The pandemic has moved all things digital to center court and changed the rules of the game. Financial marketers responded by pivoting their acquisition strategies, and 2021 promises to move digital transformation into a whole new league.
The call is for financial marketers to think outside the box and start speaking to consumers in a more meaningful way. At the Digital Banking Conference in December 2020, one message rang loud and clear: now that customers have embraced digital banking, banks need to meet them with open arms.
“Our goal is to make sure digital comes across as a human channel to our customers,” said Nandita Bakhshi, president and CEO Bank of the West. She added that banks need to “anticipate the customers’ needs and present solutions to them even before they’ve thought about them.”
Financial marketers know they need to up their personalization game, but they’re not able to fully execute on it. In a recent study conducted by Forrester Consulting, two-thirds of financial marketers identified personalization as a top goal, but more than half said they can only do basic personalization (e.g., first name).
The first step to improving personalization is to know what a champion program looks like.
4 Characteristics of Effective Digital Personalization
Successful approaches to personalization in the financial industry have four key characteristics:
- Easy – both for the bank to execute and for the customers to engage with
- Trustworthy – not intrusive or creepy, customers feel in control of their information
- Authentic – sparks emotion in customers and makes them feel seen and understood
- Cost-effective – lowers customer acquisition costs and increases ROI
Marketing to consumer communities is a personalized acquisition strategy that has these keys to success. The approach is simple. You create a personalized offer for customers based on key attributes like their life stage (students) or profession (military). When you target these consumer communities with offers just for them, you create an immediate connection because you make them feel special.
The key is to secure your offer with digital verification to confirm their eligibility. This reduces your risk, underscores the offer’s exclusivity which makes it more appealing, and protects your bottom line.
4 Reasons Why Personalized Offers to Consumer Communities Work
01 Easy
With SheerID, you can build and launch a program in days and fully integrate it into your existing user workflow. For customers, digital verification is an instant and seamless experience (that’s backed by over 9,000 authoritative data sources).
02 Trustworthy
Because customers opt in, they willingly share their information in order to access your offer. There’s no creepy sense that someone’s mining their data without their knowledge. And the zero-party data you collect allows you to create nurture programs that build customer loyalty.
03 Authentic
Consumer communities such as students and military identify strongly with their affiliations. When you reach out to them with an offer, it sparks an immediate emotional connection and makes them feel special, creating interest in your offer and evoking positive feelings about your brand.
04 Cost-Effective
When you make an offer for a group like students and the military, you’re showing your support by singling them out. This inspires them to share the offer widely with their others in their consumer community, generating exponential word-of-mouth returns.
Ready to Transform Your Digital Customer Acquisition?
SheerID can help you create personalized marketing campaigns that win more customers with less risk.