Colony Bank’s Digital Communications Playbook

[Music playing]

Jim Marous (00:10):

Hi, this is Jim Marous, coming to you from CoLab 2026 in San Diego, California, at the Gaylord Resort. I'm really excited to be here today because we're going to be interviewing a number of people that are really stepping up their game and doing things differently than the masses.

Jim Marous (00:28):

As you know, the FIsionaries Podcast is really talking to organizations that are outpunching their weight in what they're doing. Sometimes very small, modest organizations doing what the big guys haven't even figured out yet.

Jim Marous (00:42):

So, today, we have Jeffrey Wright, Digital Communications Manager at Colony Bank and out of Georgia, right?

Jeffrey Wright (00:49):

Yes.

Jim Marous (00:50):

And he's a digital communications manager which is interesting because that title probably didn't exist four years ago, or certainly didn't mean the same thing. Being involved in digital communications.

Jim Marous (01:04):

What's interesting is we have to find those specialists (sometimes from different industries) who really understand the dynamics of what this is all about. So, why don't we start at the beginning? Where did you come from, and how long have you been at Colony?

Jeffrey Wright (01:18):

So, I've been at Colony for about three and a half years. Before that, I was with a mortgage company for three years. And prior to that, I was working with a lawn and landscape company, helping them with internal operations, but I was also a stay-at-home dad.

Jeffrey Wright (01:34):

And so, that informs a little bit of my experience. And also, it's probably one of the reasons that I've been drawn to a community bank is because of my involvement in the local community as well.

Jim Marous (01:46):

So, digital communications is a mindset. It's a strategy. But being in digital communications myself, it's a completely, continually evolving space.

Jeffrey Wright (01:58):

It is. And I like that you talk a little bit about mindset. I've been having conversations recently with some friends. And I was thinking about the challenges that community banks have.

Jeffrey Wright (02:09):

And they're listed on lots of podcasts and lots of sessions that you go to attend. And realistically, the challenges are very similar that you see to other financial service institutions.

Jeffrey Wright (02:25):

But I think one of the things that community banks are really struggling with right now is that we've always relied upon relationship banking and relationships with those that are in the community. Humans, right.

Jeffrey Wright (02:37):

And in the digital world, that relationship has changed a little bit because before digital banking came along, I feel like you either asked a parent or grandparent, maybe a friend, about banking, but more often than not, you actually walked into a branch.

Jeffrey Wright (02:51):

Well, you don't have to walk into a branch now to get that information. Which means all the benefits that you get from a community bank, you may not be aware of. So, I feel like part of my job in the digital banking world is how do I initiate that relationship that's evolved and changed over the years early enough that they start to see the benefits.

Jeffrey Wright (03:13):

And last fall, there was an ABA conference I attended, and they talked that we're starting to see more Gen Zers actually starting to go back into branches. And so, I'm trying to nibble a little bit at that in terms of why is that happening, and how do we encourage that. Because I do think that there's a real benefit to having that relationship with your bank.

Jim Marous (03:35):

So, it's interesting. When you come into a branch, you've kind of committed to having an engagement. You've committed to talk to a human. You don't lose them in a nanosecond. They don't come in and go out immediately.

Jim Marous (03:46):

But that is what they do on digital communication. So, how have you structured the data and the communication style to make it that you can keep the member's attention, the customer's attention beyond just a quick look at it, maybe a digital offer or something else that goes on?

Jeffrey Wright (04:04):

I'm trying to think about why are they coming to us and what are they looking for. So, we have a ton of data at our disposal now. And the data can actually be very insightful for us where we can hone in surgically and maybe what type of communication needs to be there.

Jeffrey Wright (04:23):

But part of the marketing piece is still, how are we asking and why are they there? So, it's great to tell them that they have a CD offer that's there for them. But maybe they don't even know what a CD is. And maybe we don't even start there, is what are they saving for?

Jeffrey Wright (04:39):

So, we need to think about what is the basic reason, much like when they're going to their search engine and typing in whatever the question is. Our responses or the information that we have to have digitally needs to match that.

Jeffrey Wright (04:52):

And part of that may be educating them along the way. Maybe they don't know. So, we're taking on the role of what the banker would do if they'd walked into the branch. So, I think that's-

Jim Marous (05:03):

Trying to humanize the digital experience.

Jeffrey Wright (05:04):

Absolutely. Because—

Jim Marous (05:05):

But more than just making the word sound good. It's your selection of who you contact, when you contact. We don't want to be sold. We want to be offered … as we're going in the future, we're going to get more and more time-sensitive as to when we hit them in much the same way that Amazon and others do it.

