A Few Marketing Trends That Financial Institutions Cannot Ignore

Like most other industries, the banking and finance vertical has also been swamped by digital disruption in the past ten years. Of the nearly 700 senior industry leaders surveyed by Econsultancy and Adobe, as part of Econsultancy’s 2018 Digital Trends in Financial Services report¹, 28% mentioned that optimising customer experience was the “single most exciting opportunity” in 2018.

India has a significant online community, and the number of Internet users is expected to reach 627 million in 2019².

The top marketing trends that will influence customer service and conversion rates for the finance industry in 2019 and beyond include:

Breaking Silos: Integrating Departments with More Collaboration : Organisation charts created around departmental silos have traditionally impacted the finance domain. In most banks, employees work on their own initiatives with different goals. They sparingly collaborate, and the ensuing competition between teams can be detrimental to the organisation’s interests.

Marketing, on the other hand, is about creating better customer experiences integrated across different channels and touchpoints. Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) must bridge the gap between their departments and link multiple disciplines, including data analytics, sales and customer experience (CX). With the deployment of new age collaboration solutions, the lacunae between marketing, operations and IT teams will also be filled.

Content Creation: To excel at marketing, banks today need not only technicians, digital experts and statisticians, but also talented content creators. There is an increasing appetite for relevant content that helps consumers understand banking practices and stay attuned to their policies. Such content is published in forms of articles, how-to-guides, demonstration videos, e-books, infographics and white papers.

Furthermore, to distribute this content effectively across devices and widen its reach, organisations that leverage systematic content delivery network (CDN) solutions will stay ahead of their competitors. As a geographically distributed group of servers enabling content delivery, CDN helps financial institutions place their marketing content across different platforms. It improves page loading speeds, handles high traffic loads and creates a superior experience for users while also blocking spammers and bots from crawling onto content-rich websites.

Live Chat Solutions: A live chat service expedites the flow of information between the bank and its customers. All information that can be conveyed over the phone is transferred more comprehensively through a live chat session. The audience is directed to pages with detailed information and graphs for better understanding of a subject. Live chat will continue to be an essential constituent of marketing strategies chalked by banks.

To reach out to customers proactively at relevant touchpoints, financial institutions will also invest in chatbots based on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Data sourced from various modes can be analysed and directed to these chatbots to create engaging experiences for Gen Z, who will use such services in the immediate future. AI-based chatbots work in real time to offer personalised and contextual replies to customers’ queries.

Data and Insights-Driven Marketing: While companies such as Amazon and Netflix have thoroughly redefined customer expectations with their personalised offerings, banks, insurance companies and other financial organisations still have a long way to go.

Consumer and data-driven insights will become increasingly significant for financial marketing in the times to come. To make the most of such insights, banks and financial agencies can use digital surveys across different channels and in multiple languages.

With data-driven insights, financial institutions can customise their marketing strategies in three ways:

• Marketing optimisation – Planned experiments in forms of A/B Testing or Multivariate Testing that can be applied across a band of audience
• Customer segmentation – Segregating target groups with focused content to boost conversion in each
• 1-to-1 personalisation – Leveraging AI technologies to create a more individualised experience for every customer

Mobile-Based Services: Banks and financial institutions cannot ignore the ubiquity of mobile phones and will need to provide efficient 24*7 toll-free services, SMS solutions and hosted IVR to keep their customers updated on their accounts. While using mobile solutions to optimise their reach and connectivity with customers, banks will also need to be more particular about the security of their information. The recent news about the failure of the State Bank of India to protect its server with a password³ caused a significant dent in the bank’s reputation. The bank later clarified that there was no ‘data breach’ but has also started work on revamping its phone-based query services. The lesson learnt is that security must be in-built from the start into any solution offered by a financial institution.

Summarily, the transforming landscape of marketing has driven the adoption of advanced digital tools in most industries, and the financial sector cannot stay away from them.
At Tata Tele Business Services, we design integrated tech solutions to support the fast-growing digitalised economy. If you wish to revamp your IT and marketing infrastructure for better employee and customer experiences, connect with us at https://www.tatateleservices.com/contact-us-customer-service

Sources:
1-https://econsultancy.com/2019-financial-services-trends-fsi/
2-https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/internet-users-in-india-to-reach-627-million-in-2019-report/articleshow/68288868.cms
3-https://www.csoonline.in/news/sbi-fails-security-game-yet-again-millions-accounts-left-exposed