Beyond The Episode: Financially Empower Your Financial Institution
The February episode of The Marketing Insider | A Claritas Podcast for marketers focused on finding and targeting their ideal customers at scale, went live on February 17th. You can find the episode, here. During the recording, I had the chance to talk to one of our in-house financial data experts, Catherine Spisszak. We also spoke with Victor Corro, CEO of Coopera Consulting. Coopera is a full-service Hispanic growth firm providing custom solutions for credit unions nationwide to better reach and serve the Hispanic market.
We covered topics from the top challenges banks and credit unions will face in 2021, what the rise of fintech means for traditional banking institutions, why the U.S. Hispanic population is considered underbanked and underserved, and how credit unions are thriving with the help of local businesses. But, while you’ll hear all about those topics and more when you listen to the episode, 30 minutes just wasn’t enough to discuss everything. Because of this, we took some of the conversation offline and put it in this blog, so you can get the full story on how to Financially Empower Your Financial Institution.
Increase Consumer Investment Portfolios, Even In A Pandemic
It goes without saying that the pandemic has really done a number on consumer finances. From historic rises in unemployment, to daily small business closures and general uncertainty about what the future holds, it’s hard to see an opportunity to grow as a banking institution. The key is anticipating what challenges your customers and members are facing – before they reach out and tell you – so you know what assistance or offers to present to them. How can you do this?
Financial expert Catherine Spisszak says it’s all about finding the right consumer prospects for your bank or credit union, and ensuring your campaigns are reaching them where they are, in a way that doesn’t feel as though they are being infringed upon. Today’s consumer is online more than ever, so that’s a great place to start, with multichannel campaigns that span email, digital display, social media, etc. There’s a broad spectrum of demographic and lifestyle information out there to describe households and geographies, but there’s also psychographic data available to guide your marketing based on consumer feeling. Remember, just because it doesn’t break privacy laws doesn’t mean your customers or prospects won’t feel violated with marketing that’s a little too personalized. There’s a fine balance that can only be achieved when you work with a data partner that knows where that line exists.
Don’t Let Industry Regulation Fear Hold You Back
Speaking of privacy laws, the financial services industry has some of the strictest regulations around, but that doesn’t mean “Fair Lending fear” should hinder your growth. You just need to work with a data partner that takes the laws into consideration with the solutions they offer you. For example, Claritas’ segmentation data is based on aggregated or modeled information, meaning there’s no information about unique individuals or households published or reported within that data. Aka, we are privacy compliant! But what about Regulation B?
Catherine calls out that you can find providers with pre-built or custom audience solutions that don’t use sensitive variables like race or ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, etc. and again, Claritas is one of those providers. How does this work in the real world? Our data can and should help make marketing decisions, like who to reach with your offers. Our data should not be used for decisions on things like which individual person should or should not be approved for a loan.
Still skeptical? Don’t take our word for it. Our website has case studies from some of the hundreds of banks and credit unions we work with using solutions that bring value to their clients, while staying compliant. Whether as an input to their own models to predict market share or future growth or finding next best customers or channels to reach those customers, there’s a wealth of data out there. And, as an added safety net for those financial institutions with even more strict rules than what the industry’s regulations say, you can even decide whether you want to access this kind of data on a cloud-based software system or use it behind your own company’s firewall.
Can A Website Pixel Really Increase Prospect Opportunity By 90%?
Catherine shared a stat during our conversation that might surprise you. Almost 90% of your website visitors are anonymous. This means they’re coming to your bank or credit union’s website, browsing your pages to compare offers, and leaving without a way for you to retarget them. That is, unless you work with a data provider to help you uncover those visitors.
At Claritas, we have something called an Identity Graph. Essentially how it works is, we put a pixel on your website to collect (privacy compliant) data on your anonymous visitors. We then append additional data like demographics and behaviors to start to paint a clear portrait of those prospects who’ve already engaged with you. From there, it’s much easier for you to retarget them with offers that resonate, like credit cards with low interest rates, loan consolidation or balance transfer offers, home improvement loans, today’s refinancing rates, and more. If you’re not already doing this, we can almost guarantee your competitors are. They might even be gaining new customers and members that visited your website first, but the difference is you didn’t stay top of mind with targeted ads after they left, and your competition did.
We hope February’s episode of The Marketing Insider helps answer any questions you have about how to financially empower your financial institution. If you want to meet better prospects, market more precisely and improve your ROI, visit our website at www.claritas.com.