The advent of digital technologies has changed practically every aspect of business operations. From how employees communicate with one another, to

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2 The advent of digital technologies has changed practically every aspect of business operations. From how employees communicate with one another, to how you connect with your buyers and customers, an online marketing strategy is crucial to every industry. In fact, businesses without dedicated digital marketing campaigns are behind and will quickly become obsolete.

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4 Other Financial institutions have traditionally been slow to change, mostly due to the existing perspectives of how things should be done and the long time-scales required for their operations. This makes them rather conservative and unwilling to experiment with new and possibly unsafe technologies. In fact, a recent survey of more than 3,000 banks put out by Wipro Technologies found that fewer than 15% of banks have mature digital marketing policies. This is clearly much lower than other industries. Inability to prove ROI Lack of experience with new platforms Regulatory issues The main obstacle to a digital renaissance for financial institutions seems to be simply a state of mind most respondents of a separate study conducted by MarketBridge and SourceMedia on digital marketing for financial services said that they believe social networks to be marketing tools whose effectiveness has yet to be proven. Additionally, they are concerned about a lack of experience with these technologies, and would rather spend their time and money on what they are already familiar with. Loss of brand control This shows that financial institutions are holding themselves back by being unwilling to change with the times. They, more than most companies, need to make a concentrated effort to digitize and integrate new markets into their strategies through platforms such as marketing automation and social media. Senior management pushback 4

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6 But not all financial service organizations are being held back. According to Annalaise Gibbons, a member of the e-marketing team at LV=, the recent recession has hit financial institutions hard, causing them to tighten their belts and attempt to re-focus. When it comes to marketing, she says that companies are abandoning massive marketing campaigns, and all bets are now on measurable, low acquisition marketing channels (particularly online) to deliver business goals and bottom line sustainability. She goes on to say that as online marketing becomes the obvious choice, and more companies are starting to jump into the mix, it is becoming a much more competitive playing field. Keeping up with the flux of the market has proven to be the greatest challenge, and only those financial services willing to invest in their online marketing and IT services have a chance of achieving and maintaining growth and success. As you can see through LV= s social channels, they are beginning to experiment with what works on Facebook and Twitter through visual content and engaging their audience through sharing stories. 6

7 And there are even more financial services companies starting to engage through online channels. An example is Sun Life Financial, which actively engages its customers through their community Brighter Life. Through this community, they provide consumers with ideas on money, health, and family. Credit Suisse also does a great job leveraging digital channels. They publish an online magazine called The Financialist. The magazine provides a combination of original feature stories, informative visuals, and carefully curated third-party content. With such an effective way of engaging consumers, they have been able to gain loyal followers for their brand. They are also doing a great job of using visual content in their digital strategy, including infographics and videos. 7

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9 A key component of many new marketing strategies for financial services is marketing automation, a category of technology that allows companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows, so they can increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster. Automation streamlines and accurately measures the common tasks associated with ecommerce as it pertains to financial services, helping companies with lead generation and management, predictions, campaigns, social media platforms, customer retention programs, etc. All can be automated to gain an enhanced level of understanding, control, and effectiveness. this problem by getting consumers to opt-in to marketing early in the buying cycle and then deliver the right content at the right time, thus significantly reducing compliance and privacy concerns. Additionally an online subscription center allows clients to choose the content they wish to receive and nominate their preferred delivery mechanism, such as or SMS. Many marketing automation platforms simplify this process immensely by managing creation and authorization of content in one place. An automated marketing platform can include a triggering system that automatically sends out s when customers complete specific activities, such as clicking a certain link. Then, a personalized can be sent to follow up on that interest. Your marketing automation system then tracks the success of particular campaigns in terms of clicks and conversions, and filters out the poorly performing content to maximize positive response rates. Switching to digital marketing methods raise important concerns for financial institutions about compliance, such as the need to regulate their operations to conform to certain accepted standards. Financial services have many strict regulations to adhere to, and a change in marketing methods causes some to worry that they will not be able to keep up compliance through the transition. Marketing automation offers one of the best solutions to 9

10 In general, automation takes much of the guesswork out of business processes and provides a standard operating procedure for important tasks. This helps lift concerns about compliance for financial institutions because once a digital process is programmed to conform to regulations and then automated, conformity is assured for subsequent similar processes. Financial services need to adjust to the world of digital marketing, and they can t do this without marketing automation - there are simply too many tasks to do and too many data points to keep track of. Automated marketing releases financial institutions from the worry and hassle of tedious marketing tasks, giving them the freedom to refocus their efforts on more profitable activities. 360-DEGREE Digital Marketing For a fully integrated digital marketing strategy to be implemented, financial service companies need to think broadly and deeply about various online marketing methods. 10

