Right now, companies across all industries are competing to find better ways to engage consumers and boost profitability, and community financial institutions are no different. With comparable products and services, a crowded marketplace, and most banks and credit unions accelerating their digital experience, it’s increasingly difficult to attract new customers while trying to grow your financial institution. What you need is a lemonade recipe.
You know the saying when life gives you lemons, right? With many financial institutions focusing on products and services, adequate resources to dedicate to effective marketing are hard to come by. Time to make some lemonade.
It’s tempting to try to save costs by handling marketing yourself, but I recommend banks and credit unions consider enlisting the help of a marketing technology provider who can provide and help manage creative for a multi-channel marketing campaign. These strategic relationships can make your team more efficient by reducing workload while increasing your marketing effectiveness. When selecting a partner, financial institutions should consider a number of key components.
Table-stakes requirement: omnichannel.
With multiple paths to reach consumers, it is important that marketing technology vendors offer an omnichannel approach, which consists of elements like paid search, social media, email, landing pages, direct mail, digital display, streaming audio, streaming video, and programmatic media. Today, more consumers live online than ever, making these very reliable channels for customer and member engagement. In fact, 79% of people in the U.S. use social media and 89% use an on-demand streaming service. Additionally, contrary to popular belief, email is not dead with 76% of U.S. adults still using email. Since the onset of COVID-19, the financial industry continues to see a rise in engagement across digital channels.
Make sure martech can adapt with you.
When vetting potential partners, ensure they offer a marketing platform based on your specific needs that can be adjusted as those needs change. As business objectives advance, so must power and speed. Flexible strategic pacing can help to ensure success for banks and credit unions based on individual goals, timeline and budget.
Get some creative control.
Because there are so many options for connecting with consumers, institutions must be able to manage campaigns with an asset management system for use across digital, traditional, and in-branch deployments. This will allow banks and credit unions to have better control of the different aspects of its marketing campaign. Leveraging pre-built creative enables financial institutions to reduce time and costs on marketing as they do not have to draft copy and design graphics in house. Additionally, working with a technology provider who conducts its own consumer-testing can ensure effective creative across platforms.
Measure your success.
Though strong messaging and creative are key, there must also be data science and analytics that are reviewed behind the scenes backing the marketing program’s performance. Hitting new goals is great, but not knowing how you achieved them will hinder continued success. A marketing automation platform should measure beyond basic impressions that provide only a snapshot of your financial institution’s behavior and have always-on optimization to guarantee peak performance. With analytic reporting that continuously optimizes online and offline marketing efforts, financial institutions can be certain that they will have high attribution.
For community financial institutions, consumer engagement is a major force driving growth, profitability, and customer acquisition and retention. 2020 is by far the hardest year to do so, but you can make lemonade. Whether driving engagement, acquisition, or cross-sell, it is important to find a partner who has the tools, strategy, and experience to help financial institutions accomplish their business goals.
Keith Brannan is the Chief Marketing Officer of Kasasa®, a financial technology and marketing provider committed to driving results for over 900 community financial institutions by attracting, engaging, and retaining consumers. Based in Austin, Texas with 500 employees, Kasasa does this through branded retail products, world class marketing, and expert consulting. For more information, please visit www.kasasa.com, or visit them on Twitter or LinkedIn.