To thrive and remain competitive in the current market, financial institutions must adapt their marketing strategies in ways that modernize and improve the consumer experience. That means personalized offers with the right messages delivered to the right people at the right time to meet their needs.
Today’s consumers want to conduct their banking from any place, at any time, and on any device. They also expect to receive financial guidance and advice at each step along their journeys. To meet these expectations, banks, credit unions, and other kinds of financial institutions need to offer their accountholders consistency, convenience, and personalization.
Personalization aims to create unique experiences for consumers by providing them with information and services that pertain to their current and past dealings with their financial institutions. This also ensures consumers feel that their financial institutions understand their problems, fostering a level of trust between the two parties.
In today’s economy, it’s critical for financial institutions to deliver personalized offers as part of their marketing strategies and tactics in a timely manner, lest they risk losing valuable consumers to competitors.
In JD Power’s 2021 U.S. National Banking Satisfaction StudySM , consumers ranked personalization with relevant account offers and guidance as the top way for financial institutions to improve consumer satisfaction.
How Can Marketing Automation Personalize Consumer Contacts?
To transform their organizations and better support the consumer journey, financial institutions have turned to automation to enhance business processes, according to a report by Deloitte. One key component of financial institutions’ digital transformation initiatives is marketing automation, which enables finance marketers to personalize their contacts with consumers as part of an overall strategy.
In fact, 71% of consumers indicate that they’re dissatisfied with impersonal experiences, and 80% of consumers say that they’re more likely to purchase from organizations that provide personalized experiences.
In addition to dealing with the challenges of the current economy, including rising consumer debt, finance marketers must also ensure the content they deliver to consumers is meaningful, encouraging, and quality engagement. After all, consumers expect and demand personalized experiences related to their needs.
With marketing automation software, financial institutions can deliver content that speaks to consumers’ and prospective consumers’ financial needs, including reducing debt, building credit, buying homes, and saving for retirement.
According to one survey, 72% of banking consumers rated personalization as “highly important,” while just 8% said it was not important.
Broken down by generation, 79% of millennials place the “highest value on personalization,” followed by 75% of members of Gen Z, 74% of Gen Xers, and 58% of baby boomers, according to the survey. And 86% of consumers who rate personalization as important to their banking experiences are willing to provide feedback on those experiences, which will help institutions better tailor their communications with accountholders.
How Enhanced MeridianLink Engage Helps Lenders and Consumers
Consumer expectations are constantly changing, and new competitors are emerging every day. As such, financial institutions must do whatever they can to keep their accountholders happy. For example, by using data from marketing automation software, such as the MeridianLink® Engage platform, financial institutions can engage with consumers in more personalized ways, thereby capturing more wallet share.
An end-to-end consumer lending, account, and card marketing automation solution, Engage creates improved consumer profiles so institutions can understand just what their users need and when. Using Engage, financial institutions can better target consumers with customized, relevant communications and marketing strategies.
For example, if financial institutions can solve consumers’ needs, e.g., sending an individual an offer for a loan when they’re in the market for a new vehicle, those institutions become more relevant. MeridianLink Engage, which allows financial institutions to power this lending, recently expanded its capabilities to better serve institutions and their clientele.
The updates to MeridianLink Engage help financial institutions save time during the prescreening and deposit account opening processes. It also allows them to launch targeted marketing campaigns more quickly so they can get the right offers to the right consumers at the right times.
New Engage features include:
- Integration With MeridianLink® Opening: Engage now uses the same streamlined offer acceptance experience for customers running deposit account origination campaigns along with the lending campaigns the MeridianLink® Consumer integration offers.
- Home Banking/Online Banking Integrations: With Engage, financial institutions can deliver targeted campaign messaging or product offers to their important accountholders when they log in to their mobile or online banking systems. Accountholders interested in the products will then be redirected to prepopulated approval forms.
- Expanded Credit Bureau Integration: When it was first launched, Engage was only integrated with Experian™ for prescreen campaigns. Now, MeridianLink Engage also integrates with Equifax®, so customers with preferred relationships with Equifax can take advantage of the prescreen campaign option.
- Expanded Lending Campaign Options: When Engage was first rolled out, personalized URLs (PURLs) for each member of a campaign were only available for use in prescreened lending campaigns. Now, MeridianLink® lets financial institutions take advantage of PURLs and QR codes in their communications for all lending campaigns, including invitations to apply, credit line increase programs, and prescreen campaigns targeting prospective consumers.
Why MeridianLink Engage?
The advancements made by Engage allow financial institutions to add more new consumers through expanded channels and digital integrations. Engage gives these institutions one platform from which they can offer consumers multiple lending, account, and card opportunities through advanced data segmentation and streamlined execution, saving time and increasing consumer share of wallet.
