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Home > Resources > Reframing Personalized Engagement: Synovus’s Partnership with Personetics

Synovus Case Study

Reframing Personalized Engagement: Synovus’s Partnership with Personetics

Download the Case Study

Synovus Case Study

Reframing Personalized Engagement: Synovus’s Partnership with Personetics

Download the Case Study

Download the Synovus-Personetics Case Study

Synovus + Personetics achieved

+60

Personetics-powered insights with 20% Engagement rate

4.3/5 stars

Average customer feedback rating on personalized insights

+10 points

Increase in customer satisfaction for actionable financial guidance

19%

Conversion Rate on Zelle account actionable insight

Executive Summary

Executive Summary

Synovus, the 8th largest bank headquartered in the Southeast U.S., partnered with Personetics to personalize its digital experience and deliver data-driven financial insights to its 300,000 consumer digital banking clients. In less than a year, the results showed a strong tie between insights engagement and stronger performance metrics. Clients engaging with the insights since launch grew their average relationship balances at a higher rate, demonstrated stronger cross-sell performance, and rated Synovus higher than pre-launch in areas such as delivering quick tips and tools to improving their financial well-being.

The key to success has been a focus on financial data-driven insights, a collaborative partnership, and a human-centered approach. Building on this success, Synovus plans to leverage these actionable personalized insights to create an interactive “virtual financial advisor” for every client, further enhancing their digital banking experience.

Synovus in numbers

$60

BILLION IN ASSETS

8th

LARGEST BANK HQ IN THE SOUTHEAST U.S.

+1M

CLIENTS

300,000

CONSUMER DIGITAL USERS

247

BRANCHES ACROSS FIVE STATES (GA, AL, SC, FL, TN)

Key Metrics - Q1 2024

  • Synovus now has over 60 Personetics-powered insights actively deployed
  • 20% of Synovus’ 300,000+ digital users are highly engaged with insights
    & advice
  • Deposit gains: Engaged users saw higher growth (7% vs. 4%)
  • Product cross-sell increased more for clients engaged with actionable insights
  • Attained a 19% conversion rate on Zelle account actionable insight
  • 5 custom insights were quickly triggered through Personetics Engagement Builder, segmented to mass affluent deposit savings

“We used to put people in these isolated boxes – the branch for personal engagement, digital for self-service utility, marketing for promotions, but that episodic approach just doesn't work anymore in an always-on world. We needed to not only focus on transactions, but on helping customers manage their everyday finances and identify broader spending patterns."

Liz Wolverton

EVP, Head of Consumer Banking and Brand Experience

Synovus

The Challenge: Creating Deeper Digital Engagement at Scale

Synovus, sought a radical transformation of its digital channels, moving beyond transaction utilities to create true engagement platforms with deeper customer personalization.

Synovus envisioned a unified, persistent engagement experience across all touchpoints. This platform would offer customers timely, personalized insights and tailored advice precisely based on their specific financial needs and life circumstances. However, achieving this ambitious goal came with a critical constraint: limited resources and a pressing need for rapid execution.

As an innovative bank aiming to compete with the largest banks through technology, Synovus prioritized the following for success:

Synovus’ Prioritization for Success

  1. Personalization: Delivering a truly engaging experience required a solution that enabled deep customer personalization aligned with Synovus’ brand promise.
  2. Engagement: Building ongoing interactions to create a relationship-based experience beyond simple transactions.
  3. Fast Delivery (Time-to-Market): With a strong sense of urgency, Synovus needed a solution that could be implemented quickly with built-in expertise for a strong, agile foundation.
  4. Resource Efficiency: Partnering with a platform that supports its lean team with efficient and flexible deployments with ease.
  5. Independent Insight Creation & Control: Empowering Synovus to independently manage personalized insights, ensuring flexibility and control over the customer experience. Personetics Engagement Builder offering perfectly aligned with this requirement.
  6. Scalable Architecture: Adopting scalable architecture to accommodate future growth and functionalities – such as the Personetics Engage Platform built to address current and future needs at scale.

"We were impatient to get world-class personalization capabilities to our customers rapidly. Having a partner who could work alongside us and help us speed up that process was very important to us.”

Liz Wolverton

EVP, Head of Consumer Banking and Brand Experience

Synovus

The Solution: Partnering with Personetics for an AI-Powered Personalized Engagement Platform

Synovus selected Personetics as its strategic partner for financial data-driven personalized engagement, impressed by several key factors:

  • Alignment with Mission and Collaborative Approach. “If you could paint a picture of the ideal partnership with a vendor who could offer impactful, exciting capabilities that align perfectly with your mission, this would be it,” said Wolverton. “Synovus was impressed by Personetics’ willingness to collaborate while leveraging their experience from other large bank deployments. This allowed Synovus to rapidly deploy Personetics Engage – a financial, data-driven personalized engagement solution that integrates advanced data analytics, tailored digital insights, and interactive customer engagement capabilities into the Synovus banking experience.”
  • Built to Buy Advantage: Unlike some vendors requiring extensive customization, Personetics’ “Built to Buy” approach offered a pre-configured solution that Synovus could readily implement and integrate with existing systems. This accelerated time to value and reduced development costs.

