Benefits of Marketing Automation for Banks and Credit Unions?

Marketing Automation for Banks and Credit Unions

Engaging banking customers has become increasingly difficult in the last couple of years. The traditional marketing funnel of mass media advertising to a broad audience is long gone. The rise of new platforms such as Netflix, Facebook, and Instagram has only increased the competition for the consumer’s attention. Thus, making it harder to get your message to them. This is where marketing automation comes into play.

To cut through the noise and keep your banking consumers engaged you need to market to them as individuals. This means highly personalized messaging. Messaging that is hyper-targeted to the right person. The messages also need to be delivered at the exact moment your customer expresses a need.

This raises the question: “How can a bank or credit union implement highly customized marketing to engage individual customers at scale?” The answer: By leveraging marketing automation.

---

Benefits of Marketing Automation for Banks and Financial Institutions?

Imagine this: a current customer is searching through the credit card section on your website. He browses the business credit card page and decides to apply for it. He begins to fill out an application for the card but stops halfway. He’s unsure if this is the right option for him. As he goes to close the window, a chat box appears asking “Do you need help with anything?” He types “I’m unsure if I need an overdraft or credit card.”

This triggers an email nurturing sequence highlighting the benefits of different business financing options. A sales rep will also receive an alert, to let them know to follow up.

This is the power of utilizing marketing automation in customer communications. This can help your credit union deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

---

How Can Automating Marketing Activities Improve Consumer Engagement?

For banks and credit unions, marketing automation works to help improve customer response in the following ways:

Personalization: Bank Marketing automation provides a central database of customer data that can be used to create personalized marketing campaigns. You can dynamically display content that you can tailor to their preferences, needs, and intent. This can occur when a customer views your emails, web pages, or social media.

This specific and relevant messaging increases consumer interaction with your business. Dynamic content increases the efficiency of your marketing efforts by personalizing messages at scale.

Targeting: Marketing automation software streamlines the process of targeting specific customers for your financial institution. Both prospects and customers can automatically be categorized and tagged in the database. They are tagged using details such as their demographics, interests, and behaviors. This makes it easy to identify segments to target with marketing campaigns that will improve the effectiveness of your marketing communications.

Triggers: Smartphone users take action immediately when they need or want something. Imagine if you were able to present them with a relevant offer at this exact moment. How effective do you think this would be for improving your response rates?

Automating marketing processes helps your bank to identify these opportunities and take advantage of them to improve engagement with your customers. When you know what a customer is looking for, you can reach them with messaging targeted to their needs.

Behavioral Tracking: Marketing automation uses tracking codes in emails, web pages, and social media, to get an idea of a consumer’s intent. By analyzing multiple links, you can get a better idea of a buyer’s behavior. You can then use this data to create personalized email campaigns according to their intent.

Analytics: Analytics help to track the results of your marketing programs. Through constant improvement in your marketing campaigns, you’ll make it easier for customers to engage with your brand.

---

3 Ways Banks Can Use Marketing Automation to Better Communicate with Customers

 1. Provide Support to Customer Service: For example, say a customer has visited your FAQ page several times after recently opening a new account with your bank. This could trigger a customer service popup asking if they need any help. Engage customers with a “new customer” sequence that could be triggered to provide tips and information on how to get the most out of their accounts.

 2. Return to Buy: Say a customer has visited a product page several times but has not made an application. this could trigger an email asking if they have any issues or questions about applying for an account, loan, or investment. This helps you uncover any obstacles to applying, as well as provides a more streamlined customer journey.

 3. Email Campaigns Based on Their Stage of Interest: A customer looking for general information about car loans is likely at the early stage of the buying process. Based on this, you can place them on a lead nurturing email campaign.

Conversely, a customer who has an alert from the credit bureau while shopping for a car is evaluating their options and is close to making a decision. As a result, this could trigger an email sales sequence. It can also trigger your sales team to contact them.

---

Marketing Automation Solutions for Banks

FSSI is a full-service print outsourcing and technology that offers customized marketing communications services to the financial services industry. Our MarketAdvantage technology allows you to apply the benefits of marketing automation technology to your bank marketing strategy. Allowing you to send personalized campaigns, to the right person, at the right time.

Build a better customer relationship. Learn more about the marketing communication services we offer by contacting Dan Palmquist, VP of Sales, or call 714.436.3300 to get started.

---