case studies

cater allen

Cater Allen had a legacy of an old-fashioned and functional online presence, and, with the introduction of an internet banking service planned, took the decision to leverage the launch of the proposition enhancement by also developing a full digital marketing strategy. Cater Allen approached us to design and develop their online brand presence including website design, online advertising and digital marketing strategy.

the brief

As a complete digital rebrand, the client wanted to implement a synergy across all digital and offline activities. Each activity had its own challenge, given the company wanted to make major headway into a new digital age by developing tools, services and propositions geared toward today's climate.

Key objectives of the redevelopment

Realignment of the Cater Allen brand under the Groupo Santander umbrella, allowing it to have its own visual identity, which complemented that of the parent company.

Design and develop a website which :-

• represented the brand and culture of Cater Allen
• delivered the functionality required by their Professional Adviser partners
• delivered the high level of online functionality required by banking customers
• effectively promoted the company's expertise to its target audience
• supported Cater Allen's sales and marketing objectives

Enhance the website capabilities by :-

• enabling the promotion and measurement of strategic campaigns
• reorganisation of all online activity to be channelled through a central point
• developing a fully search engine optimised site which would increase the company's visibility
• developing a dynamic Content Management System (CMS) to deliver a flexible and cost effective client solution to content adjustment enabling the Cater Allen marketing team to be more proactive to market forces

our idea

The team worked closely with Cater Allen’s marketing, customer contact and sales teams to develop an online resource that would deliver customer loyalty, market attractiveness and competitive advantage, whilst retaining the brand attributes of understated elegance required by a private bank.

The underlying commitment that Cater Allen maintains a close relationship with its professional advisor clients and banking customers was the key to all the solutions that we developed. Cater Allen pride themselves on delivering the highest levels of personal service, whether that is by a first class telephone-based Client Team, business development management, or specialist relationship management; the website needed to reflect the same first-class ethos.

The basis of the strategy was threefold...

• to provide a completely restructured, dynamic website, allowing users to find information easily and enjoy a unique online experience. The new site would offer information about standard and new banking products and services with up-to-date content.
• to provide a seamless link to the new Cater Allen Internet Banking service.
• to build a fully functional and measureable back-office system, for the marketing team, to allow them to initiate change.

The website was developed with a fully dynamic CMS which allows the marketing team to maintain content and exploit the huge potential the internet offers. The site was built to be a reactive tool, where content, actions and user journeys can be manipulated and tailored dependent on the banking climate. The CMS allows the team to have control over the whole website from items such as interest rates and application forms to body content and banner adverts. With all this in mind, we enabled strict measurement criteria, with each download, link and action being measured to enable feedback to the marketing team. In addition, the site keeps a full audit trail of all changes in view of the unique requirements specific to the banking industry to document any actions. The strategy also looked to the future and what the next year had in store for the company. Becoming part of Santander Private Banking will see more complex products introduced and closer synergies between Cater Allen and other Group companies. Without knowing in advance what these product developments will look like, the site needed to be both flexible enough to cope with additions via the CMS but structured enough that changes did not compromise the user experience. The challenges of promotion, PR and events were all also taken into account and the site benefits from the ability to add campaign landing pages and microsites which provide synergy when promoting offline advertising with dedicated URLs. Sponsored events like the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run benefited from these online dynamics with pages being built specifically to hold content, promotions, images and video.

Further digital elements produced include; the visual design of the secure banking system, the implementation of an online banking demo plus the build and delivery of banner advertising and email marketing.

the outcome

The implementation of a full measurement system has enabled the client to finally understand the online behaviours of their current and potential customer base. The previous website had few analytics. This left the marketing team with little information with which to steer marketing activity and communications or to prove the benefits digital marketing could have in order to justify further investment from the Group.

The website is now at the heart of everything that Cater Allen will initiate over the next three years. It is the major service resource for clients to access all their business needs, services, product information and key points of contact.

Following the subsequent launch of the new website, the unique visits to the site topped at 19,000 users in the first month with nearly 12,000 of these being new visitors. At April 2008, a year on from launch, the site had tripled the number of site users every month to 61,109.

As well as generating footfall to the site, many of the strategic campaigns as mentioned above have delivered a manifold increase in uptake of calls, downloaded documents and registrations. For example, the “Pensions” campaign in February 2008, again with its own bespoke landing page, generated a 300% increase in web page generated professional enquiries over a six week period and doubled the total number of new introducers registering.

"As a traditional private bank, with a 200 year-old legacy, we relied on the excellent service provided by our telephone-based Client Team to manage all of our customer’s banking requirements. It became apparent that, as our customers became more technologically sophisticated, the requirement for both Internet banking, and a more functional website was necessary. Our clients needed to be able to self-serve, for their Cater Allen banking, contact and information needs at their convenience and this internet solution enables them to do just that, whenever and wherever they need to."

Richard Dunn
Managing Director
Cater Allen Private Bank