Jim Marous (05:25):

And even on your TV with Hulu and streaming services that the communication timing is just as important as who you hit. So, when you came to Colony, what was the biggest challenge or the area that needed the most work from your perspective?

Jim Marous (05:40):

Because I'm sure our audience realizes they're not up to speed yet. So, what was the first thing you said, “I got to fix this?”

Jeffrey Wright (05:48):

I had to have more trust in the data, honestly. And you hear that all over the place in terms of like-

Jim Marous (05:55):

But it's yours.

Jeffrey Wright (05:56):

It is. It is the problem that I had. And I was also learning a new system. I was unfamiliar with Marketing Cloud. But I knew customer journeys. And I knew what, ultimately, people are looking for. There's the emotional part, there's the knowledge part, and then there's the action part.

Jeffrey Wright (06:18):

And the friction is the next piece that we have to solve after the data. So, I've got the data piece, and we're working on that. We work with Alkami for a lot of that in terms of the real-time data that we're looking at.

Jim Marous (06:35):

So important. The last thing you want to do is hit somebody a day late.

Jeffrey Wright (06:40):

Absolutely. Or-

Jim Marous (06:41):

Day early is not so bad. Day late is not good.

Jeffrey Wright (06:43):

Or reach out to them and realize, “Oh, they don't even have that information or that product.”

Jim Marous (06:49):

Or they already do.

Jeffrey Wright (06:50):

Right. Because then we lose the trust. And everything that we're doing in our communications is trying to build trust, build the relationship, because we're kind of standing in for the banker until they actually are talking to the banker or coming into the branch.

Jeffrey Wright (07:06):

And we obviously want to offer those options because those are great ones. But we also want someone to be able to easily find the solution they're looking for. But also, when we're talking to the messaging, it's all about making sure that they don't want to unsubscribe.

Jeffrey Wright (07:20):

Because if they're unsubscribing, that means that we're not relevant to them. And we don't get the chance to be relevant a second time after they've unsubscribed.

Jim Marous (07:27):

So, that's the first thing you need to do?

Jeffrey Wright (07:30):

Yeah.

Jim Marous (07:31):

What are some things that right now challenge you, because of just the movement, not only in the digital communications field, but in the financial services field? What is the one thing you're trying to attack right now to make it so that your communications and Colony Bank is more relevant?

Jim Marous (07:47):

But also, so you can stay on top of the game. It's interesting, I'm going to assume that you're a person who's a transformation agent overall. Because you're in an age category that's maybe not normally seen as a person who's going to understand digital communication, so you have to continually evolve. What challenges are you facing today?

Jeffrey Wright (08:07):

I think keeping abreast of all the different emerging technologies is one of the biggest ones for me. Because you start going down this path and this road, and you're solving for these problems, and you think you have to do it all yourself, and it's finding the resources.

Jeffrey Wright (08:26):

It's one of the reasons I like attending the conferences, but I also have a very robust network even via LinkedIn. And I don't know if it works outside of marketing, but I can tell you that the people that I'm talking with, their customers aren't the customers I'm trying to get.

Jeffrey Wright (08:43):

So, we're all trying to solve the same problem, and we're also trying to solve these unique issues that come up that really aren't that unique. We all think that we have, “Oh, our infrastructure is so much different than everyone else's.”

Jeffrey Wright (09:01):

There might be tweaks here and there, but it's really a Frankenstein type of situation where it doesn't matter the moving parts that you have and the tools that you're using, but it's what you're trying to solve for. And I'd like to think of that in that big picture mode.

Jeffrey Wright (09:20):

The other challenge I think that I'm dealing with right now is just speed. And so, I'm very process oriented. So, if I can get the process down, then I can maybe try and layer my automations in there to makes sense. Not just for the sake of automations.

Jeffrey Wright (09:35):

It's like when PowerPoint first came out, if people still remember what PowerPoint is. Everyone had the typewriter going off and the swooshes and everything was moving, and it distracted from the message.

Jeffrey Wright (09:45):

So, I don't want the automations to distract from what we're trying to do, I want to make everyone's life easier. That's sometimes just in the marketing team and sometimes it's beyond.

Jim Marous (10:00):

So, let me take a short break here and recognize the sponsor of this podcast, Alkami Technologies.

[Music playing]

Jim Marous (10:10):

Welcome back to the FIsionaries Podcast, sponsored by Alkami Technologies.

Jim Marous (10:14):

Who are you segmenting from the standpoint of understanding where the customer is in your journey? You mentioned that earlier. How do you figure that out? Because that's like the secret sauce to figuring out where people are sometimes before they know it.

