NEFMA Spring Conference

New Hampshire Standard Breakfast
sliced seasonal fruit vg
Mount Washington selection of house-made muffins, danish, breakfast breads, croissants v
cranberry and maple butters, assorted preserves v
fluffy scrambled eggs, chives df gf
brioche french toast, new hampshire maple syrup df v
applewood-smoked bason and pork sausage df gf
roasted breakfast potatoes, parsley, caramelized onion df gf v

Freshly brewed Stance regular and decaffeinated coffee, Numi tea selection and assorted juices including orange, apple, and cranberry

Registration Open

Five years ago, ranking #1 on Google was the finish line. Today, your clients are asking ChatGPT for mortgage advice, getting retirement planning tips from Gemini, and making financial decisions before they ever click a single link. The search landscape has fundamentally changed — and the financial marketers who understand this shift first are the ones who will own their market. In this session, we'll walk through the data behind the behavior shift, explain why your traffic reports look different than they did two years ago, and make the case that your compliance culture, your regulatory credentials, and your institutional credibility are actually your biggest AI-era assets. Come ready to rethink what visibility means — and leave with a clear plan to build it.

At a time when authentic connection matters more than ever, financial marketers must harness social media not just for visibility but for measurable business impact. But what, exactly, does that look like? This session provides practical, applicable dos and don’ts for social media content and strategy. That means insights on creating social content that builds trust, strengthens community relationships, and drives tangible outcomes like deposit growth and advocacy.

EXHIBITOR BINGO! Visit participating exhibitors, connect with their teams, and get your card stamped along the way. Or, engage with NEFMA for free spots! Once you’ve got Bingo, head to registration to spin the prize wheel for a chance to win fun giveaways!

Community banks continue to lose market share to larger banks. Year after year, NEFMA conference after NEFMA conference, we find ourselves having many of the same conversations – how do we stand out in a sea of sameness, how do we get more value out of our marketing budgets, and how do we get the next generation of customers to care about local banks the way their parents and grandparents did? 
Your brand can’t do it all. So we’ll discuss tactics to deploy your brand in ways that transcend traditional ‘glossy awareness advertising’. These tactics shorten the distance between consideration and intent and use your brand in unexpected late-funnel ways.
Blurring the lines between awareness media and consideration media isn’t a new topic, but we take the idea and turn it into a holistic removal of all barriers and lines that makeup the traditional sales funnel. 
We’ll discuss how to use technology to flatten the funnel and then use your people to stretch the funnel wider. 
We’ll discuss ‘chicken-or-the-egg’ scenarios: how can you sell a financial product to a customer that doesn’t know you exist? But also flip it: how can you make people aware of your bank, without squandering money with the flimsy goal of ‘increasing awareness’? 
The conventional wisdom says to use brand awareness tactics to help shorten the distance between ‘awareness’ and ‘consideration’ – but what if we could use ‘brand’ to shorten the distance between ‘consideration’ and ‘intent’ as well? Or better: tactics that turn the sales funnel on its head, leading with end-cycle intent. It’s the method that large banks can afford to do, but local banks unnecessarily fear. 
We’ll present case studies that show real world examples of media tactics, brand tactics, and marketing tactics that dismantle the traditional sales funnel and lead to sustaining growth.
We’ll also juxtapose these case studies with national banks, showing how their built-in awareness seemingly frees them to take risks that local banks too often shy away from. 
While these are broad-brush topics, there are also very specific topics that we’ll cover, including: 

• Rich media “Branded acquisition” tactics – the dos and don’ts 
  
• The paid search ecosystem – how to lead your marketing mix with intent 
  
• How to avoid the murky community bank “brand slop” permeating the industry 
  
• How regression analysis can uncover insights that aren’t always obvious 
  
• How to turn local "community newspapers" and similar properties into performance drivers instead of community obligations. 
  
• How your people – at every level – can utilize your brand to shorten the sales cycle 
  

The takeaway will be how to deploy your brand in powerful but unexpected ways that move the needle in sales and growth. The session will be one part right-side of the brain: what do we do to make our brand more powerful and aspirational? And one part left-side of the brain: how can we grow faster and move the needle in sales? The takeaway will be how to marry both objectives using new technologies, methods and media to make your brand work harder in a crowded and competitive market. 

For years, marketers have been told they need to “reach Gen Z.” But most guidance stops at stereotypes, surface-level channel lists, or trend-chasing tactics that don’t translate into real engagement or trust. The reality is more complex—and more urgent. Gen Z has fundamentally different expectations around communication, privacy, authenticity, and brand behavior. And Gen Alpha, now entering their teen years, is being shaped by an even more fragmented, creator-driven, and algorithmic world. Traditional outreach models—especially email-first, SMS-heavy, or interruption-based approaches—are increasingly ineffective, and in some cases actively rejected. In this session, Tom Stirling explores how Gen Z actually behaves, how they interpret brand outreach, and what CMOs need to rethink now to stay relevant—not just for today’s younger audiences, but for the next decade of growth. Rather than focusing on novelty platforms or short-lived trends, this session breaks down the structural shifts happening in how younger audiences communicate, evaluate brands, and decide when (and if) to engage. Topics include why SMS norms are changing, how private and semi-private channels are replacing public feeds, why “always-on” brand presence can backfire, and how younger audiences distinguish between brands that understand context versus those that simply show up. Attendees will learn how Gen Z’s preference for opt-in, contextual, and asynchronous communication impacts channel strategy—across social, community platforms, messaging, and owned media. The session will also explore how creator ecosystems, peer validation, and cultural fluency influence credibility far more than polished brand messaging. Importantly, this is not a session about abandoning fundamentals. It’s about recalibrating them. Tom will share practical frameworks for adapting existing brand, content, and CRM strategies to better align with younger audiences—without chasing every new platform or diluting brand integrity.
Looking ahead, the session will also touch on Gen Alpha: what early signals marketers should pay attention to, what’s likely to carry forward from Gen Z, and where assumptions may break down entirely. The goal is to help marketing leaders future-proof their approach—not by predicting trends, but by understanding behaviors. This session is designed for CMOs and senior marketers who want clear, actionable guidance on how to engage younger audiences thoughtfully, responsibly, and effectively—without gimmicks, jargon, or generational clichés.