T8 Webware, a provider of Web development, management and hosting services for the financial industry, today announced that Dubuque, Iowa-based Heartland Financial USA (NASDAQ:HTLF) selected its Web services to aggregate content and consolidate the management of its 17 different sites.
The $4 billion holding company provides community banking, mortgage, wealth management, insurance and consumer finance services to individuals and businesses through 10 subsidiary banks in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Colorado and Minnesota.
Heartland maintains one Web site for each of its subsidiaries, a holding company site for investors, a wealth management site and travel company sites for its customers. Employees at its corporate marketing office are charged with the task of updating all of the sites' content, which encompasses product information, promotional messages, online account access, personnel changes and community news for regions ranging from the Rocky Mountain states to the Midwest and Great Lakes states.
Heartland partnered with T8 to design all the sites around a similar framework, while also supporting the individualized, local branding aspects important to each one of its community banks. Each site will have the ability to syndicate corporate messages and also communicate local messages reflective of the community or audience that the Web sites serve. To best manage the workload and streamline the custom tailoring of the sites, the financial services company will leverage FREEDOM8, T8's content management system. The system enables authorized users to post Heartland content from any location at any time, while enforcing FFIEC guidelines and FDIC functional compliance.
"Increasingly, we view the Web as a storefront for each of our community banks," said John Berg, executive vice president, marketing and sales at Heartland. "As such, it's a vital communications channel for us with our customers, investors and the growing communities we serve. We are dedicated to maintaining a cohesive brand image across all of our sites while still providing each customer with the personal, local information that is needed."
"T8 and its content management system, FREEDOM8, enable us to make each site a true online resource - more than just an 'About Us' section and a list of services, and still maintain a strong community orientation," Berg said. "In addition, the company is proven in the financial services industry, so we can rely on T8 to provide the security and support necessary to meet all of our compliance needs."
"Heartland recognizes that its Web sites are its most powerful marketing tool; they have the potential to reach each customer at an individual level while still supporting a strong corporate brand and increasing sales," Wade Arnold, CEO of T8 Webware, said. "Accomplishing such a professional, cohesive and effective aggregation of sites would be unfeasible without FREEDOM8 to manage and track changes. It will result in more Web updates, creating a heightened Web presence, and all requiring less work from personnel."