Safe deposit boxes have long been a staple of the banking industry, but over the last few years, many banks have been gravitating away from this offering. Big banks in particular have shied away from this service.
When banks stop offering safe deposit boxes, their customers must scrabble to look for new options. This presents a valuable opportunity for financial institutions that still host safe deposit boxes.
If your bank offers safe deposit boxes, you need to optimize this investment. Attracting people whose banks don’t offer the service is a great starting point, and it also gives you an opportunity to build relationships for future banking needs. Ideally, you should also market the service to existing clients and prospective customers, but how?
Consider leveraging the following messages in your website content, newsletters, and conventional marketing materials.
1. Emphasize the importance of securing key documents.
In an increasingly digital world, paper documents are still critical. You can’t sell a car without a paper title. Birth certificates, death certificates, and Social Security cards are all still on paper. These documents can be extremely time-consuming to replace if lost, and they’re prone to risks of flood, fire, and theft when stored in homes or offices.
Market the fact that your financial institution can keep these documents secure. Consider using visuals of ruined paper documents and frustrated people waiting on hold as they try to replace them. Then, compare that to visuals of people easily accessing these documents from a safe deposit box. Whenever possible, draw in real-life stories to emphasize your point.
2. Let people know that boxes are safer than under the mattress.
Some people don’t want all their cash in a bank account. They don’t trust the digital economy, and they’re just more comfortable knowing that they have stacks of cash on hand. The same sentiment applies to people who like to keep physical gold or silver in their possession.
Although it may seem counterintuitive, these people can become your customers. Although they don’t want their funds in a bank account, they also don’t want to lose their money.
Use your marketing outreach to remind these people of the risks of storing cash in their homes. Consider incorporating real-life stories of people who lost thousands of dollars in cash due to floods, fires, tornados, rodent infestations, or other disasters.
Then, show these prospects that your safe deposit box is a safe haven from these risks. Illustrate your safe deposit box management practices with their needs in mind. Emphasize the safety but also the privacy of these boxes. Use your marketing to appeal to their old-school nature, with your traditional offering.
3. Educate people about the risks of home safes
Take an educational approach and let people know that home safes are risky. This is a concise message and to help it reach as many people as possible, consider making something that is easy to share. This may be a short video or even a social media meme.
Simply remind people that home safes are prone to theft and point to a bank safe deposit box as the best alternative. Someone can easily break into a home and open the safe or steal the whole thing. Safes can be great for items that you want easy access to such as your passport if you travel often, but they’re a subpar option for valuables that you don’t need on a regular basis.
4. Talk about how you reduce the risk of natural dangers.
Telling people the dangers of storing valuables at home is only one-half of your marketing strategy. You also need to let people know why they should select your safe deposit boxes. Let them know what the bank does to prevent fires or water damage. Explain any insurance coverage that you offer to customers, if applicable.
Also, make sure that you tell people what you do to secure their boxes from theft. This puts you at an advantage over the competition, and it gives prospective customers peace of mind that their valuables will be safe.
5. Cross-sell your other services to box holders.
In addition to marketing the boxes themselves, make sure that you’re marketing to box holders. Once someone rents a box at your financial institution, you have started a relationship. They trust you to store their physical valuables, and that generally means they’ll be more likely to trust you for their other banking needs. Take advantage of this relationship to upsell and cross-sell other offerings.
If you offer safe deposit boxes, you should optimize this revenue stream. Market this service to increase your occupancy rate, and then, safeguard retention by using the best management practices possible.
Contact SQN to Talk About Safe Deposit Box Management
Want help securing and managing your safe deposit boxes? That’s where we come in.
At SQN Banking Systems, we customize anti-fraud solutions to meet the unique needs of our clients. One of our favorite offerings is SQN: Safe Deposit. This solution leverages our signature verification technology to help you monitor access to your safe deposit boxes.
When someone signs in to access their box, the solution compares their signature to the signature on file. It looks at static and dynamic elements to assess the validity of the signatures, and it alerts your team if there appears to be a discrepancy. This process is much more precise than having someone manually check an ID and collect a signature. Unfortunately, that traditional process can be very prone to errors.
When you protect your customers, you protect your bottom line. To get help, contact us at SQN Banking Systems today. We can talk with you about this solution or schedule a free fraud process review to help you spot other vulnerabilities.