Case Study: Top-20 Regional Bank achieves customer-centric cross-sell optimization and higher ROI with Merkle

Deposit Cross-Sell & Portfolio Optimization

Merkle helped a top-20 regional bank shift from a product-centric direct-marketing cross-sell strategy to a customer-centric model. The bank’s challenge was to stop starting with products and instead identify the best products for each customer to maximize portfolio value and satisfaction; Merkle introduced a Customer Development Index (CDI) built on propensity models, eligibility and channel affinity to inform monthly, customer-focused offers.

Merkle implemented the CDI framework and a rules-driven selection process that considered product eligibility, channel preference and contact management to choose the optimal offer per customer each month. The new approach produced more consistent communications, better-managed customer experiences, streamlined processes, focused investments on the most profitable households and increased incremental response and program ROI — with observed product lifts up to about 0.65% (eStatement) and overall portfolio lifts of roughly 0.2–0.3% in some segments.