How BankPlus brought in $250 million in deposits with OptimaFI

Key metrics

OptimaFI helped BankPlus generate new deposits with a data-backed Growth marketing program.

Overview

AUM: ~$8B in assets

Locations: 80+ financial centers and ATMs across Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida

How OptimaFI Helped: BankPlus needed to more accurately identify growth opportunities and allocate marketing resources with precision. Within the first six months, the OptimaFI Growth program generated more than $250 million in deposits — 75% of which were new money.

Solutions: Acquisition, Onboarding, Cross Sell, CD Marketplace

“OptimaFI's data and modeling work. Their marketing strategy is analytics-based, and we proved it.”

Rob Armour,
Chief Marketing and Product Development Officer, BankPlus

Challenge

Growing deposits without wasting spend

BankPlus, a Mississippi bank with nearly $8 billion in assets and more than 80 branches, needed to grow deposits quickly without wasting marketing dollars or taking on unnecessary risk.

Traditional marketing had limited visibility and required broad, expensive outreach. Additionally, while broad campaigns and high-level planning tools provided direction, they lacked the precision needed to make confident, product-level investment decisions.

BankPlus wanted more granular insight, sub-segment targeting, predictable performance, less risk and a partner with industry expertise.

What success required

• Guaranteed ROI
• Large-balance deposit growth
• Sub-segment precision
• Measurable, adaptable execution

Solution

Pay for Performance model

BankPlus partnered with OptimaFI to help execute Pay for Performance growth marketing campaigns powered by granular analytics and precision targeting. The goal was to acquire, onboard, and cross-sell to as many new households as possible.

The bank only paid for accounts that were successfully opened, replacing broad outreach with focused micro-segmentation and measurable execution.

Robust Opportunity Assessment

OptimaFI analyzed the product mix, household behavior and account-level detail using the OptimaFI Peer Performance Index, a continuously updated database of 12+ billion data points from hundreds of peer banks and credit unions used for benchmarking.

The methodology let BankPlus:

• Compare itself to hundreds of institutions at a granular level
• Unearth high-value opportunities and prioritize those that align with near-term strategy

“Instead of broad loan and deposit categories, we could compare the household mix, product penetration, and sub-segments that made up those numbers.”

Rob Armour,
Chief Marketing & Product Development Officer, BankPlus

Sub-segment targeting

Finding that many opportunities existed within small, highly responsive client groups. OptimaFI was able to narrow in on audiences that were more likely to convert. BankPlus's precision-microtargeting was based on:

• Propensity models
• Product gap analysis
• Behavioral indicators
• Competitive benchmarking

High-value marketing campaigns

BankPlus only paid for accounts it opened. It benefited from digital marketing analytics that pair demographic and financial propensities with expected digital performance to create targeted campaigns that follow prospects across devices and platforms.

“Their platform sticks to an IP address and follows the customer everywhere — much more effective than a one-off email.”

Rob Armour,
Chief Marketing & Product Development Officer, BankPlus

Adaptive strategy

OptimaFI and BankPlus built a 12-month outreach calendar to focus on high-value deposit campaigns, select product categories aligned with strategy and pivots for changing market conditions.

“It lets you be nimble. When conditions change, we can look back at the opportunities identified months earlier and find one that fits the new strategic need.”

Rob Armour,
Chief Marketing & Product Development Officer, BankPlus

Results

High-impact growth

In just six months, the OptimaFI Growth program generated more than $250 million in deposits — 75% of which were new money — validating the model and leading BankPlus to integrate OptimaFI into its core growth strategy.

Demonstrable ROI

OptimaFI made it easy to tie campaign performance to results and track performance. In a head-to- head comparison using the same audience segment, the OptimaFI Growth campaigns outperformed BankPlus’s internal campaigns by 18x.

Growth without risk or waste

By pairing granular analytics with a structure where only results were paid for, the bank replaced broad marketing risk with precision investment, and built a repeatable engine for growth.

“OptimaFI takes all the pressure off the client — they design programs that work, and we only Pay for Results.”

Rob Armour,
Chief Marketing & Product Development Officer, BankPlus