Internet Customer Acquisition Strategy at Bankinter

Bankinter is a small independent national Spanish bank founded in 1965 and operating through various customer acquisition networks and distribution channels. Among their competitors, which are traditional brick-and-mortar banks and Internet-only banks, Bankinter positions itself as innovative, multichannel and low-cost provider of financial services. In 1992, Bankinter started to change its strategy by closing some of its branches and focusing more on product and channel-oriented marketing. In line with its innovative positioning, Bankinter was the first Spanish bank to offer telephone, electronic and internet banking. In 1999, as part of their polarization strategy, Bankinter launched its e-collaborator program aiming to attract new Internet customers at low cost. Branch 8700, Bankinter’s Internet branch, experienced rapid growth leading to decreases customer acquisition costs and increases in costumer acquisitions. After its alliance strategy with highly trafficked dominant online portals that proved to be cost-intensive and didn’t lead to new customer acquisitions, Bankinter launched its e-collaborator program in 2001. E-collaborator is a low-cost acquisition tool placing banners on Websites that link the user directly to ebankinter.com, Bankinter’s online site launched in 1997. As it is a very cost-effective program, it resulted in lowering per customer acquisition costs while increasing new customer acquisitions. Apart from that, Bankinter established an elaborated CRM system, which provided them with important information on customer profitability and allowed them to gain a competitive advantage. However, Internet customers appeared to be less loyal than traditional brick-and-mortar customers. Customer acquisition and customer retention are two of the main challenges banks have to deal with. Bankinter is