5 Things Your Financial Institution Should Be Doing with Marketing Automation Today

Marketing automation is an indispensable tool for financial institutions. It is the doorway to scaling your meaningful interactions with customers and prospects. In the past, banks lagged behind other industries in adopting marketing technology, today we see that they are embracing the advantages of robust CRM systems. Customer experience needs have become more about personal and relevant messages, consistently.

Whether you are new to marketing automation or an experienced user, here are five things you can and should be doing with your marketing automation tool.

1. Use automation during your onboarding process.

Using marketing automation during customer onboarding is a great beginning to ensuring the customer journey will be a success. There are multiple milestones in the onboarding process that call for automation. One example is to deliver a personalized acknowledgment letter for every new customer. Here you automate the timing, content, and method of communication based on the type of account a customer opens and their expressed preferences in communication medium (email, print, etc.). Other onboarding touch points could include a follow-up phone call prompted with an automated reminder or placing a surprise insert in a customer’s first statement.

2. Focus on automating for growth

Using marketing automation for business development creates more efficient campaigns with more consistent messaging and engagement. For example, you can qualify a prospect list, automate an email delivery, track if the email is opened, and automate a reminder to contact the prospects that showed interest. This type of automation elevates your marketing campaigns far above indiscriminate bulk mailings or unqualified lists of names to contact.

3. Focus on automating for retention

Keeping in touch with your customers is an important step in retaining their business. Structure regular interaction points where appropriate. For example, automate a mortgage touch-point process, which ensures that you communicate regularly with mortgage customers during the long-term payment process when it is easy to lose touch. When you communicate with them, ensure you are talking about matters that interest them and apply to them specifically, like automating a happy birthday wish through an email or print card via mail.

5. Don’t forget tracking

Tracking and measuring campaign performance is fundamental in understanding what works, what doesn’t, and how to do it better. For example, use tracking to know how many campaign emails are opened and how many of those lead to product usage. Measure every campaign’s results against the campaign’s initial goals to determine successes and ongoing strategic adjustments. And don’t overlook that tracking and the use of reminders is also a good mechanism for team accountability related to campaign tasks.

For more information on marketing automation, including more applications and practical examples of its use, request a demo today!