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12 As described earlier, social media is an integral part of everyday life. However, many financial services firms have been slow to adopt, fearing the unknown, reputation risk, and the perceived lack of value of social marketing. However, in a world where a complaint from an annoyed customers can go viral in less than 24 hours, social media has to be taken seriously. 1M Financial service firms have been playing catch-up in the last few years; however, their presence on social networking sites saw 31% year-over-year growth, way above average. Additionally, 59% of customers are unaware of their firm s presence on social media, so there is plenty of room to gain a competitive advantage. Bank of America is a financial institution that does a great job of engaging through social channels. Their Facebook profile has well over 1 million likes, and they are doing a fantastic job with visual content and stories. 12

13 An automated marketing system helps integrate social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube as well as blogs into existing strategies by adding features like share buttons to content so that it can be easily spread through social networks. This activity is tracked, as well as what leads and customers post on the networks. Content can be scheduled to be posted automatically, and responses can be logged. interested in the content, who is most likely to share it, and what types of content generate the most interest (hint: it s usually pictures and videos). By tracking social metrics, a business can understand the benefits their social media campaign is bringing in terms of increased conversions and customer interest. One of the best uses of social media is to increase customer engagement, and this can be done in many different ways. A company can use their corporate profile to show off their personality and present a more casual and approachable picture of themselves, making social channels good platforms for public relations. Contests, sweepstakes, referral programs, polls, and giveaways all encourage customers to engage with businesses and share their content with their friends. Many marketing automation tools include functionality which makes it very easy to set up, deploy, and monitor these campaigns with minimum effort. Take a look at a contest from Umpqua Bank that asks customers to share to share on social. All of this behavior and interaction can be measured and analyzed by a social analytics program that will fine-tune a social media campaign for success and ensure compliance. This brings insight into who is most 13

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15 Financial services firms are struggling to engage customers online and through . Often, firms send irrelevant messaging to clients, which is the fastest way to get them to opt-out of communication. Not only do these firms fail to respect the client s online behavior, they also fail to respect their own customer data. Innovative companies such as Allianz, are tackling perceptions of risk from clients by shifting their marketing to education-based nurturing. This not only engages clients more and with higher results, it differentiates firms from those who are ignoring this growing trend. In contrast, old firms are still sending generically targeted direct mail. To the right is a campaign that Allianz has created to engage consumers by encouraging them to identify their financial personality with a quiz. Once you have taken the survey you can than watch a video which talks about their five financial personalities. They are also providing targeted content to their customers which they can segment based on location, gender, and other characteristics. By appealing to specific customer demographics when you leverage content on social channels and through your marketing, you can build stronger relationships because a potential customer perceives your content as relevant to their situation. 15

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17 The financial service industry was an early adopter of technology that brought customer data together. However, firms have struggled to cope with the recent explosion of data from website behavior, social media interactions and other digital channels. What is clear is that analytics programs are vital for financial services. They measure metrics on website page-clicks and conversions to show how well, or how poorly, a site is doing. Analytics reports can be very simple and contain only the crudest information or they can be quite complex, customized, and detailed. whether they came back or not, and if they ended up making a purchase. An automated web analytics program can draw conclusions from this data, generate reports, and automatically send out those reports to the appropriate personnel. Web analytics programs with real-time processing provide companies with a way to understand how well different marketing strategies are working. A customer s activity can be tracked from the initial lead generation stages all the way to a conversion, so each step of a campaign can be studied independently and compared to the success of the equivalent steps of other campaigns. By studying the success or failure of individual marketing steps, they can be continually refined to make them more effective. Automating this process takes the hassle out of generating reports and sending them where they need to be. By collecting data on web performance, businesses can see the effects that any changes have on their campaigns. They can learn why people visit their site, what they clicked to get there, how long they looked at pages, 17

18 Conclusion. Although in the past financial institutions have been slow to adopt digital marketing trends, by leveraging marketing automation and social media they are now starting to see the benefits of engaging with customers and creating relationships online. By keeping up with market trends and spending time to try out different channels, you can successfully lead your firm to provide customers a better experience and ultimately become a trusted advisor. 18

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