Jim Marous (10:28):

So, what's the process of figuring out? It's easy when you have a CD renewal or you have somebody that just closed an account or somebody that just applied.

Jeffrey Wright (10:35):

There's an action that, yes, you can respond to those very easily. The marketing data analytics tool that we use from Alkami, which used to be called Segment. And most people, internally, I still have to use the word segment, otherwise they don't know what I'm talking about.

Jeffrey Wright (10:55):

There's one that's out of the box right now that I think is a good indicator of how it uses the key life indicators to help predict what you may be ready for the next conversation. And I'm really excited because we're getting ready to launch this.

Jeffrey Wright (11:10):

I'm waiting for final approval on some of the content. But it is an indicator that looks at people with personal check-ins and accounts that are then using it to spend for their business. They don't have commercial accounts yet. So, what I love-

Jim Marous (11:26):

I'm a great example. I've for a long time had a small business. I used it in the personal side and neither side saw each other.

Jeffrey Wright (11:35):

Well, and what I love about this, is that no one else knows this, but us. So, other competitors out there in the digital world don't know to talk to them about this. And what I also like is that it starts a conversation. Because maybe they're ready to make the move to a commercial account and maybe they're not.

Jeffrey Wright (11:54):

But you know what, I can get them talking to a commercial banker who can actually nurture them and work with them as their business grows, which means that we're also then ready to step in if they need a loan. If they need help with employees and making payments for them.

Jim Marous (12:12):

So, you mentioned (in this answer you just gave me) that you're waiting for some approval on copy.

Jeffrey Wright (12:18):

Yeah.

Jim Marous (12:19):

Understanding digital communication, understanding real-time communication, understanding reaching out to customers at a time of need that is not traditional. It's not like a renewal notice.

Jim Marous (12:33):

How do you sell that internally when many of our leadership people have a hard time? Because we're risk-averse as an industry as opposed to risk management. As a result, we don't want to be wrong.

Jim Marous (12:47):

But the reality is, if you can put it in the human sense of how everybody else in this world is communicating today, we're making errors, but consumers are much more accepting of those than they've ever been.

Jim Marous (12:57):

Because they realize we're all trying to use the best technology we have. We may miss once in a while, but they don't hold us accountable to the fact that “I'm leaving, you don't know me.”

Jim Marous (13:06):

But how do you sell that to management to get out of their way? Or was that management part of the reason you went to Colony? Because you realize they were more accepting of innovation. They did think outside the box. They were in a mode that said, “I can't stand still. I got to evolve.”

Jeffrey Wright (13:24):

When I joined Colony, they were already in a position where they were ready to embrace technology and make these moves, to recognize that they needed to meet the customers where they are. And part of that was — marketing's job is still to facilitate conversations. A conversion in marketing is different than a conversion in sales.

Jeffrey Wright (13:47):

We're trying to get the best possible opportunities for the best possible conversations to lead into the best possible relationships. That I can sell. I can talk to the different lines of business for it.

Jeffrey Wright (13:58):

In our particular instance, one of the nice things about our integration is that the campaigns that I create over in Segment, they go to digital banking, but they also go over to our Salesforce core, and they hit me over in Marketing Cloud.

Jim Marous (14:11):

There you go. It's all part of the communications process. And you have to have these areas talk to each other. I'm sure you're working on trying to make it so the customer care people, the people on the telephones and the chatbots, everything else that's going on.

Jim Marous (14:26):

Because you can't do it … we're great at silos. But you've got to avoid those because we can step on our own toes. We can ask the same questions on multiple channels. We can make it very difficult for the customer to believe that we're digitally astute.

Jeffrey Wright (14:45):

On the marketing account side, I can set up a multi-email journey. But I can put listeners in there. It says any time that they no longer qualify for this, eject them from the journey, don't send them the next email. For us, that's a conversion.

Jeffrey Wright (15:01):

But the nice thing is that we're no longer communicating with them when it's not relevant. The other thing that I do, which not every marketer does, is I start offering fairly early in the option for them to self-eject.

Jeffrey Wright (15:15):

So, you have your call-to-action button, and that says, “Yes, I'm interested.” But what about maybe a smaller button, doesn't have to be as large, but it says, “I'm not interested right now.”

Jeffrey Wright (15:26):

And what I like about that is instead of saying, “I'm not interested ever,” just pause it for a little bit. And that I can also sell to management and to the lines of business.

