Legacy systems and practices can prevent credit unions from responding to the ever-changing expectations of their consumers – and prevent them from growing their businesses.
To prepare their organizations for the future, these financial institutions (FIs) must look seriously at how digital transformation can help them keep up to date with the latest technologies and understand the shift in the behaviors of their consumers.
Increasingly, companies such as Amazon and Netflix have set the bar of consumer expectations exceedingly high. And now consumers expect every company to provide them with relevant, highly-personalized experiences that meet their every need.
Now that these FIs have access to an increasing amount of data, they would do well to emulate the business models of these tech giants that truly understand the needs of their consumers.
Since digital banking has significantly increased the amount of information FIs collect, they’re able to glean more insights into member behaviors from that data, including their transactional behaviors and how they engage with their institutions.
The key is for FIs to tap into a complete data solution that gives them a total view of each member’s interactions and also offers automated marketing communications, allowing them to send the right messages to the right users at the right times.
“One Size Fits All” Marketing Is Not Good Enough
Like many organizations in other industries, FIs often store their data in silos across the business, which means they don’t have a single source of truth about each member. This can result in less-than-stellar member experiences as well as ineffective and fragmented marketing efforts.
Not only do marketing teams in small and midsize banks and credit unions have to deal with data silos, but they’re also overworked. Consequently, it can be a challenge to develop and execute relevant campaigns or deliver the targeted offers that their consumers want.
Because they have to deal with limited resources and numerous conflicting priorities, many FIs are just not able to provide consumers with the same level of personalization as their fintech and big bank competitors.
Additionally, some FIs still follow an annual campaign calendar, i.e., sending a lending campaign in Q1, a deposit campaign in Q2, etc. This method is ineffective because FIs aren’t automating campaigns that connect with consumers and prospects at the right times.
Personalized and Seamless Communications
Consumers want their FIs to interact and communicate with them seamlessly across all channels, including in-person, online, and mobile. And consumers also want their FIs to provide timely, relevant, and valuable information that’s customized to meet their needs. By giving them the personalization they’re after, FIs can engage consumers, enhance their experiences, attract their interest, and gain more of their trust.
Consumers also want that credit union experience across all channels. FIs can do this by:
Understanding their consumers and their needs
Even though FIs have massive amounts of information about their consumers, that data is useless if they’re not able to access it. FIs need a solution that delves into the data and also offers analytics to enable them to truly understand their consumers. This will allow FIs to provide relevant, personalized interactions as well as offer customized services and programs to address the needs of their consumers in a timely way.
Optimizing their data solutions
Financial institutions already have the necessary data to implement personalized messaging. The problem is that they don’t have a way to glean insights from that data — insights they can use to build trust with their consumers and, as a result, boost their profits.
To optimize their data solutions, credit unions must integrate their core data with their payment processor data so they can understand their consumers’ buying trends, payment trends, and preferences. FIs also need to consolidate their data to make it easier to deliver the right promotions to the right consumers at the right times.
Relevancy Over frequency
More doesn’t always mean better, particularly when it comes to communication. FIs need a comprehensive, data-informed view of each member, so they can more accurately determine the most relevant and effective messaging topics and how often they should deliver that messaging. Consumers are more likely to respond to one or two targeted messages, rather than broader, irrelevant messages sent more frequently.
Technology That Affects the Bottom Line
With a comprehensive consumer lending, account, and card marketing automation solution FIs get a better understanding of what their consumers need and when. Improved member profiles, enhanced data, seamless integrations with loan origination systems, as well as automated, personalized campaigns can help FIs produce revenue-driving opportunities across the organization.
MeridianLink® Engage
Engage is exactly this type of comprehensive, end-to-end solution. Engage creates enhanced profiles of your consumers, so you know just what they need and when they need it. Engage also helps your financial institution build more profitable relationships with your consumers through data-driven insights and personalized communications. By combining your data with third-party data via this cutting-edge decisioning and marketing engine, you can eliminate the need for IT pulls and other manual tasks related to marketing campaigns. Gain efficiency and take advantage of everything Engage has to offer:
- Data-driven Insights – Unique growth opportunities for your institution
- Recommended Actions – Targeted marketing campaigns, including prescreen consumer loans
- Predictive Outcomes – Real-time campaign impact tracking
- Seamless LOS Integration – Full integration with MeridianLink Consumer and MeridianLink Portal
- Data Enhancement – Third-party integrations for a more complete customer view
- Customizable Campaigns – Customize your campaigns to fit your goals and budget
To learn more about this cutting-edge solution, watch our webinar on-demand. In this webinar, we shared the success stories of three MeridianLink Engage clients using the software’s personalized recommendations and communication tactics to boost engagement and growth potential, including Christine Wright from FedChoice who talked about her experiences and how her institution has benefited from using Engage.
