I admit it – I love using Bankrate.com to find the best savings account rates and to use their online calculators. I’m not the only one, between 3 and 4.5 million Americans use the site every month and that number is growing steadily, up 20% year-over-year.

But my love for the site, has not necessarily translated into universal love for the stock on Wall Street - RATE is down about 27% year to date. But Compete data shows that the company has given investors something to smile about. Recently, Bankrate.com announced the acquisition of CreditCardGuide.com for $44 million in total consideration ($34M in cash, $10M in a two-year earn out). Part of the reason that Bankrate.com management cited for acquiring the company was “CreditCardGuide.com has succeeded in developing a strong organic traffic stream to its site.” Indeed they have.

CreditCardGuide.com has consistently been increasing their SEO traffic (natural search referrals) over the past six months. In August, 90% of all search traffic to the site was from natural search. This is right on par with Bankrate.com standards, which is also around 90% SEO / 10% SEM.

Additionally, CreditCardGuide.com receives nearly 30% of all its traffic from Google, a percentage considerable higher than many sites, including Bankrate.com, which receives about 20% of its site traffic from Google.

Based on these metrics, it seems CreditCardGuide.com - which attracted about 180,000 unique visitors in August, growth of 80% year-over-year) was a strong acquisition for Bankrate.com and will continue to help it strengthen its search-based visitor acquisition strategy.

Note: come back next week for our take on RATE’s Bankaholic.com acquisition!

According to the PGA there are 27 million golfers in the US. For marketers, golf enthusiasts are an enticing target segment; according to the Golf Channel, their average viewer has a household income of $76,000 (compared to approximately $48,000 for all Americans).

That may help explain why so many PGA tournaments have corporate sponsors – The Honda Classic, the Wachovia Championship, the AT&T Pebble Beach ProAm to name a few. Of course the question for these brands – does sponsoring a PGA tournament – a very offline event, lead to more online interest from golf enthusiasts?

Compete identified “golf enthusiasts” in our panel based on people who frequent golf oriented websites. We overlapped that audience with visitors to the domains of a few of the companies that sponsored PGA tournaments this spring. We looked at the index of golf enthusiasts during December 2007 (prior to the PGA 2008 tour kick-off) and again in May (following the PGA spring tournaments we studied).

The data above can help us answer a few questions about the success of these sponsorships:

• Do these brands over index in golf enthusiasts’ visiting their websites? In all cases – Yes. There is between 1.2X and 3.3X greater likelihood of finding a golf enthusiasts visiting these sponsor domains than you’d expect to find based on the size of the golf enthusiast segment online. So, these PGA sponsorships appear to be working
• The second key question – has the index of golf enthusiasts increased or decreased this spring, the same period of time when all of these tournaments were held? In this case, the results are mixed. Between December 2007 and May 2008, three companies saw their index of golf enthusiasts on their website decrease (Mercedes, Wachovia, and Verizon) while VZW was flat, and AT&T and Honda saw a small increase.

It appears from the data that each of these brands succeeds at attracting to their website a target segment that their offline marketing is courting. However, it remains unclear if there is any direct and immediate lift associated with the date of the PGA event and an increase / decrease in the number of golf enthusiasts visiting the site.

Much has been said about the influence of the Hispanic vote in the contentious presidential primaries. However, battling for Hispanics is nothing new to financial services marketers; they’ve been vying for the attention and a larger share of wallet from this important segment for a long time.

Most major brands offer bilingual websites, for example GEICO and Bank of America, as well as specialized products and services, some of which have become controversial. But which marketers are best at bringing Hispanics to their company’s website to shop for new products – regardless of whether those products are credit cards, auto insurance policies, or home equity loans?

Let’s take a look.

*This graph charts the percentage of a site’s online shoppers (it excludes people logging into their accounts and just looks at people shopping for a new product) that are Hispanic. I’ve included only the top performing sites in this chart. There are a whole host of financial services sites that have a much lower percentage of Hispanic visitors to their websites, but they couldn’t fit on the graph.

