Howard Seibel's Customer Acquisition, Retention & Loyalty Blog

Saving While You Spend?

Amazon and Fidelity announced a partnership in which Fidelity will be the first tenant in a financial services store within Amazon.com. They hope that consumers will shop for mutual funds and other investments before, during and after they shop for books, toys, and clothes.

Can marketers get people to think about saving and investing while they’re really thinking about spending? Fidelity might get some clicks and leads from this partnership, but the overall effect will be small.

This reminds me of an entrepreneur who contacted me when I headed marketing for an online brokerage firm. He wanted to rent space in major shopping malls and stock it with brochures of mutual fund companies and brokerage firms. People would stop by to learn about investing while they shop, he said. Come back when you’ve had a success, I said.

The Fidelity/Amazon arrangement continues the misguided “save while you spend” trend on which I’ve previous posted.

Customer De-Acquisition

I have a business checking account at Commerce Bank. Last week, I was shuffling money around and left the account with zero balance.

A few days later, when I tried to deposit a check, I was shocked to find that my account was closed. An apologetic phone rep informed me that bank policy is to close any checking account that has a zero balance for two days. I would have to visit a branch to get it reopened.   Couldn’t do it over the phone. It happens a lot, she said.

Maybe Commerce Bank has a good reason for not wanting empty accounts on its books, but empty and dormant are different things. 

I like Commerce Bank; business checking is free and they’re open Sundays. I went to my branch and allowed them to acquire me all over again.

What policies does your company have that de-acquires customers?