  • Tailored Engagement with Personetics Engagement Builder: Personetics Engagement Builder is a codeless creation and management console that empowered Synovus to go beyond a one-size-fits-all approach. The console allowed the bank to tailor specific engagement strategies and personalize the customer experience based on unique needs and behaviors.
  • Strategic Design Partnership: Synovus valued Personetics’ unique expertise as more than just a technology provider. They saw Personetics as a design partner, providing strategic guidance and collaborating on how to best leverage transactional data and AI to achieve Synovus’ customer engagement goals.

The bank's partnership approach consisted of three key workstreams:

  1. Reframing mindsets. Rather than operating in product/channel silos, Synovus reframed how to deliver a unified customer relationship. This included visually mapping how branches, digital, marketing and other departments could work in concert to engage customers persistently.
  2. Focused data strategy. Instead of “boiling the ocean,” Personetics focused the data strategy on specific use cases like identifying frequent check writers to promote the Zelle account. “It helped us build our data muscle iteratively, around simple problems,” said Wolverton.
  3. Humanizing digital engagement. The team challenged themselves to inject more empathy into digital conversations. Changing insight language from “You’re overspending” to “You’re spending differently this month” could improve ratings.

"We're passing the baton between virtual and personal, so it all feels coordinated.”
“Banks must know more about their clients, and to do that, they must be more engaged to deliver the right answer. As consumers, we expect this. As banks, we’ve got to start those building blocks now."

Liz Wolverton

EVP, Head of Consumer Banking and Brand Experience

Synovus

The Results: Guidance that Moves the Engagement Needle

Within just one year, Synovus has seen very impressive results from its Personetics-powered digital experience, including:

  • In-app engagement success. The bank now has over 60 unique AI-driven insights actively deployed, with 20% of digital users engaged. Customers give the insights an excellent 4.3/5-star feedback rating on average.By changing the tone of the Overspend insights, Synovus saw a significant jump in customer satisfaction ratings. With the ability to customize insights through Personetics Engagement Builder, a codeless creation and management console, the bank improved its customer rating from 3.6 to 4.7 out of 5 stars by using a softer, more suggestive tone for the “Possible Balance Issue” insight.
  • Impact of personalized language. By leveraging Personetics BI analysis reports and Engagement Builder, Synovus was able to instantly measure customer reactions and test and modify specific insights – ensuring the highest level of customer feedback on each insight and advice.
  • Boosting team morale. A daily “Quote of the Day” campaign was initiated to inspire and motivate the Synovus team.
  • Deposit and cross-sell gains. Engaged users saw higher growth (7% vs. 4%). Product cross-sell increased more for clients engaged with actionable insights.
  • Higher satisfaction scores. Synovus experienced a significant 10-point increase in customer satisfaction metrics related to providing actionable financial guidance. Customers reported higher satisfaction in receiving quick tips for financial decision-making, managing spending, meeting budget goals, recalling recent communications, and various other aspects of financial management support.
  • Standout personalized campaigns. A standout was a Zelle account insight sent to frequent check writers, driving 19% conversion on click throughs (CTA).

"The results really showcase that our customers welcome and even expect us as their bank to be looking out for their financial wellbeing proactively. It's allowing us to demonstrate the value of a true banking partnership."

Liz Wolverton

EVP, Head of Consumer Banking and Brand Experience

Synovus

What's Next: Guiding Customers Through Key Financial Moments

Looking ahead, Synovus plans to enhance its partnership with Personetics and the personalized guidance capabilities of its digital engagement experience in three key areas:

  1. Advice and Guidance with Synovus’ Brand Promise – By continuing to use the Personetics platform and Engagement Builder console, Synovus will expand its already strong list of insights to be even more prescriptive and supportive. This enhancement will help users navigate through financial life events more effectively with helpful calls to action.
  2. Financial Goal Automation – Helping customers achieve financial goals, such as savings, through automated programs powered by Personetics ACT, will enable Synovus to better support its customers’ financial resilience. This will reduce cognitive load and increase chances of success. Capabilities will include allowing customers to easily initiate automated actions, such as savings transfers or temporarily modifying overdraft settings, directly through insight prompts.
  3. Unified Engagement – Synovus will incorporate Personetics’ transaction intelligence to deliver personalized interactions across all customer touchpoints, including marketing campaigns, outreach scenarios, and relationship manager interactions. This integration will ensure a seamless and personalized experience, whether customers log into their mobile app, visit a branch, or receive an email.

"Synovus is built on being a trusted partner, empowering everyone to reach their financial goals. The Personetics-powered digital experience is a significant step towards fulfilling that mission. By using data to understand each customer's unique situation, we can provide personalized guidance that helps them prioritize their finances.”

Liz Wolverton

EVP, Head of Consumer Banking and Brand Experience

Synovus

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