I’m not sure whether I like current-events-themed promotions because they are effective or because they make for timely blog posts (probably the latter, but I’ll continue to believe in the former).
While it seems that banks have been dropping the ball on the year-end holidays, I was pleasantly surprised to find a bank doing a full-court press around March Madness. It’s an annual tradition of binge sports watching as the top 68 U.S. colleges play a single elimination tournament during the last 3 weeks of March.
STAR Bank ($1.6 billion in deposits) has a homepage-dominating ad for Game Time, a debit-card sweeps during march (see above). Cardholders that conduct at least 17 transactions are automatically entered to win one of five $100 statement credits. Customers can also enter the contest online, a user-friendly way to comply with U.S. sweepstakes rules (see bottom of landing page below).
Bottom line: The graphics are eye catching, the timing is perfect, and it’s easy for customers to participate. My only concern would be the size of the prize pool, which is only $500. For a month-long sweeps, there should be a bigger grand prize. How about this? A sweet sixteen earning $100 each, a final four winning $500 each and a champion taking home $1,500.
Promotion landing page (link, 16 March 2007)
Author: Jim Bruene is Founder & Senior Advisor to Finovate as well as
Principal of BUX Advisors, a financial services UX consultancy.
While I have 
The end of the year provides a unique challenge to banks. Customers are busy buying gifts, finishing year-end projects at work, and preparing for holiday travel, meal prep and/or extended family time. There isn’t an abundance of deep thought about long-term financial plans, other than how to pay down inflated December credit card bills.
For the past 10 years, I’ve done a year-end post looking at holiday promotions at the largest U.S. banks. And surprisingly, fewer banks than anytime since 2004 were running holiday messages in the days before Christmas. This year, only four of the 20 largest banks referenced the holidays on their homepages. That compares to nine banks 
Banks have ratcheted up the design aspects of their websites substantially during the past 18 months. But in my annual look at holiday website designs, I found little change over past years. Only nine of the 20 largest U.S. banks displayed any holiday graphics or promos this year. That’s one more than 
In my annual look at holiday offerings from major banks, I found that Scrooge still roams the halls at many of the big names. Only eight of the 20 largest U.S. banks are using holiday-themed promotions or graphics (note 1). That’s one more than 
