When it comes to card customization the opportunities are endless, but some smaller financial institutions need to think outside the boundaries when it comes to customer acquisition and custom photo or co-brand cards can be a powerful tool.

When it comes to marketing locally, esp. for smaller banks, it is difficult to assess to the target demographic. For most small banks, it is simply “the community”. But it would not be wasted effort to carefully look at the surrounding community at large and look for targeted pockets of consumers that really work well for your bank. I call this hyper-localization.

For example, if you have a custom card program one way to really make it work beside allowing people to place their photo on the card is to co-brand the card with another affinity-based community segment. For example, high schools in most towns tend to be a community hub for sports, theatre, kids (of course), but also parents. A high school may in fact be an awesome place to run a custom card campaign because it touches so many prospective customers. Rather than putting a big ad in the Sunday paper imagine posting a bulletin with a debit card that had the High School logo on it? Even better allowing cards for each major sporting and extra cirricular activity the school offers and making an offer to both the kids and their parents. Kids with active involved parents are no-doubt going to want to show off their pride for their son or daughters activity.

This may sound like a lot of work, but it isn’t really and the potential results could be fantastic. First of all, creating the templates should be a snap. Get the schools permission to use their logo and market in the allowed school venues and then create a handful of card designs (digital of course) that are only printed when ordered through your custom card utility. No inventory to carry, but a powerful impact.

This type of marketing may in fact hit your target demographic and the future up and coming generation of local customers too, but don’t stop there. Your community is full of pockets of folks you would like to have as customers. Find them by using the thoughtful people in your bank and make a small effort to reach these people with the right tools and you will find you’ve got a card for card for everyone and happy new customers!