Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. You're listening to Top Quartile, where we bring you stories from the front lines of growth in community focused financial services.
Well, hello and welcome to the very first kickoff episode of Top Quartile, the brand new podcast brought to you by Infusion. I'm Dan Marks. I'm a partner and EVP at Infusion. And our star guest today is my good friend and boss, Tim Keith, CEO at Infusion. Tim, how are you this morning?
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Doing great, Dan, thank you.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: All right, we've got an exciting episode and there's a lot of exciting things happening at Infusion with our clients and the good work we're doing. Tim, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your background that led you to help co found Infusion?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Sure. My history goes back in bank marketing to the early 90s. It's been split really between a few years on the client side as a banker, both at Amsouth bank as well as First Tennessee bank, where you and I work together.
On the vendor side is the other part. And I've been very fortunate to work with hundreds of banks and credit unions over the years with stints at Axiom and of course, Infusion.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: What a great background. And yeah, it's neat to work with you again at Infusion after spending some time together at the First Tennessee.
Now, before we dive into the very serious topic we have today on the Top Quartile, what is one fascinating hobby or fun fact that most people don't know about you?
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Well, I don't know how fascinating anything that I do is, but I would say that I do play the upright bass and play both in jazz groups as well as bluegrass band and also in formal church setting. The history of that goes back to a couple things. One, I have a bass that's been in our family about 50 years.
We think it's at least 80 years old. It's a very resonant instrument. It's really a treasure that fortunate to have.
And then the other part is I grew up playing the cello and so when I had the opportunity to learn to play the upright bass, there were some things that kind of came natural to it. But enjoy playing. Am just good enough as a musician to be dangerous. I would not call myself a professional by any means, but I do enjoy playing.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is awesome. That's a great gift. I have a very small musical talent, so I appreciate anybody who spends that much time playing. And you got invited to play on some of these quarantine zoom cocktail parties, right?
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Actually, one of the real joys of my life is getting to play music with my oldest son, who's 22 and is a very good singer and guitar player.
So we were able to do a couple parties where we would trade off the upright and the guitar and trade off singing and playing. And so a lot of fun. So trying to make the most of zoom and distancing. But I would say even beyond the zoom part of it, just getting to play music with my son has been a real fun thing. So.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah, and what a joy and good to be well rounded and all those things. And also, it's neat when the hobbies intersect with work and you can talk to clients about their musical interest and there's some neat stories about those on the way. And who knows, maybe, maybe one day you guys can record a soundtrack for top quartile.
And speaking of fusion jazz, there's some history behind the name of Enfusion, the company, right?
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Our history and heritage, really very much heritage goes back to a predecessor company called Fusion Marketing Group.
So Fusion was on the vanguard of database marketing when MCIF Systems first came into the banking industry.
Fusion was started by a banker here in Memphis, Tennessee, where I am named Art Holdman. He worked for Leader Federal Bank. Bank that's long been absorbed into multiple larger banks. But Art was from Leader Federal and Don Mann was from Archer Malmo Advertising. And they started working together when Art got access to MCIF data at his bank. So they started putting campaigns together and one thing led to another and they left their respective companies and started Fusion.
And I was one of the early employees of Fusion.
And as I said, we were on the vanguard of database marketing. We taught the school of Database Marketing at Northwestern University for years. Still have some Fusion school graduates out in the industry.
And so it was just a unique culture because there was just this pervasive desire to learn from every piece of data you could get your hands on. And really a curiosity factor that really drove what made that company great. The company got absorbed into, ultimately into Acxiom Corporation. So I spent about 10 years combined between my Fusion years and my Axiom years.
And Axiom's a great company based on little Rock, big database technology company.
But Acxiom really focuses in on Fortune 500 businesses. Their clients are large financial companies.
Many of them are. And so I had the opportunity to work with all of the top 10 banks in that role, which was just a great learning ground because you just have so much data and of course, very smart people you're working with that you can learn from.
But really we felt Acxiom kind of got away from what made Fusion special, which is working with community based banks and credit unions. And so we started Infusion marketing as a way to go back to the community bank market, the credit union market, and really pick up the heritage of Fusion, but add to it everything we learned from Axiom as well as the advancements of modern technology. And so in Fusion, very much and very intentionally ties into the legacy of Fusion.
A lot of what we do in terms of the foundational concepts go all the way back to Art and Dan Art and Don Rather and what they built at Fusion. So we're very proud of that history and heritage and.
And actually still work with some clients who were former Fusion clients.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's neat to see that kind of combination of the legacy that you're talking about. Ann, you could talk about curiosity and learning and the ongoing advancements and some of the fundamentals of audience and media and offer may have started in the database and mail, but it's perfectly suited to the digital world. And so seeing that sort of where we are today, we're very much an omnichannel, data driven firm that with the focus on curiosity and learning and discipline and all those things.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Yeah, even email, back in my Fusion days was just getting started as a channel. And so the overwhelming part of what we did at Fusion was direct mail, which still works and has been a proven marketing channel for many years, over and over again, proven its effectiveness. When you send someone a piece of mail, you really don't have any view to what percentage of people pick it up and read it right away, what percentage throw it away without looking at it, what percentage put it aside and read it later.
