At Mabus Agency, we’re constantly innovating. From late-night texts to in-the-moment hallway conversations and brainstorm sessions, we’re always looking to find the next big “what if”—one of those questions that spurs creativity and that elusive “a-ha!” moment we all relish. 

Early last year, we helped Renasant Bank come up with a plan to increase wallet share within its existing client base. We tore through all the latest buzz-worthy tech options that might help us drill down, and built social and psychographic profiles to help us zero in on the specific types of clients on which we needed to focus.

Then, we asked a question that brought everything back to the basics.

“What if we compare checking accounts to savings accounts, and see what happens?

Through careful data analysis, we were able to isolate a large group of active Renasant banking clients who had checking accounts, but didn’t have savings accounts. From there, we used each of Renasant’s marketing channels—email, social media, online, direct mail, and more—to target this newfound group of clients with advertising specifically related to Renasant savings accounts.

“Sometimes, we try to make things too complicated, so you have to pull back and look at the fundamentals,” said John Oxford, Senior Vice President and Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Renasant Bank.  “In this case, it was the two deposit fundamentals of banking: checking and saving.” 

The completed ads not only highlighted the benefits of having Renasant checking and savings accounts, but they also helped clients get started on personal savings plans.

Because a savings account is a primary product, we were able to test the performance of our ads across all platforms at the same time. Clients simply responded in one of two ways: by opening a savings account or by ignoring the messages they received. Every time an account was opened, it showed that the medium worked.

As we expected, mobile ads outperformed all other media, but every platform generated a significant return—in fact, Renasant set a company record for savings accounts opened in a single month. Clients opened savings accounts at a much higher rate than they had in previous years, significantly boosting Renasant’s wallet share and delighting the bank’s marketing leaders. 

“This savings gap campaign showed us that, although it’s easy to go after the shiny new thing, looking back at fundamentals can often get you a quality win,” Oxford said. 

At Mabus Agency, we push ourselves to try new things and stretch creatively and strategically but, sometimes, the most obvious opportunity for growth comes from a fresh look at what’s already in place. So, before you rush to move outside the box and come up with creative solutions to questions that arise, be sure you’ve exhausted the box of all of its options—there just might be a great idea awaiting its chance to pay off in a big, big way.