2018: 4 Major Digital Marketing Trends Changing Retail Banking

4 Digital Marketing Trends Impacting Retail Banking in 2018

A synopsis of a Jeffry Pilcher article on The Financial Brand

A study from Adobe and eConsultancy reveals that senior-level decision makes in banking have become aware that the fintech industry presents a threat, and all factors from marketing to customer experience revolve around digital.

Customer Experience 

28% of all institution believe that customer experience optimization is the most exciting place for an opportunity in 2018. Making the experience easier, more fun, and more valuable for customers is a primary avenue for differentiation in the next five years.

Personalizing the Customer Journey

The experience must focus on the needs of the customer, customer journey mapping can both optimize opportunity interactions and smooth any issues with the customer experience; issues which can disenfranchise customers and cost the financial institution revenue.

Data-Driven Marketing Insights
Integrating AI into marketing decisions is a new avenue for innovation, Data-driven marketing was identified as the next top opportunity following customer experience optimization. While 61% claim to already be using or planning to use AI within the next year, which is ahead of other industries, they are not being utilized effectively. Challenges exist identifying effective uses, building internal resource and knowledge are top obstacles that are seen to prevent them from maximizing the use of AI.

The Adobe survey notes financial brands ignore the importance of content in a compelling customer experience. They ignore the creation and management of content, particularly video, and this does not look to be something which is planned to be improved.

Data-Driven Marketing Insights
Having not invested in the required technology, that is a current barrier to the improvement in digital capacities. Adobe believes it will be vital for them to improve their legacy technology, something which they may have issues making a short-term business case for when it is a longer-term play. Investment while not wide-spread does pay off; top performers are 2x as likely to invest in digital skills and employee education.

Financial institutions have the data, have the funding, can they pivot to meet customer expectations and maximize digital?

California - New Privacy Law

A few weeks ago Europe passed a law about how companies collect, use and store people's personal information.

This week a new privacy law just passed in California giving people more control over their personal information. This was a clear response on how social media has been using our information online.

People in California will be able to see the information collected about them, reasons why they are collecting it and who is seeing that information. It will also allow them to opt-out.

We will see what other states will join California passing laws such these.

For more information:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/technology/california-online-privacy-law.html

Brand Collabs Manager from Facebook connects brands and influencers

Nowadays, Influencer marketing becomes one of the effective ways of digital marketing since the digital disruption and the increase in using mobile and social media. Consumers also prefer this type of marketing because they think that it seems to be real and credible compared to the official marketing from the brand. To support this method, Facebook just announced the launch of a new tool, Brand Collabs Manager, to help brands better connecting to the influencers in Facebook platform. This tool will facilitate brands to match their preference with the right influencers. Brand Collabs Manager requires both brands and influencers to sign up and provide the different service for each side.

The list of influencers showed up for the brands. 

Source: Facebook Brand Collabs Manager

For the brands, they can explore the content creators who have followers in the range of 25,000 to 8 million with attribute filter they need to match with their promotion. The brands can see influencer’s information and Facebook portfolio to know about the past partner that the influencers work with for the decision making. The tool also provides the in-depth detail of the demographic, the influencers’ follower background and percentage of matching to see if those influencers can contribute to the right consumers or not. 

The creator's profile on Brand Collabs Manager

Source: Facebook Brand Collabs Manager

For creators or influences, they can create their profile and customize their portfolio. The tool helps the creators to know more about their insight and performance data. Furthermore, the creators can discover the brand profile to see the previous collaboration which is useful for the decision of being a future partner.

Brand Collabs Manager will help the brand to create a better engagement from the more efficient creator selection and also facilitate the creators to control their profile from learning the brand profile before they become the partnership. The tool assists both sides to have a good relationship for being a business partner as well. But for the first phase, the service is available in the US only. If this function works, it will help the brand around the world in better working in this part of digital marketing.

Reference:

https://www.facebook.com/collabsmanager/start/

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-announces-brand-collabs-manager-platform-to-connect-influencers/526082/

Leverage happy customers to promote your brand

Based on research from Statista 2018, it’s estimated that by 2021 there will be 3Bn+ social media users – that’s 40 percent of the world’s population. User generated content via socia media is essentially free marketing.  Nowadays, social media is the destination for customer-service.

Instead of dailing a customer service line and being put on hold, customers are heading to Twitter and Facebook to voice a complaint. The immediate transparency will put your brand's reputation on the line if the complaint is not quickly addressed.

However, social media marketing shouldn’t just be just a platform to project your own voice. It's is really effective to allow your existing customers to market your products and convince potential customers for you.  It’s important to respond to your users’ interactions with your brand.

https://edgylabs.com/how-to-leverage-happy-customers-to-promote-your-brand

Driving mobile app retention through push notifications

For mobile marketers, the stakes have never been higher. Apps are continuing to lose more and more users. So, how exactly do you hold onto users who are abandoning your mobile app? One way that might be overlooked is by using push notifications.

