Coincidences are what make life interesting, don’t you think?
Not an hour after I posted yesterday’s story on Banking, e-Commerce, and Merchant Accounts, I was in the car, listening to that quaint old thing we call “radio”, and a commercial came on for a product/service from Wells Fargo Bank. Wells Fargo wants to help us all save more by using Way2Save, and it’s a pretty good idea.
Now don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing terribly revolutionary about Way2Save. Among other things, Way2Save works by moving a dollar from your checking to your savings account each time you use your debit card. Bank of America has offered a similar program called Keep The Change for years.
What’s interesting about Way2Save, aside from the fact that saving a dollar every time you use your card will add up a lot faster than saving as little as a penny, is the idea that banks as large as Wells Fargo and Bank of America don’t merely offer these programs, but spend money marketing them.
I talk about long tail marketing all the time. And while I generally speak about long tail marketing as a Search Engine Optimization Philosophy, Way2Save and Keep the Change are long tail marketing techniques, too. I don’t know how much money Bank of America or Wells Fargo make from these programs directly, but I promise you that they’re enacting real business change if they get you to buy into them, even though that business change might seem small or infinitesimally incremental.
Even stodgy, old-school businesses like banking can change—and need to. And Way2Save and Keep the Change are examples of Wells Fargo and Bank of America changing in a way that can help their customers, for real.
And isn’t that what customer service is all about?
