Liberty also recently launched Liberty Line, an online newsletter that provides personal finance tips and applications for credit cards, mortgages, and other products. McDonald suggests that an employer or a business take inventory of its staffing to see if employees can cope with, deliver services through, and communicate by way of technology. Liberty used to sell products with ads. Today, it reaches customers using Facebook and e-mail. Liberty sends customers messages at least twice weekly through e-mail blasts and plans to engage more with the use of viral videos.
The bank has had talks with a local university about forming possible partnerships that would allow Liberty to produce viral videos on a regular basis. Also, McDonald says Liberty is using mobile devices to target specific customers for campaigns related to mortgage banking for individual homeowners, future homebuyers, and real estate agents. Individuals can go online, apply for a mortgage, and be processed through technology or a combination of manual and automated processing.
According to Michael Grant, president of the National Bankers Association, Liberty was one of the first banks to use social media and McDonald displays a rare penchant for investing in new technologies to expand his bank’s clientele. “It’s amazing how he’s able to jump on things right away,†Grant says. The NBA comprises about 40 minority member banks–mostly African American banks–with branches in more than 20 cities with more than $8.8 billion in combined assets and more than a million depositors.
(Continued on next page)