SouthState Bank Case Study

SouthState Bank

Digital-First Approach to Banking and Lending

SouthState Bank partnered with Sagepath Reply to modernize its brand and digital presence as it evolved from a community bank into a larger regional institution. The engagement combined a website replatform, brand refresh, and digital-first marketing strategy to create a stronger foundation for customer acquisition and long-term growth.

The Challenge

As SouthState expanded through organic growth and acquisitions, it needed a digital experience that better reflected its position as a modern regional bank. The challenge became more complex as the new website launched during a major merger and the global pandemic, requiring the bank to attract new customers and grow lending activity in a highly uncertain environment.

The Solution

Sagepath Reply developed a strategic roadmap centered on an enterprise CMS, refreshed branding, and a more customer-focused digital experience. Kentico was selected for its scalability and integration capabilities, and the new site was designed to be mobile-optimized and easier for customers to navigate. To support acquisition goals, the team also built a flexible, data-driven media strategy across programmatic advertising, paid social, paid search, and promoted content. Analytics and measurement were embedded throughout the effort to track ROI, optimize campaigns, and improve performance over time.

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Reaching New Customers in a Challenging Environment

The launch of the new website coincided with a large merger for SouthState along with a global pandemic. Plans were already in place to shift a majority of SouthState’s advertising to digital first approach. Bringing in new customers and growing their loan business would be no easy feat.

Finding Efficiency and Flexibility

With many unknowns facing the team, we created a media plan for SouthState Bank that allowed for flexibility routed in data, allowing the bank to have a full funnel marketing strategy that would reach their goals of driving online acquisition for Checking, Mortgage, and Consumer Loans.

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Hyper-Targeted Digital

We did fewer things and did them well, which is important when marketing budgets are limited. With the end goal in mind, we developed a comprehensive media plan that included programmatic advertising, paid social, and paid search to increase awareness, drive consideration, and ultimately convert prospects into customers.

Test, Measure, Adjust, Repeat

When our paid media team is spending real dollars to drive users to the website, it’s important to make sure the website is setup to track the ROI appropriately. This was no exception for our analytics team and SouthState. Whether it’s placing pixels, tracking conversions, standardizing UTM’s, analyzing ad groups, or visualizing return on ad spend - our analytics team has you covered.

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Measuring Awareness Across the Board

For our brand campaign, we deployed a digital survey that allowed us to measure awareness from those who were and were not exposed to our ads, showing that seeing an ad does influence not only a person’s awareness of your brand, but also their sentiment toward your brand. We leveraged promoted content to drive traffic to the website, educate consumers, as well as fill our retargeting pools for product promotion. This full funnel approach allowed us to cast a wide enough net to get in front of new consumers, while ultimately converting those prospects into customers.

The Impact

The result was a more modern digital foundation for SouthState’s brand, banking, and lending experience. With a responsive website, stronger analytics, and a full-funnel digital marketing strategy in place, SouthState was better positioned to reach new audiences, improve brand awareness, and convert prospects into customers.

SouthState Bank

ROAS

121%

ROAS for new checking account revenue.

ROAS

1,156%

ROAS for mortgage loan lifetime value.

Brand Recognition

57%

increase in brand recognition from customers throughout the Southeast.