2009 Award Winners
Award-winning project: Increasing the communication success of PSD Bank Berlin-Brandenburg eG
Project partners: PSD Bank Berlin-Brandenburg eG | School of Management and Innovation (SMI) at Steinbeis University Berlin/Berlin
Customer magazines are becoming an increasingly important communication tool. Despite this trend, there has been a lack of empirical evidence to date regarding the potential impact and impact parameters of customer magazines. Against the backdrop of rising expectations regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of corporate communications, this lack of knowledge regarding customer magazines must be viewed critically.
PSD Bank Berlin-Brandenburg eG is a regional cooperative bank operating as a direct bank, with its headquarters in Berlin. In order to maintain dialogue with its customers despite its direct banking model, the bank uses the customer magazine ‘GELD + GEWINN’ as its key communication tool. Given the magazine’s importance to the bank’s commercial success, a project was carried out in collaboration with the SVI Endowed Chair for Marketing and Dialogue Marketing at the School of Management and Innovation, Steinbeis University Berlin, to optimise the use of ‘GELD + GEWINN’.
In a field trial, the influence of visual and haptic stimulation (high/low), as well as the presentation of content (editorial/advertising), the delivery day (Monday/Friday) and the level of product group involvement (high/low) was examined. The combination of the levels of the object-related parameters (visual, tactile, content) resulted in eight test versions. A total of 32,000 customer magazines, manipulated in this way, were sent by post. Three to four days after delivery, 30 randomly selected recipients from each of the 32 test groups were surveyed. This meant that around 1,000 respondents were included in the study.
Based on the results, the SVI Endowed Chair developed a set of guidelines designed to optimise the effectiveness of customer magazines whilst simultaneously achieving cost savings. As part of this collaboration, findings have now been obtained for the first time that allow conclusions to be drawn about the impact and impact parameters of customer magazines beyond the specific magazine in question.