9-103-021
REV: MARCH 16, 2007
F. ASÍS MARTÍNEZ-JEREZ
V.G. NARAYANAN
Internet Customer Acquisition Strategy at
Bankinter
I believe that God must have made the Internet for Bankinter, so that the bank could progress and grow
stronger.
— Juan Arena, Bankinter Chairman
There is a series of comic books about the Roman Empire called Asterix, about a small Gaul village that
continually maintains its independence from Caesar through use of their wits and a magic potion. I often think
of Bankinter as the village. We are constantly outwitting our rivals, and we’re getting very close to developing
our own magic potion.
— Jaime Echegoyen, Bankinter CEO
Ana Peralta looked at the neatly organized stacks of reports on her desk. It had been a month
since she had added the e-collaborators channel to her job description as director of the Internet
network at Bankinter, and she was already deeply involved in her analysis. Her immediate task was
to prepare an executive summary of the Internet business and the e-collaborators program. The
e-collaborator program was the bank’s latest attempt, within the portalization strategy the bank had
followed since 1999, to attract Internet customers at a low cost. She planned to assess the health of the
business and the effectiveness of its marketing campaigns over the last few years and make
recommendations for the upcoming year: 2002.
The bank’s Internet marketing campaigns in 2001 had been hugely successful. New-customer
acquisition costs dropped, while new customers increased exponentially. The bank’s Internet branch,
referred to in the bank as Branch 8700, had experienced rapid growth during 2001, largely due to the
e-collaborators program, which placed Bankinter banners in high-traffic online sites that linked the
user to ebankinter.com, Bankinter’s online channel. The program, following on the heels of a
promotion that offered a financial incentive to anyone who opened a Bankinter account, resulted in...