A three-step method for financial services firms to target high-value prospects more effectively

Acquiring and retaining the high-value customers your firm needs is an ongoing challenge. It takes unified customer data and insights, relevant and real-time content, constant optimization, clear results measurement, and alignment across your organization. Financial services businesses simply can’t afford to waste media budgets on prospects who aren’t a good fit.

Overcoming the challenges associated with acquiring high-value clients in the financial services industry is a must. Here are three steps that financial services organizations should take to improve customer experiences and drive growth:

1. Unify siloed customer data to inform every interaction with your prospects
2. Ramp up content publishing to increase experimentation
3. Connect your on-site marketing and off-site advertising

1. Unify siloed customer data to inform every interaction with your prospects

To show your potential customers that you understand their needs and can provide the level of service they desire, start by combining customer-provided data with the behavioral data you collect from website interactions, app activity, and contact center interactions — all while adhering to data governance and other privacy regulations. Access to this data unlocks insights about your prospects, but if the data is partial, incomplete, or unclear, it could leave you with less understanding than before. Putting your first-party data together with third-party data from travel and hospitality groups, entertainment businesses, and even other financial services providers reveals additional insights that are valuable for identifying your high-value audiences so you can retarget them across your other marketing channels.

For example, if your firm is targeting high net worth individuals, you can filter your prospects based on other behavioral data or wealth signals that may indicate they have a higher income or net worth. These signals could be certain professions, affiliations with foundations, or interests that may indicate wealth, like international travel. This level of understanding of prospects allows you to match the right financial product to a corresponding financial need. It can also help you refine media investments to eliminate wasted spend.

2. Ramp up content publishing to increase experimentation

To deliver the most engaging digital ads, you need constant testing and quick iteration along with a deep understanding of your customers. That way, your business can take advantage of changing markets and address customer needs. If your marketing team is held back by manual, slow, content creation processes that rely on multiple business units and lengthy reviews, you’ll lose business to your competitors who have embraced more efficient publishing and iteration. The ability to rapidly test new content against various segments simultaneously is what allows businesses to optimize their messaging.

Let’s say a bank wants to promote new high-yield savings accounts to potential customers across its marketing and digital advertising channels. For different audience segments, they need multiple content variations and sizes with unique graphic elements, language, or colors. Generating these content variations can often be handled entirely by generative AI tools. The bank can then test those variations and optimize performance metrics related to engagement and conversion. Without the content variations to support those tests, performance improvement wouldn’t be possible.

3. Connect your on-site marketing and off-site advertising

Because digital marketing teams typically focus on a firm’s owned channels, like its website, mobile app, email, and social media, while advertising teams focuses on paid channels, these two units often operate in separate silos — especially if one or both are handled by external agencies. This lack of coordination leads to poor experiences for customers and missed opportunities for your business. Each marketing interaction your business has with customers and prospects should inform all future interactions, whether they come from marketing campaigns or paid advertising.

You need to unify your data from all your marketing and advertising systems into a single profile so that you can speak directly to the needs of each individual at every touchpoint. However, these data points aren’t as valuable unless you’re able to overlay all your data to create a complete view of who your customers are and what they need from your business. And with tools like predictive modeling, you can get a deeper understanding of what channels, segments, and publishers are performing best to optimize your media spend and improve results.

For example, let’s say a prospect visits your website and starts a personal loan application, but leaves before finishing the process. You can then use engagement data to see that they were applying for a loan and use that for retargeting purposes in your digital advertising campaigns. Then, when they return to your website, you can show them content related to personal loans to encourage them to pick up where they left off in their application.

Adobe can help your financial services business streamline customer acquisition

While data unification, content velocity, and siloed channels have historically been struggles for financial services businesses, thankfully, solutions exist today. Adobe offers a suite of tools geared toward the unique needs of banks, wealth managers, insurance companies, and payment platforms.

To get the most out of your customer data, increase your content velocity, and speak directly to each customer’s needs, you can use:

• Adobe Real-Time CDP — a unified system for managing person and account profiles
• Adobe Journey Optimizer — a streamlined, integrated platform for managing experimentation and personalization at scale
• Adobe Customer Journey Analytics — a full view into customer journeys and analytics
• Adobe Mix Modeler — an AI-powered, self-serve platform for determining which marketing elements and media channels are driving results

With a single system for creating, managing, and activating unified customer profiles, you can finally get the most out of your performance and customer data. By accelerating your content creation, iteration, and optimization, you can find and act on data-driven opportunities at scale. And finally, connect your digital marketing channels to tie everything together and enable end-to-end journey orchestration focused on acquiring the most lucrative, high-value accounts for your firm.

Learn more about how Adobe can help you make every financial experience personal.

Arjun Sekhar is a principal industry strategist for financial services at Adobe.

https://business.adobe.com/fragments/resources/cards/thank-you-collections/financial-services