Jim Marous (15:37):

So, I mentioned this is an evolving area. It's something that we're going very quickly from static communications to dynamic communications to proactive communications. And there's not a single soul in this event that hasn't said “AI” at least a couple of times within their field. And agentic AI, to be more specific.

Jim Marous (16:00):

We're doing fairly well as an industry in back office, evolving with AI. We're not anywhere near where we say we want to be with customer experience AI. Where do you see that going?

Jeffrey Wright (16:11):

So, obviously, we're a salesforce house because we have it for the core in terms of our CRM. And we have it in the Marketing Cloud. And they have agentic. And I've been to the conferences, and I've seen where that's heading. And it mirrors what I'm seeing in other products that are out there.

Jeffrey Wright (16:31):

For me, in the world of marketing, I tend to not just use one AI tool. And sometimes I'll use it just to get my monday.com in order because I just don't have the time. I don't have the bandwidth, and I don't have the resources to do it all myself.

Jeffrey Wright (16:49):

But I think the real direction that we're heading with is we have to accept that it's in our lives somehow. And it's both personal and work. And from a work perspective, it's just understanding how do we get it in a way that we're also using it with compliance department?

Jeffrey Wright (17:10):

Because that's the big piece; is we don't want to do something wrong. We don't want to do it unintentionally.

Jim Marous (17:15):

Do it right and don't use compliance as the excuse for not moving forward. It's a balancing act.

Jeffrey Wright (17:20):

So, we have a lot more conversations with compliance rather than just a back and forth of “Yes, no, yes, no.” It's let's sit down and talk through this and figure out what works, what doesn't work, and what's best both for the industry and the customer.

Jim Marous (17:34):

Jeffrey, how big is Colony Bank?

Jeffrey Wright (17:36):

So, we're just under $4 billion in assets right now. So, some would say that we're a larger community bank.

Jim Marous (17:46):

It depends on who you're comparing to.

Jeffrey Wright (17:47):

It really does.

Jim Marous (17:49):

And is something I try to bring forward in all these conversations we have in the FIsionaries podcast, is you said in the last answer, and you've been feeding me the right lines at the right time in that number one, you can't do it alone.

Jim Marous (18:04):

Number two, you got to find a partner that's going to move fast enough because we're only as fast as our slowest partner, which is something Elon Musk says about SpaceX. And the reality is it's very true that you can't move faster than the slowest element.

Jim Marous (18:18):

And so, if you're not getting information, if you're not getting the ideas from parts of our Alkami, such as Segment and such, if you're not getting from Salesforce, if they're not continually feeding you what's next and you're not feeding your partners what you expect.

Jim Marous (18:35):

Because we're seeing this more and more. We've seen it quite a bit lately in that the organizations are actually pushing their partners (their solution providers) to offer X, Y, or Z or to be able to do X, Y, or Z because you're going to be held back and that's not part of the deal.

Jim Marous (18:50):

And you're not the only partner within your organization that uses parts of Alkami. So, you don't want to stir the pump, but you got to push it because that is still responsible. So, I think it's interesting given what the scenario is that the partnerships are so important because it makes you a star.

Jim Marous (19:08):

And if you had one thing to recommend to the listeners and watchers of the podcast today, only one, what is it?

Jeffrey Wright (19:17):

Be intentional.

Jim Marous (19:19):

What do you mean by that?

Jeffrey Wright (19:20):

So, when we're talking personalization (and this is just one example) is don't use personalization just because you're wanting to throw a name out there or you're wanting to feel that you're connecting with the customer.

Jeffrey Wright (19:37):

As a customer, I don't care if you know me as Jeff or Jeffrey, I don't even care if my name's on there. But I do want to know that you know the date of my CD maturity because that is an element of trust because that means you're looking at my finances when I have to take my eye off of it.

Jim Marous (19:55):

And the bar's getting higher. Because the reality is, yeah, I want you to know that I have this service and my maturities and all this. But very quickly, the consumer is going to say, “You better know me better than that.” I want you to be my GPS that says, “I know what's coming down the road for you, even though you may not know it.”

Jim Marous (20:13):

That’s our ultimate goal. Your comment about being intentional is part of that. You've got to know your North Star and what you have to achieve. You've got to coordinate across the whole organization. There's a lot of people that are impacted by what decisions you make.

Jim Marous (20:26):

You need leadership and a culture that encourages this experimentation. Gosh forbid we should say that in the banking world. And that we can implement against it in an intentional way. Jeff, Jeffrey, whichever one you want to go by today.

Jeffrey Wright (20:40):

I'm good either way.

Jim Marous (20:41):

Hey, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Jeffrey Wright (20:43):

Pleasure. Thank you.

[Music playing]