We take a look at ways that financial institutions can “”brand the desktop”” making it easier to keep banking services top of mind with customers and prospects. Eight methods are proposed ranging from the very low cost (a few hundred dollars) to the high end (7 figures); but most could be implemented for less than $10,000.

We draw inspiration from the leading Web companies, Google, Yahoo, and eBay, which have introduced custom toolbars to increase site usage.

We also highlight the unique marketing opportunities available from this month’s “”OBR Best of the Web”” winner, AWS Convergence Technologies WeatherBug service.

Contents
• Time, temperature, and banking
• Eight ways to create a persistent bank presence on the desktop
• Toolbars from eBay & Google
• Building bank-branded toolbars
• Posting time/temp online
• Best of the Web: Lessons from WeatherBug
• Customer service: Fighting rogue popup ads
• Conference calendar
• Numbers in the news
• Citigroup gives away Wall Street Journal subscriptions