By Phil Ricketts, Wholesale Commercial Director at Royal Mail Marketreach
If the last eighteen months have taught us anything, it is to expect the unexpected. The landscape can shift, and the context which defines our daily lives can change shape at any moment. It is impossible to know exactly what the future has in store, or how the world will change.
But what is more predictable is people. There are certain values that we stick with. Broader changes can shift our short-term priorities and habits, but they seldom change our core values and beliefs.
No matter the era, whether it is pre-digital or post-pandemic, we can know that trust matters to people. Trust is the foundation of any interpersonal relationship. People want partners they can rely on – and this is true for relationships with brands and businesses as much as anything else.
Loyalty and trust
Trust is everything in business. And customer loyalty is the most powerful asset a marketer can have.
For the bottom line, loyalty matters because it translates to Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) – a projection of how much money a specific customer will bring to the brand over a set period – and how likely they are to recommend the brand to others (as measured by Net Promoter Score and other metrics). Gartner research found 59% and 61% of businesses respectively listed loyalty and retention as their most important objectives in 2021.
For financial services businesses, trust is even more paramount. People need to feel trust and reassurance that their financial matters and commitments are in the right hands. Building and growing a trusted reputation stems equally from strong service, and the right communications.
Loyalty is built by optimising the many incremental interactions and experiences a customer has with a brand to be as positive as possible. And driving loyalty and retention come from understanding your customer and their needs.
This means driving value across every touchpoint in the customer communications journey. To deliver this, brands and businesses must blend behavioural understanding with appropriate personalisation and customer journey insight in a way that drives trust.
This can sound more complex than it is. Trust is not abstract. And some marketing channels naturally imbue trust in their communications, such as mail.
Mail is a strong medium for driving loyalty and making customers feel valued. Research shows that 70% of people said mail made them feel more valued compared to just 30% for email. In addition, almost all addressed mail is opened, and each piece is interacted with 5 times and remains in the home for around 7 days.
The lockdown era supercharged this effectiveness. Amidst the digital message bombardment of lockdown and hybrid working, physical communications have become more engaging than ever. Recent research shows that 99% of people open their customer mail, compared with 21% for emails and around 9% for finance app notifications.
Over two thirds (71%) of consumers say that they completely trust the mail they receive. And this trust spans across all forms of customer service mail, including; statements, invoices, customer updates.
Financial brand marketers and businesses can benefit from leveraging the trust values of mail. Especially when you combine its power with digital channels.
The digital dovetail
Businesses need to ensure their messaging is authentic. The digital era has made us all more weary and cautious of scams and fake news online. A global Kantar study showed social media as the least trusted for seeking out news and information – 70% of people in the UK said they ‘don’t trust’ a lot of content on social platforms, including posts from brands.
Audiences acknowledge the trust physical mail induces. Over half (51%) of people prefer to receive sensitive and confidential information via the post – with only 35% opting for email and 1% via text.
As trust in different media channels varies, it is apparent businesses should leverage an integrated media mix. Some channels may be more cost efficient, but others carry more weight with audiences. A balanced campaign will use both.
In fact, direct mail and digital can enjoy a powerful partnership, especially as they share a key similarity: both channels work best when they are fuelled by data. And with the rise of automation technologies such as Salesforce, Adobe and Iterable, sending communications by mail is quick, easy and efficient.
Smart use of data enables brands to deliver a personalised, timely and relevant message – if synchronised across digital and physical channels this means brands can not only gain the attention of their target audience but drive actions too.
The latest figures from JICMAIL reveal the symbiotic relationship between mail and digital, finding an increase of 70% in online activity driven by mail.
How the Close Brothers re-designed their journey through mail
Close Brothers is a leading UK merchant banking group, who like many, use customer mail to register new customers. But the business noticed that their original customer welcome pack led to10% of credit agreements being completed incorrectly. And this meant higher processing costs for the business.
The business improved their welcome pack with a simple redesign – altering the structure of information, adding clear calls-to-action, as well as data-driven personalisation. By optimising their customer mail with an investment of just £10k, incorrect applications reduced from 10% to 3%, delivering annual savings of £270k.
Putting faith in trust
Trends and habits rise and fall. Popularity is an ever swirling roundabout. The world can change at any moment. But what won’t change is the importance of loyalty and customer retention in the business of financial services.
Trust works for both parties. People want brands they can rely on – and equally brands want loyal customers. Building long-term relationships with customers and forging lucrative loyalty should be the overarching goal of marketers, and brands should have a clear idea of what channels strategies are the best fit for reaching these goals.
