Arvest to Launch Internet Newsletter

Arvest.com, the Internet face of Bentonville’s Arvest Bank Group Inc., has been tinkering with its home page and in the next few weeks will launch yet another online product. Kevin Sabin, Arvest’s manager of Web administration and development, said the entire site has been evolving over the last six months.

“It’s basically becoming a portal for all of the bank group’s divisions,” he said.

Mel Parks, CEO of the Arvest Asset Management investment arm, said the company is moving toward a one-stop Internet presence.

“We’re certainly trying to make every effort we can to bring together all of our products and services for our customers,” Parks said. “We don’t want to focus just on our brokerage or insurance but on tying all of the pieces together in one place.”

A new financial services newsletter, Arvest e-Source, will be used to market all of the bank group’s services. A hyperlink for service has already been added to Arvest.com, and Arvest e-Source is expected to become operational in July.

Sabin said the idea is to give people no-fuss access to financial news. Articles will include tips on everything from how to save money for a child’s education to establishing trusts and using many other investment tools.

“E-Source is still in the test phase right now,” Sabin said. “But we know that many of our current and prospective customers want information about financial services. We want Arvest.com to be one or two clicks from the financial information they’re looking for.”

Sabin said once Arvest e-Source is up-and-running, Internet surfers will be able to sign up for e-newsletters. Registration at the site will be required, but Sabin said all correspondence from Arvest will be permission-based.

ArkansasBusiness.com and NWABusinessJournal.com, this publication’s official Web sites, offer similar e-newsletters on breaking stories within the financial industry.

Sabin, whose office is at Arvest State Bank in Tulsa, Okla., said the most recent addition to the regional bank’s Web site deals with its credit card department. Arvest credit card customers may now monitor their cards’ activity online. Recently, online banking customers gained the ability to view images of their checks.

Also in the near future, Sabin said, version 2.0 of Arvest’s individual banks’ sites will be launched. Since the sites can be linked through Arvest.com, the largest portion of the upgrade concerns aesthetic bells and whistles. Sabin declined to disclose traffic information for any of Arvest sites, and he said the coming upgrades do not require heavy capital investments.

The bank group has one full-time designer and one full-time developer who focus 100 percent of their energy on Arvest.com.