The Financial Brand Insights - Winter 2021

peak; for instance, of media respondents surveyed, marketers in that industry averaged 35 data sources by 2022. So eleven is still a lot, but it’s a good place to start for unifying that data now. In the survey, there was an ask about nine data sources in particular. What stood out for Financial Services Marketers, is that the most popular focus is on known digital identities, with 82% of respondents replying (figure 2). Known digital identities are anything the organization owns like the company's website data, transactional data or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data. This isn’t a surprise for this industry with customers and members usually consuming more than one product or service. The marketer needs to bring that data together to figure out what to communicate next.

There’s a theme here of understanding what the customer is engaging with across the organization, then using that for personalization to

Figure 5

45% of Financial Services Marketers are unclear on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in their organization. AI usage:

Marketing channels used

build on the next best action. Financial Services Marketers Humanize

79%

Mobile messaging

78%

Email marketing

The top two priorities of Financial Services Marketers involve engaging with customers, so humanizing these engagements is critical. The number #1 Priority for Financial Services Marketers is engaging with customers in real-time. That’s why clean and current data is so important and ties in with marketers focusing on known digital identities and transactional data. The next two priorities are: ● #2 creating a cohesive customer journey across channels and devices. ● #3 measuring marketing ROI and attribution. The pandemic has influenced how marketers think about customer engagement, with 45% of Financial Services Marketers claiming their digital engagement strategy has changed since the beginning of the pandemic, where 43% of Financial Services Marketers say it has somewhat changed (figure 4).

87%

Website/app

Figure 3

91%

Social media

Satisfaction with customer data aspects

49%

TV/OTT

77%

Direct mail/print advertising

Integration

33%

48%

16%

88%

Digital content

Identity reconciliation

85%

Events and sponsorships

35%

44%

17%

Quality/hygiene

88%

Digital ads

38%

47%

13%

Consent management

91%

Video

31%

46%

20%

Figure 2

69%

Audio

Timeliness

Marketing data sources used

36%

40%

17% 7%

SOURCE: Salesforce © November 2021 THE FINANCIAL BRAND

Accessibility

36%

46%

16%

Completeness

82%

Known digital identities

38%

42%

15% 4%

prefer, especially with so many different ways to engage. As Financial Services Marketers work towards personalization, only 64% say their channels are dynamic (figure 6). That means marketers are figuring out how to orchestrate channels together. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been one way marketers have achieved personalization in their marketing communications, but 45% of Financial Services Marketers are unclear on the role of AI in their organization. Of those that do use it, from the survey, we see that the main use of AI is personalization and real-time communications.

80%

Transactional data

● Completely satisfied ● Somewhat dissatisfied

● Somewhat satisfied

● Neutral

● Completely dissatisfied

75%

Declared interests/preferences

SOURCE: Salesforce © November 2021 THE FINANCIAL BRAND

70%

Second-party data

Figure 4

Change in digital engagement strategy since beginning of pandemic

68%

Inferred interests/preferences

Similarly only 38% of Financial Services Marketers were completely satisfied with the quality and hygiene of their customer data with 85% being somewhat satisfied. Overall, that’s a good position for marketers in the industry but there is room for improvement to get that true single view that humanizes communication-based on where the customer is at in the life cycle How about activation of all the data then? After integrating that data, Financial Services Marketers prioritize these five use cases to activate it: 1. Customer Insights 2. Personalization 3. Identity Reconciliation across systems

72%

Offline identities

64%

Anonymized digital identities

45%

43%

12%

62%

Third-party data

● Completely changed

● Somewhat changed

● No change

54%

Non-transactional data

There’s diversity in the channels marketers are using to engage with customers. Financial Services Marketers are trying to reach customers and members on the platforms that they want to receive communication from, a great step towards personalization. Over 77% use nine different channels (figure 5). It’s important to get that customer data identifying what channel they

Figure 6

Data can be complex and marketers can have issues with data that might be out of date. Here’s how respondents viewed the quality of the customer data (figure 3). Only 38% of Financial Services Marketers were completely satisfied with the completeness of their customer data, but most were somewhat satisfied at 81%.

Digital cross-channel coordination

64%

26% 10%

4. Consent Management 5. Audience Segmentation

● Dynamic

● Duplicated

● Siloed

THE FINANCIAL BRAND INSIGHTS WINTER 2021