Check out the latest CUNA News Podcast sponsored by Marquis as Dr. Tony Rizzo, Chief Marketing and Creative Officer, and Ryan Housefield, Senior Vice President of Sales, describe how credit unions that use data on the front lines can provide the engagement tools employees need to drive sales and decision-making while improving the bottom line.
In a little more than a decade since the global financial crisis, things are looking up, especially for U.S. financial institutions. With the calmer waters comes fierce competition. On top of brick-and-mortars, Fintech and Neobanks are hitting their stride while Big Data companies like Amazon and Google are jumping on the lending wagon. Consumers are bombarded with messaging from all sides. How can your bank or credit union’s voice be heard through all this static?
Attracting and Retaining Households
Although it’s true that spending is up, acquiring new households is down and retaining current ones is an issue. Half of all accounts are single-service households. This presents potential retention issues, especially since new single-service households are 50% more likely to leave within a year. The likelihood of leaving halved if they add just one more product. With four products, the potential for leaving decreases to a mere 5%. Concerted efforts to add at least one more product to a household is essential for retention. But it has to be personalized and sent at the right time to the right person. Flooding households with untargeted messaging just doesn’t work, whereas a vehicle loan offer aimed at households with teenagers might do the trick.
Meeting Consumer Expectations
Today’s consumer voluntarily supplies enough information for brands to know and predict their preferences. Nearly three-quarters of global consumers expect brands to treat them as individuals, not anonymous parts of a larger whole. In a world of anonymous avatars and usernames, they expect brands to use the data to approach them as individuals with relevant, personalized experiences. That includes financial institutions.
The Backbone of Effective Marketing Efforts
It’s no secret. If properly utilized, Big Data enables the personalization consumers are looking for. When properly interpreted, you’ll know who your customers/members are, what they need, and when to engage them. Take it one step further to increase growth and profitability by leveraging the data for Growth Analytics.
The Analytics Growth Engine
Growth Analytics is used to identify growth attributes and metrics. An Analytics Growth Engine gives direction and purpose to your Growth Analytics by combining artificial and human intelligence to deliver insights to fuel consistent and predictable revenue growth.
Mark Gibson, Senior Consulting Associate at Capital Performance Group, suggests that growth engines for financial institutions need to have specialized stages.
Stage 1 – Prospecting
Stage 2 – Acquisition
Stage 3 – Onboarding
Stage 4 – Activation & Utilization
Stage 5 – Relationship Expansion
By using data and analytics as tools at each stage, you’ll have precise and scalable data that measurably improves performance and efficiency.
The Super Tools
A strong marketing plan is based on how consumers learn about and buy financial services. It’s about the journey from the prospect to full engagement. Gibson’s Analytics Growth Engine model requires data be applied as a tool to each stage of the process. These tools – Segmentation, Targeting, Engagement Strategies, Life Stage Marketing and Customer Value and Attrition Propensity – lead to a deeper understanding of customer/member needs. In turn, offers are more pertinent to targeted consumers and likely to elicit a response.
Putting It All Together
You have your Analytics Growth Engine. You have your super tools. When the tools are applied, insights will be more meaningful, leading to increased sales, deeper relationships and stronger retention.
Segmentation is the foundation of any targeted marketing strategy. Before prospecting, determine who your best customers/members are, what products and services they use and where they are on their financial journey.
Use Targeting at Stage 1 Prospecting to find prospects who resemble your best account holders. Combine predictive and look-alike modeling with third-party data to target individuals with potential for best value and profitability based on your Segmentation analysis.
Use the Engagement tool to define the onboarding process. Understand what services and products a fully-onboarded customer/member uses. Realize the vision by applying the Engagement tool to Stage 2 and 3 of your Analytics Growth Engine to develop a personalized approach for each customer/member. Then, use the Engagement tool for reboarding to increase activation and utilization.
Life Stage Marketing is perhaps the most important tool for customer/member personalization. Apply it to Stage 4 Relationship Expansion to understand where each customer/member is on their financial journey. Now, you can give relevant advice and predict what products make sense for your customer right now. For instance, a HELOC is meaningless to a 20-year-old college student, but a student checking account might do the trick. This tool helps deliver the right message at the right time.
You’ve reached Stage 5 – Relationship Expansion and your prospect is fully-engaged. Use the Customer Value and Attrition Propensity tool to determine their value to your organization. This allows you to fix a value on retention efforts in both time and money by targeting accounts that historically realize the most value.
You Are Not Alone
Developing a robust Growth Analytics program driven by a strong Analytics Growth Engine is essential in today’s banking landscape. However, most financial services marketers are short on time, training and manpower. Even though financial institutions have remarkably more data than other lines of business, many are unprepared to make the most of this opportunity. But consumers expect us to know who they are and what they want before they even know themselves. If we don’t deliver, we risk losing both prospects and current customers/members. That’s where a company like Marquis can help by leveraging the strength of technology, analysts and creative services needed to extend your reach.
Marquis works closely with your team to develop a strong marketing plan dedicated to attracting new customers/members, expanding product adoption and increasing product use. The Marquis team assembles data sources and provides the tools and expertise to analyze and understand customer/member relationships and opportunities. Using Big Data and Growth Analytics, companies like Marquis become your partner, helping you elevate performance and increase effectiveness. They become your Analytics Growth Engine.
Time for Action
To successfully compete in the current environment, you must engage with customers/members on a deeply personal level and develop a marketing strategy that meets consumers’ expectations of personalization. An Analytics Growth Engine puts your vast amount of data into context to discover new opportunities and promote revenue growth. It’s how you attract prospects and engage with those customers/members most likely to add new products. It makes your message heard in the ultra-competitive world of retail and business finance.
Image courtesy of Mark Gibson, Senior Consulting Associate, Capital Performance Group.