Think Holistically: Break down silos by sharing data insights across departments. This enables the entire organization to benefit from actionable intelligence.
“Data isn’t just a tool for marketing—it’s a way to drive value across the bank,” Van Ausdale emphasizes.
Westfield Bank’s success story demonstrates the transformative potential of data-driven marketing. By embracing tools with a modern, strategic approach, Van Ausdale and her team have accelerated their impact on the Bank’s business —delivering personalized campaigns with measurable results and impact, improving customer satisfaction, and fostering trust—all without increasing resources.
For financial marketers, and their broader institution’s back office, investing in data tools and adopting a data-first mindset are necessary steps to staying relevant, engaging with customers and executing omni-channel campaigns.
Actionable data has unlimited potential. Start exploring how data-driven solutions can empower your team and unlock new opportunities for growth here.
