Jay Sanderson, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Digital Experience at Progress
Across all industries, banking and financial services organisations have probably experienced the most radical digitisation in recent years. As the cumbersome in-person branch-banking experience diminishes, branch visits to set up an account or loan are reduced to a few quick clicks on a mobile device – from anywhere. The shift to banking from anywhere has been accelerated by the availability of technology, but has also been driven by rising customer expectations to carry out their banking processes as they choose.
While online banks have mastered the seamless digital customer experience, traditional banks need to work harder to achieve the same success. It’s not about simply moving their operations from bricks and mortar to the digital world; to stay competitive, they must adopt new, customer-centric marketing approaches to maintain and build their customer loyalty.
With a myriad of banking products and services available, traditional banks must adopt customer-centric marketing practices to keep the attention of their customers.
Meeting customers’ evolving banking needs
Offering truly personalised digital experiences is essential in digital banking. In fact, now that the Government’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) publishes a customer satisfaction league table of UK retail banks, it matters more than ever for providers to find ways to satisfy their customers’ requirements.
This is backed by research into 89 retail banks across Europe by consultancy Kearney which reveals that 45% of consumers in Europe used digital channels to purchase banking products in 2023, up from 33% in 2020.
Yet still a percentage of consumers expect human interaction with advisors at physical branches. This means that an omnichannel approach, which enables customers to access the right information whether in-branch or online, is critical to supporting customers’ needs. As consumers become increasingly digitally savvy, banks must adopt intelligent customer-centric marketing approaches to keep customers loyal.
Key focus areas for elevating customer engagement
The fundamental areas banks must consider to elevate their customer engagement include:
- Understanding their customers
Since banks must appeal to the needs of a diverse range of clients, from individuals to enterprises, they cannot take a one-size-fits-all mindset to creating content. In first identifying the major market segments that they serve, banks can create separate “Insights” pages that provide tailored financial advice for either businesses or personal customers, for example. Understanding the typical customer journey is also essential to getting customers to perform certain actions. Access to the right information on a bank’s service offerings can persuade a customer to open an account.
- Optimising content for omnichannel marketing
Effective omnichannel marketing connects with a customer equally though any channel. Banks must create messaging with the channels’ unique user scenarios in mind, factoring in each specific customer segment and context. For example, it might be that a bank’s blog can help readers with some tips and educational content. Meanwhile, their Instagram page can highlight real-life community stories that demonstrate they are a caring and responsible business.
- Generating highly personalised content for their digital products
Relevance and personalisation must rank highly on the content agenda. Advice pages customised for various categories, such as insurance, health and security/privacy are an ideal free resource to boost customers’ financial understanding.
But without data, banks are powerless to understand their customers’ needs, interests and goals, and therefore won’t be able to personalise content accordingly.
To harness this data for meaningful insight, banks can utilise a digital experience platform (DXP) to gain complete visibility over user interactions across various channels. To take a cautious approach that factors in highly personal or sensitive financial topics for customers, the DXP can help banks to identify customers to offer dedicated advice, for instance on improving their credit scoring or for help with overdrafts.
- Following the 80/20 strategy
To help customers identify which financial product or service might suit them, banks need to apply what’s known as the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of their content relates to non-promotional information that focuses on the customers’ issues. The remaining 20 percent is focused on guiding customers to take the next step in their journey.
A good example is in the case of a call-to-action (CTA) in marketing materials, driving users to a suggested web page for further information. This helps banks to become a trusted source of financial expertise which earns customer loyalty.
- Creating relevant content
After registering for a new product, the customer’s journey with the bank continues. They may experience friction moving from physical to digital services or simply need more support to obtain the best service: This is where having a dedicated online help centre is vital to support customers’ account queries. Having a search bar with predictive capabilities and AI-powered chatbots can help speed up the decision-making process for customers. Additionally, visual or interactive tutorials can also guide customers while using their mobile banking apps.
Only customer-centric marketing content will enable banks to compete
Once they are acting as a guide, banks can integrate their customer, product and service data to deliver truly personalised campaigns, which allows them to rival fintechs and their online-only counterparts.
By making strategic tech investments that can facilitate content design and management, such as a digital experience platform (DXP), banks can leverage customer data insight to create campaigns to drive customers’ actions, whether it is an account opening or other superior digital experiences, which keeps them head and shoulders above their online-only competitors.
