Why you should be doing data-driven marketing
A recent study published by the Digital Banking Report found that two-thirds of financial institutions don’t know if their marketing efforts are bringing a good return on investment. A saddening 31% said that they use more guesswork than data when creating and implementing marketing campaigns. If you aren’t measuring your marketing campaign efforts or utilizing industry data, then you’re not optimizing your marketing budget. That means you’re not getting the best return on investment, and are essentially wasting money.
When asked what the top three marketing priorities for the next year were, improving or expanding data analytics capabilities was ranked dead last for two financial institutions. So from this study we are lead to believe that financial institutions are aware that they aren’t utilizing data in their marketing to the best of their abilities, but have no immediate plan to change anything. If this is how your marketing department feels, let me try and change your mind. Here is what a data-driven marketing approach can help you accomplish.
Helps you reach the right people
Ideally, every single person that you reach with your message would lead to new accounts and balances or at the very least increase their relationship with your institution, but we don’t live in a perfect world. However, data can help you whittle down the audience to the people that will most likely respond to your efforts. You can use customer information that you have collected to target people with relevant characteristics and needs to improve your response rate and increase efficiency.
Lets you know the right place
Nowadays we have upwards of a dozen points of contact from all the social outlets, phone calls, email and even direct mail. Using the right data, you can better understand how each customer prefers to communicate, even breaking down which channel is best for which service. I personally like customer service communication over the phone, deals and offers sent to my email, with every other outlet I feel should be private. Data can show you who agrees with my preferred delivery paths, and who is completely different.
Shows you the right things to offer
Every one of our interests is mapped out. You get targeted advertisements everyday whether or not you notice it. The advertisements that I see on Facebook are more than likely drastically different from yours, because those ads are based on data collected from our personal online habits. By leveraging this information, you can create customized offers and opportunities for the right people.
Helps you send it at the right time
Data has already given you the who, what, and where, and it can give you the when as well. It can inform you of when is the best time to reach members and when is the time in which they are most likely to respond. All of this is based on member’s behavioral patterns in online interactions.
Big data is more than just a buzz word. When used correctly in your marketing efforts, data can create a plan that shows how to reach the right people, with the right offer, at the appropriate time, in the right place.
