Tag: direct mail marketing

The challenges facing today’s marketers seem to be mounting and they can feel more pronounced for financial institutions. From customizing messaging and offerings at an individual customer level, increasing conversion rates, moving beyond digital while keeping an eye on traditional channels, and more, financial marketers are having to modernize their approach to customer acquisition. The most forward-thinking financial firms are turning to customer acquisition engines to help them best build, test and optimize their custom channel targeting strategies faster than ever before. But what functionality is right for your company? Here are 5 capabilities you should look for in a modern customer acquisition engine. Advanced Segmentation It’s without question that targeting and segmentation are vital to a successful financial marketing strategy. Make sure you select a tool that allows for advanced segmentation, ensuring the ability to uncover lookalike groups with similar attributes or behaviors and then customize messages or offerings accordingly. With the right customer acquisition engine, you should be able to build filters for targeted segments using a range of data including demographic, past behavior, loyalty or transaction history, offer response and then repurpose these segments across future campaigns. Campaign Design With the right campaign design, your team has the ability to greatly affect customer engagement. The right customer acquisition engine will allow your team to design a specific, optimized customer journey and content for each of the segments you create. When you’re ready to apply your credit criteria to the audience to generate a pre-screen, the best tools will allow you to view the size of your list adjusted in real-time. Make sure to look for an acquisition engine that can do all of this easily with a drag and drop user experience for faster and efficient campaign design. Rapid Deployment Once you finalize your audience for each channel or offer, the clock starts ticking. From bureau processing, data aggregation, targeting and deployment, the data that many firms are currently using for prospecting can be at least 60-days. When searching for a modern customer acquisition engine, make sure you choose a tool that gives you the option to fetch the freshest data (24-48 hours) before you deploy. If you’re sending the campaign to an outside firm to execute, timing is even more important. You’ll also want a system that can encrypt and decrypt lists to send to preferred partners to execute your marketing campaign. Support Whether you have an entire marketing department at your disposal or a lean, start-up style team, you’re going to want the highest level of support when it comes to onboarding, implementation and operational success. The best customer acquisition solution for your company will have a robust onboarding and support model in place to ensure client success. Look for solutions that offer hands-on instruction, flexible online or in-person training and analytical support. The best customer acquisition tool should be able to take your data and get you up and running in less than 30 days. Data, Data and more Data Any customer acquisition engine is only as good as the data you put into it. It should, of course, be able to include your own client data. However, relying exclusively on your own data can lead to incomplete analysis, missed opportunities and reduced impact. When choosing a customer acquisition engine, pick a system that gives your company access to the most local, regional and national credit data, in addition to alternative data and commercial data assets, on top of your own data. The optimum solutions can be fueled by the analytical power of full-file, archived tradeline data, along with attributes and models for the most robust results. Be sure your data partner has accounted for opt-outs, excludes data precluded by legal or regulatory restrictions and also anonymizes data files when linking your customer data. Data accuracy is also imperative here. Choose a marketing and technology partner who is constantly monitoring and correcting discrepancies in customer files across all bureaus. The best partners will have data accuracy rates at or above 99.9%.

You’ve Got Mail! Probably a lot of it. Birthday cards from Mom, a graduation announcement from your third cousin’s kid whose name you can’t remember and a postcard from your dentist reminding you you’re overdue for a cleaning. Adding to your pile, are the nearly 850 pieces of unsolicited mail Americans receive annually, according to Reader’s Digest. Many of these are pre-approval offers or invitations to apply for credit cards or personal loans. While many of these offers are getting to the right mailbox, they’re hitting a changing consumer at the wrong time. The digital revolution, along with the proliferation and availability of technology, has empowered consumers. They now not only have access to an abundance of choices but also a litany of new tools and channels, which results in them making faster, sometimes subconscious, decisions. Three Months Too Late The need to consistently stay in front of customers and prospects with the right message at the right time has caused a shortening of campaign cycles across industries. However, for some financial institutions, the customer acquisition process can take up to 120 days! While this timeframe is extreme, customer prospecting can still take around 45-60 days for most financial institutions and includes: Bureau processing: Regularly takes 10-15 days depending on the number of data sources and each time they are requested from a bureau. Data aggregation: Typically takes anywhere from 20-30 days. Targeting and selection: Generally, takes two to five days. Processing and campaign deployment: Usually takes anywhere from three days, if the firm handles it internally, or up to 10 days if an outside company handles the mailing. A Better Way That means for many firms, the data their customer acquisition campaigns are based off is at least 60 days old. Often, they are now dealing with a completely different consumer. With new card originations up 20% year-over-year in 2019 alone, it’s likely they’ve moved on, perhaps to one of your competitors. It’s time financial institutions make the move to a more modern form of prospecting and targeting that leverages the power of cloud technology, machine learning and artificial intelligence to accelerate and improve the marketing process. Financial marketing systems of the future will allow for advanced segmentation and targeting, dynamic campaign design and immediate deployment all based on the freshest data (no more than 24-48 hours old). These systems will allow firms to do ongoing analytics and modeling so their campaign testing and learning results can immediately influence next cycle decisions. Your customers are changing, isn’t it time the way you market to them changes as well?

The holidays are behind us, the presents are unwrapped, resolutions have been made and may already be broken. For many, it’s the most depressing time of the year as the reality of holiday spending settles in. According to the American Consumer Credit Council the average American spends $935 on gifts each holiday season. A recent report by Mintel showed the average consumer held $16,000 in debt at the end of 2015. Now is the time to reach out to consumers who may be suffering from a financial hangover; an Experian study revealed consumers typically look to personal loans for help with credit card debt in the second quarter of each year. What’s the best way to reach these consumers? Direct mail is still one of the most successful paths. Here are four keys to securing new personal loan customers via direct mail marketing: Focus on education: Some of the most successful direct mail campaigns for personal loans in 2015 focused on educating consumers about personal loans first, and then showing options for debt consolidation. Consumers are weary of trusting new lenders, according to Mintel, with 50% viewing them as riskier than banks and credit unions. Marketplace and online lenders should take the extra step of introducing their brand and showing their product as a safe option. Highlight the use of the loan: Consumers generally have a negative attitude toward debt, with 72% feeling uncomfortable holding any type of debt. Stressing that personal loans are a responsible tool for consolidating debt is critical. Some effective campaigns listed the top three reasons to choose a personal loan, while others used customer testimonials to show how a personal loan was used and how they benefited. Provide a competitive comparison: Another way to highlight the benefits of personal loans is by comparing the fixed rates and payments of a personal loan to credit cards. Many consumers consolidate credit card debt to one card immediately after the holidays, according to the Experian study. Simply showing the long-term benefit of a personal loan versus credit card is often enough to trigger action. Personalize the offer: Lenders are delivering more personal, relevant offers that are tailored to the interests of each recipient through the use of the latest personalization technology. For example, highlight the recipient’s specific qualifying loan amount or the qualifying loan rate for which they are eligible. Unsecured loans have experienced growing popularity in the last several years, and originations are poised for a seasonal peak in the coming months. Are you ready?