With digital marketing, we maintain the integrity of the targeting, and that's where we hold that legacy of what Fusion proved is consistently predictable data for targeting.
So you still start there. But we have this rich insight into how the folks we target interact with the marketing, how many times they see it, how many times they click on it, and how that correlates ultimately with whether or not they purchase a product. And some ways regret that Art never got to see the digital world and the ability to really close that loop from an analytics perspective.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: And so here we are today, growing, adding clients and impact and all those things. Why are we doing a podcast, Tim, other than the fact I talked you
[00:08:28] Speaker B: into doing the thing? So Infusion has a really unique perspective on what's happening in the industry, and unique in a couple of ways. One, it's growing every day. So we get data in every day from banks and credit unions all across the country.
And we have built a standardized data model that allows us to take that data and transform it into normative intelligence and really a lights out, automated rapid fire kind of way. At the same time, we are updating, we're getting updated data every day.
We also are speaking to bankers about that data in the context of what's happening in their organizations.
So we're hearing directly from their mouths the cause and effect relationships between over performance and underperformance in certain key metrics and what's working and what's not working for them.
So you have the data element, you have that really qualitative element of the conversation. But then you have the third element which is our history as bankers, having experienced 9, 11 and the financial crisis and other different challenges in the industry as bankers.
And so when you put the three together, we think that we have a unique knowledge base, a unique finger on the pulse of what's happening in the industry.
And it would be one thing if we lived in a static world, there would still be value in that perspective. But if 2020 taught us anything is we don't live in a static world. And so you have this crazy combination of a global pandemic, interest rates dropping from, you know, 150 basis points in a couple of months, this massive flood of federal stimulus into the economy which has flooded all the industry with liquidity.
So how do you try to pull apart what the data is telling us about the implications of all of this? And most importantly, what would you do going forward? And we just think we have a unique perspective there in terms of what we can bring to bear.
So what you'll be hearing in these, these dispatches from the front line are not just from Dan and myself, but from our clients and who can share in their own words how their particular brands are impacted by different trends, how they've been able to respond, what they've learned along the way.
And we're very intentional in choosing the roster of clients and subjects to be relevant. We're super excited about this initiative and really want to be able to be a more prominent pollinator in the industry of the most up to date intelligence on what's working, what's not working, what's happening out there.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And so we talk a lot about, of course the science is really cool, very in depth and the accumulation expertise and the unique perspective.
One of the most inspiring things to me is the relationships we have. And you touched on that with years and decades of, of close working with some really bright and high quality folks around the country. And so that's. So let's talk a little more about some of the profile of the types of people, some of their roles, some of their backgrounds that we've already invited to be on the show or look forward to very quickly inviting on the show. And obviously we're not going to use names right now because this is casting a vision, but give our listeners a sense of who we're inviting.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's a great cross section of the types of different ways brands try to find their place in the market. So for example, we'll have CMOs of banking companies that have been really essentially components of a larger mortgage operation that are trying to turn themselves into true commercial banks. You will hear from credit union executives who are in a, in a progression to from a share strategy into a true checking driven relationship strategy. You'll hear from brands who are trying to really make the transition from product driven, price driven types of organizations to value relationship driven organizations. So you'll hear from marketing execs, retail execs, and that'll end up covering ground from marketing strategy, analytics, product strategy, pricing strategies, how sales integrates, how the sales organization integrates with those other components, how the sum hopefully is greater than the parts if it's put together properly. And so again, real excited about the roster of folks who we'll be bringing to this podcast.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And if you're interested, you have a unique perspective you want to share, we'd love to talk to you about being a guest on the show. So what is. So Tim, let's talk a little bit about the name. So what does top quartile convey to you or what are we trying to convey about the name?
[00:13:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I think our mission is in fact our mission statement is to help community banks and credit unions thrive.
And what that means is to be in the top quartile of performers out in the industry.
And it's interesting looking at our normative data and then as we go through our peer group assessments with clients and we talk about why you over perform here, underperform there.
Things like geography and size of institution come into play here and there. But 90% of the time, 95% of the time it's the strategies organizations undertaker either intentionally or otherwise that drive differentiation. And so really what we want to hone in on here are what are the particular sets of strategies and tactics and ideas that drive top quartile performance? In other words, you're outperforming 75% of the market because you figured out how to make the particular strategy you've undertaken work in the environment you're in.
