The Stellar Growth System^sm is a proven data-driven approach to growing market share. We analyze your brand strength, account holder loyalty, competition and product preferences in your market place. We use all of this information to help you create effective strategies to target vulnerable competitors, drive new account openings and increase market share.

The Stellar Growth System^sm will help you leverage your competitors' weaknesses, identify especially vulnerable competitors, improve media buying effectiveness, enhance the account holder experience, reduce attrition and increase account openings significantly over current levels.

Step 1 - Loyalty Assessment
The first step measures your Net Promoter Score^® (NPS). This is the best method to measure account holder loyalty and is a predictor of your company's ability to grow in the future. To do this, we survey your account holders and ask them how likely they are to recommend your institution to their friends, neighbors and colleagues. We also ask them what would have to change at your financial institution to earn a perfect score on the next survey. The scores and comments are put into report form so you can easily see what opportunities exist to improve your loyalty levels.

When combined with the competitors' NPS scores from the general consumer assessment (step 2), a relative measure of loyalty in your market is created. This step reveals what your institution needs to do to improve and by how much, giving you the basis to create plans, tactics and goals all focused on improving the account holder experience.

Step 2 - General Consumer Assessment
Your ability to grow market share is dependent on the strength of your institution's brand in the marketplace. With this second step we measure your brand awareness and determine your brand's personality. We also identify the most important factors to consumers in choosing a financial institution specific to your market. Both quality of service and loyalty levels are ascertained, for you and your competitors, giving you a relative measure of your loyalty levels and service quality.

The information gathered during this step is used to create a brand plan, a list of initiatives all focused on improving your brand strength. In the brand plan, we help you determine ways to position your brand as dominant, leverage competitors' weaknesses and identify vulnerable competitors. We also work to improve both media buying and creative effectiveness as well as help you create offers that are more unique and compelling, improving your marketing effectiveness.

Step 3 - Targeted Acquisition
After completing steps one and two, we will be able to determine a number of key factors that can be incorporated into an effective acquisition strategy. Those factors include identifying the most compelling offer for your market based on what the consumer wants, which competitors have low loyalty levels and should be targeted, and what percent of your market intend on opening a new account in the future.

In addition to the research findings, compelling copy and creative will be developed that will incorporate elements designed to target women, typically the primary decision maker when it comes to banking decisions. The next step in this process will be to analyze your current account holder base to determine the most effective areas to mail. Utilizing account penetration, recent trend activity and geographic convenience, we will utilize Stellar Market Analyzer^sm to model the activity of your database on a carrier route level in order to secure the best postal discounts.

In this day of permission-based marketing, direct mail is still a highly efficient method to use in acquisition strategies. It drives the highest volume of accounts with the lowest acquisition cost and delivers a continuous reinforcement of your brand on a regular basis. Stellar Strategic offers a comprehensive direct mail acquisition strategy that includes training for branch personnel, gift fulfillment, branch collateral, creative and production, front-end and back-end reporting and a pay-for-performance pricing option based on incremental account growth.

Step 4 – Growing Share of Wallet
The last step in developing our Stellar Growth Strategy is to focus on retaining existing relationships (retention) and deepening each of those relationships (cross-selling) through a strategic, long-term process. To grow share of wallet, we need to create dialogue with your account holders in a constant, consistent, relevant and personalized manner.

Creating value that your account holders recognize and appreciate is more than just asking for the business; it is trying to understand what their needs are and tailoring the message to address those needs. The strategy includes highly personalized, value-based touch points, including a relationship survey, relationship building brochure, personal needs assessment and needs-based product and service offers, utilizing the Stellar Predictive Model^sm, to both retain more households and increase the number of accounts per household.

Stellar Strategic is committed to helping your institution dominate your market by implementing a strategic, data-driven approach to growing market share with the Stellar Growth System^sm. Once the first two steps are completed, the data is compiled and presented during a full day, on-site presentation to review results and recommendations. Your institution will gain valuable insight on your market, your brand, the competition, as well as your account holders. At that point, development of a targeted acquisition and/or share of wallet strategies will commence.