Based on this data, I have a few observations and questions for the readers of this blog:

• According to eMarketer, between 9.5% and 9.9% of the internet population is Hispanic. However, between 15% and 20% of the shoppers to the top sites in our graph are Hispanic – more than twice what you would expect to find. Is anyone aware of Hispanic-focused campaigns these companies are running?
• Seven of the top ten sites feature auto insurance as their primary product – what is it either about that product or auto insurance marketing that attracts such a high percentage of Hispanics?
• Citibank is in the top five for two different products – Citibank’s checking product and their mortgage product. What is it about Citibank’s advertising (messaging, media placements, or targeted offers) that is resonating so well with the Hispanic segment?

Any requests for other segments?

While the upcoming iPhone launch is capturing the lion’s share of attention in the Wireless industry, the re-introduction of Mobile Banking has been at the core of a movement to make a cell phone your next wallet. Mobile Banking was unsuccessfully launched in the early 2000s, but better offerings and wireless technology have spurred a revival in Mobile Banking Strategies. Though 80% of wireless phones currently have the capability to be used for mobile banking, how will consumers adopt the technology?

In April, Compete Surveyed Active Online Bankers, to better quantify the potential of mobile banking. This study indicates a clear market for Mobile Banking.

• 29% of online bankers said they would definitely or probably use banking features if they available on a wireless phone
• An additional 33% were undecided, illustrating an opportunity for banks and wireless providers to win over another group of consumers

Continue reading “The (Re)Birth of Mobile Banking” »

Do you need a loan? Or maybe you’re looking to loan money to someone else and earn a nice return? Well, join the 37,000 other people who visited prosper.com last month. It’s the “online marketplace for people-to-people lending.”

Whether you’re an entrepreneur looking to start a business or someone looking for a better return on your investments, you’ll find this site a wealth (yes) of information and opportunity. Take the following example:

This guy says “I am requesting this loan for my wife so she can start her home based business selling jewelry. She currently works as a hair stylist…this loan is a boost we need to get her project rolling right away. With the income potential anpeod our own incomes, paying this loan is not a problem. Thank you for considering our loan and our request.”

Based on this information, Prosper creates an online market place similar to Ebay.com where lenders “bid” on loan requests and indicate what percentage they are willing to loan the money. Borrowers’ credit ratings and repayment history are shared. From my own observations, most of the loans made seem to be in the $100 - $250 range. These small loans are then pooled at a single rate, in this case 13%, to fund the entire loan request. Lenders are then paid back by Prosper, which sets up an automatic, monthly withdrawal from the borrower’s checking account.

As a lender, you can determine if you want to make low risk, low percentage loans (8%-9% range), or fund some riskier opportunities, with rates as high as 29%.

Personally, I’m in the process of setting up a lender account now (typically takes a couple of days to transfer money in). There might be some great investment opportunities out there.

My grandmother used to hide a $2 bill (not two $1 bills, but an actual $2 bill) every time she visited my house. Of course, when I found it she’d tell me to put it in my savings account. Now I’ve got about 57 $2 bills that I need to deposit. I want a high interest rate, a very low minimum balance and no fees. After a bit of research, here’s what I found.

Before you go to any bank website, check out an informative and helpful site, BankRate.com (2.3 million people per month – click on the “checking and savings” tab). You’ll learn which banks offer the highest money market / savings account rates across the country.

From there I learned Zion’s Bank is paying the highest rate in the country right now, 5.07% APY with a $1,000 minimum deposit. Not having quite that much cash on hand I found HSBCdirect.com pays 5.05% APY and has a $1 minimum deposit. This is who I ended up opening an account with.

Other banks you may want to consider that pay comparable rates are EmigrantDirect.com (5.00% APY) and CaptialOneDirect.com (5.00% APY). Both have a lot of site traffic, 320,000 and 142,000 people per month respectively.

Lastly, you may have heard of INGDirect.com. While I find their online experience great (and so do a lot of other people – 1.9 million people per month), they no longer pay as competitive of a rate, 4.35% APY.

So, the next time your grandmother decides to teach you a lesson about saving money, tell her you’ve moved on from the piggy bank to an online savings account offering 4-5% APY…with those kinds of rates, she might think twice about hiding $2 bills around the house and open an account of her own!

(Note – rates change on a daily basis. All rates quoted in this article are from 10:45AM ET, Monday July 24, 2006)