And so I think that's the concept. I think most bankers are familiar with quartile ranking, whether it's comparing themselves within the industry or just looking at the relative profitability of their own customers, that that concept I think applies. I think to me what makes it connect with, with our stuff is the fact that strategy does make a difference. It does differentiate.
And organizations that underperform typically are less focused, less clear on their strategy. They struggle to execute, they can't maintain the basic disciplines of solid execution. So that's really what we want to bring in this podcast to the industry is what are the factors that correlate with top quartile performance and the fundamental metrics to define profitable banking?
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. We all know it's also not a snap your fingers and jump to the top quartile on a particular metric. So as you talk about strategies, sometimes we work with clients, or often clients have stayed with us over years and decades and you see that progression of where they're able to really double down on strengths, then it's a strong correlation with reaching top quartile and whatever their goal is.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: And I think hopefully a differentiator of this podcast will be how tangible the information is, whether we're talking about statistics or we're talking about really specific examples of high performance, rather than talking in generalities or buzzwords.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: And so to that end of the tangible stuff, what the tagline that we came up with or the promise statement is stories or dispatches from the front lines of growth.
And that's unique, just like the name. So what does that mean to you?
[00:16:39] Speaker B: You start at the end with the term growth. Growth can mean a lot of different things and growth priorities are different for different organizations at points in time.
So that's what will make this, I think really interesting is if you're trying to grow your mortgage business or you're trying to grow your auto loan portfolio, if you're trying to transition from indirect lending to direct lending, if you're trying to grow your checking base, which pretty much everyone is trying to do, if you're trying to grow non interest income or you're trying to grow deposits, those are all different forms of growth.
And so we start with what does growth mean when we, you know, that again comes back to what you know, being really intentional about tangible examples of growth that are relevant to anyone in the industry.
And then we say dispatches from the front Lines would really be folks who are in spec who are growing in particular contexts with, as you alluded to, maybe unique challenges that they're dealing with or multi year challenges that'll resonate with other folks in the industry and specific tangible stories.
Again, one of the challenges with analytics is and you and I could do 100 shows about relative decile performance or standard deviations on certain statistics, but ultimately if it doesn't connect to the real world, no one's going to listen. And there's a great, I wish I had the quote in front of me, but there's a great Einstein quote where he talks about the less connected mathematics is to the actual world, the less true it is in a sense. And so I think here the more connected these stories are to what people who listen are dealing with every day, the more true to life they are, the more actionable they are, the more helpful they'll be, hopefully.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: And so the focus on real growth, whatever that is. And there's different types, right? There's growth in capabilities, there's all the things that were mentioned in terms of organizational outcomes. But then what are those tangible steps that are being taken?
What are those actions that lead to the growth? And ultimately I think some of the double meaning or the layered meaning in it is one of the things that want to hope to help contribute. Tim, you talked about pollinating the industry is growing the knowledge base, elevating the art and science in the industry. And so the conversations contribute to that individual growth, that company growth and ultimately the industry growth.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And I think that goes back to recapturing some of the heritage of Fusion, who again was really on the Vanguard 25, 30 years ago there in that way known as a real source of industry intelligence. We want to pick that legacy up for sure. I think it's not just learning from successful strategies, it's also learning from getting shot out of the saddle or learning from mistakes.
That's where I think there's sometimes just as much value. And so you'll hear that too from the folks that we've chosen here. These are folks who aren't afraid to talk about where, where they the strategy didn't work out as planned or worked out differently than they expected.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: And you talked about dynamic environment. Right. So you know, 2020 is a year like probably many or few.
Don't say it. Unprecedented is an overused term. If you go back in history, there's enough echoes, but certainly 2020 is going to go down as one, as a year to remember.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we've seen across the board, We've probably done 60 assessments for clients in the last five or six months looking at their customer base and any kind of year over year types of trend analyses.
And we've seen anywhere from 15 to 35% growth in checking account balances, checking portfolio balances.
That's in the context of I remember years at the bank fighting tooth and nail to get 1 or 2% growth and you felt like you really achieved something. And then we have this massive wave where the industry grows 25% in one year. And so we said to a lot of clients, you may be in banking for 40 years, you'll never see anything like this again.
That's extreme. But of course the question is, how long is it going to last?
Is that tide ultimately going to recede and what are the implications? Again, all the reasons to be thinking about these things and taking the best data and experience together that we have and trying to assess where we are and where we're going.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: And the stories, I think, really come in when helping people think about the implications of their strategy and the customer behavior, because anecdotes can be very useful for inspiring investigation.
And when you look at the data and then you ask, hey, when you hear enough similar anecdotes and enough trends in the data, that sort of helps really paint to your point earlier, what's a true trend versus something you might read on some industry blog of somebody pontificating, which has a place, but testing that against the data and seeing, okay, what are people who make decisions about their wallets, their financials doing on a daily basis and how does that aggregate up?
