Creating human banking experiences through data-led marketing

Our recent report, created in partnership with Braze, found that only 53% of financial services brands use advanced techniques like event-based and attribute-based personalisation when it comes to customer communications. 

Using modern customer engagement technology will help financial services brands humanise the experience with their customers – as personalising each interaction using sophisticated decisioning algorithms will make the individual feel acknowledged. Real-time customer MarTech can manage two-way dialogue with customers, engaging them with the right content at the right time. 

Great experiences start from the first contact

As the market grows ever more competitive and it becomes easier than ever to switch providers, creating the right first impression for your customers is essential.  

It’s often thought that successful customer onboarding requires the customer to share a lot of data, but with the right customer strategy, marketing technology and third-party demographic data you can create an onboarding process that’s right for your customer without asking for more than your customer is willing to provide. Registration processes should be simple, not prohibitive to engagement, and show clear reasons for data collection. Consider neo-banks such as Plum who gamify their onboarding journey and make it simple to become a customer. 

Collecting marketing consent is an often-neglected part of the sign-up process, with a series of check boxes tucked in at the end just before the terms and conditions acceptance. Improved consent processes are geared towards signing up for specific engaging content or benefits. 

Education and transparency

Even though people are visiting branches less, it is still possible to create real trust through educating customers to support their decision making via your digital channels. 

Many progressive banking and building society brands are now using interaction and behavioural data to point their customers to educational posts or feature tutorials. Brands can therefore help their customers to meet their individual goals, whether it’s to stay on budget, boost their credit scores, save for a new home, or other major life purchases. 

Teaching customers to make the most of the digital tools available to them, and explaining how to achieve their financial goals, will demonstrate care and support. Additionally, being connected with the customer’s long-term ambitions means that bank and consumer are together for the same reason. 

Humanising the experience

With Covid-19 accelerating the use of digital channels, the online experience needs to build trust by clearly acting in the customer’s best interests, like an in-branch customer service representative would. 

Humanising the experience using empathy is key to this. Creating warmth and understanding around life events, in the same way a customer service representative would, is a powerful way to build that bond with your customer.  

It’s critical that the customer journey promotes the value your brand brings by using every interaction, no matter the channel, to reinforce how each individual customer can financially better themselves. 

Throughout this blog series for the financial service industry, we are breaking down the opportunities for marketers to create a personalised customer experience, and build brand loyalty through central decisioning engines, marketing attribution models, data modelling, machine learning and AI-driven recommendations. Continue reading at the links below: 

Blog 1 – How the banking and financial services sector can lean into a changing market

Blog 3 – Three ways to stand out in a crowded insurance market

For recent insights on how your customers feel about the experience they receive from their financial services providers, and for guidance on how you can better understand and meet shifting customer expectations, download our recent report – Banking on the Customer Journey.