Country Bank CMO Shelley Regin shares how her team is using marketing automation, employee brand ambassadors, and financial literacy programs to build lifelong customer relationships.
If you work in bank marketing, you know the job has changed. It’s no longer enough to sponsor the local parade, run a few ads, and call it a day. Today’s bank marketers are expected to drive revenue, prove ROI, and somehow still find time to post on social media.
That’s exactly why we sat down with Shelley Regin for the latest episode of Bound by Banking. Shelley is the Chief Marketing Officer and Community Relations leader at Country Bank in Ware, Massachusetts. With over 30 years in banking, a faculty spot at the ABA Bank Marketing School, and a board seat at NEFMA, she knows just about everybody in community bank marketing, and she knows what’s working right now.
If you can’t watch the full episode, no worries. Here’s a recap of the biggest takeaways from our conversation.
Doubling Down on Marketing Automation (and the Numbers to Prove It)
The first thing we dug into was where Shelley’s team was investing more time and resources, and where they’re shifting priorities some.
The big investment was marketing automation. Country Bank rolled out HubSpot in February 2026, and the early results speak for themselves: 125 leads generated, a couple of mortgage applications in the pipeline, and roughly $750,000 in new deposits. Not bad for a few months of work.
But the real value goes beyond just the numbers. It’s what automation lets the team do differently. Instead of blasting generic campaigns to everyone, they can see the actual customer journey. What is each customer interested in? What actions are they taking, or not taking? That behavioral targeting means customers hear about products when they actually need them, not whenever the marketing calendar says it’s time.
As Shelley put it, marketing automation is every marketer’s dream. Set it up properly, and it works like an extra salesperson who touches base at the right moment without being pushy.
Deprioritizing the Social Media Calendar
Here’s the part that might surprise you. While Country Bank still runs paid social advertising, Shelley’s team has stepped back from the always-on organic social media treadmill. You know the one she’s talking about. A packed content calendar, endless approval rounds for a single graphic, and pressure to post every single day.
Instead, they lean on their brand ambassadors, a.k.a. their own employees. Staff members represent the brand naturally, whether they’re in their home banking centers or out at community events, and the marketing team simply repurposes and shares that authentic content.
The strategy took off after the bank launched its “Made to Make a Difference” tagline in 2021 and got employees genuinely bought in on what the brand stands for. Since then, they’ve seen about a 60% increase in followers and a 44% increase in engagement.
There’s a lesson here for every bank to take away. People connect with people. A quick photo of your team volunteering at a food pantry will often outperform the polished graphic that went through eight rounds of approval. And letting employees carry some of that load frees up your team for the digital marketing work that actually moves customers through the funnel.
Making Data Actionable (Meet the Marketing Unicorn)
When I asked Shelley what data she relies on to make growth decisions, her answer started with a role most bank marketing teams don’t have the luxury of. A business insights and intelligence officer who works alongside the marketing department.
She calls him a unicorn, and it’s easy to see why. Over the past four years, he’s helped Country Bank build out a real marketing tech stack: analytics, a new website, HubSpot, and Dynamic Yield personalization on the site. More importantly, he helps the team turn raw data into decisions.
That looks like studying customer data before launching a new product, researching new markets by digging into consumer data and census tracts, and building lookalike audiences based on the customers who already hold two or three products with the bank.
Most banks have plenty of data to work with. The banks that win are the ones who turn that data into a story and then into action. Of course, not every bank has the budget or headcount for a dedicated analytics role, and that’s okay. It’s part of why we teamed up with Bond AI here at BankBound, so community banks can make their data actionable without hiring a unicorn of their own.
Could Apple or Amazon Beat a Community Bank?
I asked Shelley a hypothetical question I’d been saving for a while. If a tech giant like Apple or Amazon launched a full-scale retail bank tomorrow, what’s the one thing they couldn’t replicate?
Let’s be honest for a second. You can’t out-Amazon Amazon. No community bank is going to compete with big tech on technology, and pretending otherwise is a losing game.
But here’s what a tech giant can’t buy on day one: genuine community investment. Country Bank gives back more than a million dollars annually, logs 1,800 hours of employee service time, and supports over 455 local organizations. Even the bank leadership, including the president, serves on the boards of two large local food pantries. That commitment runs from the top of the house all the way down.
When you’re opening your first account or applying for your first mortgage, you want a trusted advisor sitting across from you, not just a slick app. As Shelley said, community banking wins that battle hands down.
Investing in the Next Generation
The last topic we covered might be the most forward-looking. How Country Bank is winning younger customers before the fintechs do.
With generational wealth transfer coming and younger consumers increasingly choosing fintechs, Country Bank decided to meet kids early. After a fintech partnership for youth debit cards didn’t pan out, they brought the program in-house, using their own customer data to set age-appropriate spending limits for kids 8 to 12, teens 13 to 17, and adults 18 and up. Just five weeks in, about 100 new customers had signed on with around $18,000 in card activity.
Pair that with their Money School program, which teaches over 3,000 students across nearly a dozen high schools, and their Credit for Life fairs, where students role-play life as a 25 year old making career, insurance, and budgeting decisions in real time. Each fair welcomes around 500 students and takes about 60 volunteers.
The philosophy is simple. Students tend to bank where their parents bank, trust is built early, and today’s teen debit card holder is tomorrow’s mortgage applicant. Kids get to learn those money lessons in a role-play scenario instead of learning them the hard way in real life.
The Bottom Line
Shelley’s playbook comes down to a few things any bank can act on today. Automate where it drives revenue, let your people tell your brand story, put someone in charge of making data actionable, lean into the community investment big tech can’t fake, and start building trust with your future customers now.
Want the full conversation? Watch the complete episode of Bound by Banking with Shelley Regin, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.