SPONSORED CONTENT PRESENTED BY MERIDIANLINK INC.
In today’s ever-changing economic environment, it’s more important than ever for banks to prioritize developing and executing a solid deposits growth strategy. And with evolving customer expectations for data-driven, frictionless, and personalized digital experiences, institutions that understand the market landscape and are prepared to deliver will stand above the rest.
For financial marketers, this requires a real-time understanding of buyer intent to better determine where your current (and prospective) customers are in their journeys. They can then offer every consumer targeted and personalized information at just the right time.
Business intelligence + marketing automation = better business decisions
Financial marketers have massive amounts of internal and external data flowing into their organizations every day. Using business intelligence and marketing automation to analyze this data will help them develop insights to make better business decisions, improve customer outcomes and remain competitive.
“Nearly 80% of marketing leaders say data, analytics and insights are very important to winning and retaining customers,” according to a CMO Council study. “Practically every marketer says direct access to customer data provides them with a competitive advantage”—and that includes marketers at financial institutions.
But even as banks collect substantial data about their customers, they often don’t have the means to analyze that data to turn it into meaningful insights.
Unique challenges faced by financial marketers
- Data silos. Customer data is often siloed in separate business units, making it difficult for marketers to access.
- Unstructured/unusable data. Many banks collect enormous amounts of unstructured data they never access—data that’s unusable because it’s never stored in their data warehouses.
- Limited reporting. Reporting can be challenging to access, making it difficult to determine campaign impact and ROI.
To address these challenges, an increasing number of financial marketers are turning to advanced analytic and data intelligence capabilities to gain deeper insight into buyer intent. Using powerful business intelligence tools allow FIs to harvest more actionable insights from their data, enabling executives to make more informed decisions.
Banks that that use traditional marketing strategies to reach customers will never deliver on the expectations their customers have for relevant and personalized communications. Merely generating real-time insights isn’t enough. To succeed, financial marketers need a way to take advantage of all their customer data.
Amplifying business intelligence with marketing automation
Business intelligence tools give banks access to their information quickly so they can create key dashboards and visualizations to represent their information dynamically. When lenders use these tools in conjunction with marketing automation, they’re able to:
- Employ data faster and more effectively. Layering business intelligence on top of powerful marketing automation software allows lenders to take action on the data stored in their data warehouses.
- Better understand and communicate with customers. The combination of tools also enables financial marketers to analyze data so they can better understand and communicate with every customer.
- Offer personalized products and services. Tapping into analytics and insights tools to personalize and improve the customer experience can boost loyalty and increase profitability in both the short and long term.
Actionable steps to tailor the customer experience
Understanding the consumer is key to keeping and generating business. If you hope to personalize each interaction and build the trust necessary for strong relationships, it’s crucial to recognize each customer as an individual. To tailor the customer experience, banks can take steps to optimize each of the following areas:
- Acquire. Whether it’s a new account, loan or life change, it’s an opportunity for you to acquire a new relationship by providing customers with the products or services they need to meet their personal financial goals. One of the fastest ways to lose new business before it’s acquired is digital friction. Nearly half (48%) of consumers say they encountered digital friction when they tried to open an account online. The same percentage say friction caused them to take their business to another financial institution. Making it easier and faster for customers to do business online is the best way to acquire new business.
- Optimize. Once a person becomes an accountholder, attention should turn to optimizing that relationship. This could take the form of setting up direct deposit and online banking, offering additional services based on need, or simply making sure they activate and use a debit card. It’s all about building a stronger, stickier relationship with the person when it matters most.
- Grow. As a customer moves into new life moments, their financial needs will inevitably change. As a financial institution, you need to be positioned to evolve and build on that relationship. That might look like a new mortgage for a first-time homeowner or a home equity line of credit for a family looking to save for college or retirement. The goal is nurturing and growing the relationship. Among consumers who defected to another financial institution, 78 percent said they would have been willing to buy from their primary bank if they’d received a compelling or equivalent offer. Use your data to understand the needs of your customers before they look elsewhere.
- Retain. The consumer’s life is constantly changing. How you communicate with each person should reflect as much. Recommend new products or services as customers move from one life stage to another. Otherwise, you risk losing customers to another institution offering better, more personalized solutions.
Meeting customer expectations
Before this age of digital transformation, when customers interacted primarily with local branches, relevancy in the banking experience was straightforward: Offer simplified banking solutions, a few personalized product recommendations, and a promotion or two. Now, especially in an uncertain economic climate, customers expect a tailored, frictionless digital experience—and personalized data is the only way to provide it.
To increase customer loyalty and deposit opportunities by using data to better understand and communicate with customers, you need a team that understands how to derive actionable insights from the data available to you.
Learn more about how MeridianLink helps clients understand and communicate with their customers. Download our free eBook, “Increase Consumer Loyalty and Deposit Opportunities” today!