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's again, that intersection of it was really fundamental behavior. And that again goes back to the fusion was really built on a behavioral segmentation mentality, which is still the most predictive data that's ever existed. And we prove that every day through our different analytics. So what is behavioral data? Well, behavioral data ultimately is the intersection of how people experience, in our context, experience, the use of financial products and how that shows up in actual correlations of data. So that's the combination we want to try to bring together.
And it's a good sanity check too, because you look at certain data points and you say this really doesn't seem like it corresponds with reality.
And a lot of times when you do the digging, you find out it's an issue with the data because of that lack of correspondence.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: And it's interesting to see for as long as we've both been in the industry, you hear People talking about the growth of what became digital banking. And some of that is really happening when you look at the data and the behavior, and then some things are taking longer than people imagine. It reminds you of the Bill Gates quote. People overestimate what something's going to happen in a year, but they underestimate what happens in 10 years.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And of course, if you want to really pick a almost buzzword cliche, it's the speed of change, that phrase. But with that said, again, you look at 2020 and how, forget what we view all experience as individuals, but how it's affected bank, credit union portfolios. It really is amazing. And astounding would be maybe a better word.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: And that's where the outside perspective combined with your own, the own leadership expertise is really critical. That fusion of perspectives and fusion of data sources and ultimately fusion of perspectives.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: But then it's the other side of it is again, that balance is if you did a FICO distribution by demographic strata and you compare, you would find it hasn't really changed that much in 40 years. Behavior, there are still a range of behaviors and there always have been, there always will be.
So it's understanding how to contextualize those behavioral data points to what's happening today and what we think will happen tomorrow.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. What a great summary.
And we're excited to kick this off. Excited to do it. And as we get closer to the end of this inaugural episode, think about, what's that perspective?
Tim, if you could email your younger self, say 25 years ago, back to that young fusion marketing person just starting off, what advice would you offer yourself?
[00:25:24] Speaker B: It's really a great question. I would just say probably more than anything else, it's been so consistently proven through a lot of folks in the industry that we're in, and particularly who do the jobs we do get lost in the forest because there's so much data, there's so much noise at the end of the day, it generally comes.
It comes down to two or three or four factors that stand out and consistently bring clarity to what's happening.
And it's trust your instincts. When you see something that may appear to be too simplistic as an answer, a lot of times actually that's indication that you're on the right track. And so I go back to, I think back to those early days and we were figuring a lot of stuff out as we went because no one had ever had looked at data that way before, been able to organize data like that. We fast forward to the day, these same sorts of predictive correlated data continue to perform consistently and you can get hung up on certain anomalies that at the end of the day wouldn't end up making a difference and would lead you down a path where you'd be back at some future point to where you started. And so that's the thing, the maintaining focus on the data that really makes a difference and how that corresponds with the business challenge that you're trying to deal with and not getting pulled aside by the shiny object or the thread that you could pull forever and not get anywhere. From a bank marketing analytics perspective, that's really, I think the key thing is we've got almost too much data. So it's the ability to bring it down to the essence and distill it down to the essence and trust your conclusions and not continually trying to second guess yourself.
So that's one thing, I think the value of the curiosity factor and the discipline to measure, track, learn, it just pays off over and over again.
And a lot of times as to pick up on what it's confirmational. Yeah, it turned out I was right about this. Sometimes it's not.
So those things I think would be things I would tell myself, trust your instincts, have confidence and then learn. For every interaction, and this is something we really strive for at Infusion, is to learn from every, not just every piece of data, but every interaction we have with a client.
Everyone sees things a little differently and you can learn from the different perspectives on the data.
Last thing I would say is what has become one of our core values at Infusion and I think ties into why we're doing this podcast, which is we have a core value called blan yap. That is a Louisiana term. You can look it up, Google it, but it's basically give a little bit more. When you go to Eaton, Louisiana, you always get two or three extra shrimp, extra crawfish.
When you provide a service like we provide, give clients more than they paid for, more than they asked for, more than they were expecting. And that's going to pay off for you every time. It's going to pay off for you every time. And so we strive for that. That's one of the reasons we're doing this podcast, is to really live up to that value.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: What a great way to wrap it up.
So thanks, Tim, for casting the vision for Top Quartile. This is the podcast that strives to bring you real stories from the front lines of growth from the executives at different community focused institutions really all over the country that are doing some exciting things in data and analytics and marketing and sales, and really all the growth drivers. And that's what we're excited to kick off today and to embark on this journey for all the reasons that Tim you so eloquently described. So thanks everybody and look forward to many more.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Thank you, Dan.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: That's it for today on Top Quartile. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to Top Quartile wherever you find podcasts on any podcast app. And while you're at it, we'd really appreciate a five star rating. And if you're interested in getting an opportunity assessment, head over to infusionmarketinggroup.com to learn more. Thanks for listening.