Push notifications are the bread and butter of many mobile app marketing strategies, and they can be incredibly effective to engage and retain app users if used correctly. So how to best use push notifications? Let’s looks at several ways to do this:

• Volume - Bear in mind the sheer volume of push messages you’re sending. It’s very easy to go overboard with push and end up annoying (or bombarding) your users with irrelevant, unhelpful messages — or just too many.
• Targeting - You need to be especially careful of overstepping the line with behaviorally-targeted push notifications because personal data privacy is top of mind these days. Data tells us that sending one push message per week for behavior-based campaigns works most effectively.
• Preferences - We’ve learned it’s important to offer users more preferences up front, rather than plowing ahead with sending notifications based on location and behavior and assuming it’s OK. It’s better to ask them up front which kind of notifications they’d like to receive. By providing options for specific types of notifications, you’ll create a more receptive audience.
• Content - Consider including an option for notifications about content. Push is a great tool for showcasing new content, such as the preview for the long-anticipated season of “Game of Thrones,” offering that little black dress in your user’s size or updating people with timely information such as breaking news.
• Location - We’ve seen users point to location tracking as the most valuable trigger for push notifications. So, if you’re a business with physical locations, geofencing is worth a try. Mobile is inherently location-based, and geofences give marketers the ability to connect with people the way they want, when they want, based on where they are.

At the end of the day, all marketers need to make it their priority to improve retention and reduce churn. Adopting some of these push notification tips will help set you on the road to keeping your users around for the long haul.

Source:

https://marketingland.com/using-push-notifications-for-mobile-app-retention-242258

Twitter strategy of brands for World Cup 2018

The FIFA 2018 Soccer World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world. Taking place once every 4 years, this world event provides major brands the perfect platform to advertise their products. The best part of the tournament is that you need not be an official sponsor of the tournament to leverage the soccer fever gripping the world to utilize the tournament as a marketing platform. I wanted to point out the following brands as examples of excellent marketing/social media strategy this world cup.

1) Corona Beer: The beer brand kicked off its efforts with the World Cup on Dec. 1, creating a live event experience with input from celebrities and athletes and reaction to the group Mexico was placed in. 

2) McDonald's Brazil: The company held a contest for kids in which 11 winners will be chosen to attend a Group Stage Brazil game and it offered special sandwiches celebrating previous world cup winners. It used the hashtag - #Prepara to prepare the fans for feel-good moments during the world cup preparation and tying in its food offerings.

3) Amazon Studios: Fox Sports is providing highlights of every World Cup goal on Twitter Moments and offer a six-second preroll ad for every highlight. Amazon is making use of this ad spot to advertise their new Tom Clancy series to fans from around the world.

View image on Twitter

Changing Promotion Landscape in Pharma

What's changing in the pharma industry?
1. Access restrictions are changing

• Sales rep access to HCPs has been declining
• Sales force size has been has declining

2. Channel preferences are changing

• More HCPS now rate digital media as their preferred source of information
• More than 50% HCPs spend 1-5 hrs/week finding medical information online
• Increasing use of smartphones and tablets by HCPs for work purposes

With low sales rep access, the Pharma industry has reacted by reducing sales force size and launching many marketing tactics. Pharma has focused on building and launching marketing & digital assets leading to a bombardment of messages on the HCPs.

But, the current promotion approaches do not always recognize customer preferences. A new approach is necessary to ensure the right message gets to the right customer using the right channel.
Multi–Channel Marketing’ is not the answer; Customer Centric Marketing is the answer and requires a new mindset. Traditional Pharma Marketing Promotion is based upon a group but Customer Centric Promotion is based upon optimizing the individual HCP.

Always start with your audience. To communicate effectively, you must know who they are.
Stratifying the HCPs into several segments who behave similarly, based on data, allows you to tailor your message and investment appropriately.Within each channel, the message (What you say) is a key component, but is often sub-par due to regulatory restrictions.

Creating Customer Engagement Journeys to weave all available tactics together to deliver the right message at the right time using the right channel, allows you to create a superior customer experience for the HCPs.

When you customize the experience to fit the customer, everyone wins.

I'd been shopping at the same department store for 10 years. I might as well have been a brand-new customer each time I walked in the door. The associates were nice enough, but they knew nothing about me or what I was looking for. I ended up buying less than I likely would have with more assistance, and I wasn’t that happy with the things I did buy.

This is the level of personalization all businesses should be providing -- and not only in bricks-and-mortar stores. Personalization is crucial for online interactions, too. Here are three reasons marketers must customize clients' digital experiences.

1. This is a relationship.

You have a digital relationship with your customers. But are you creating digital experiences that communicate how much you value those relationships?

Think about your interpersonal relationships with your friends, coworkers and neighbors. You remember specific details about these people. You know what each likes and needs. And you aim to please because each of them can choose to have a meaningful relationship with you or some other acquaintance.

Your digital relationships with customers are no different. You choose how you invest in your relationships.

A decade ago, the technology didn’t exist for businesses to create deep and meaningful relationships at scale. Newer technology has changed that. It's now possible for companies of any size to deliver helpful, relevant, individualized digital experiences that delight customers and make them want to come back. You simply need to prioritize and invest in this capability.

The world is becoming ever more digital. You might never meet your customers face-to-face or even speak to them directly. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do everything in your power to create meaningful relationships.

2. Expectations have changed.

In the not-so-distant past, cable TV was the norm. You had no choice but to watch shows at the time they aired. If you missed the one you wanted to see, maybe you’d get lucky and catch a rerun later.

Music was much the same. You chose which albums to buy, but radio play dictated most of the music you listened to. If you caught only the last 30 seconds of your favorite song, too bad. 

Fast-forward to today. Services such as Netflix and Spotify mean you can watch or listen to the content you want, on your schedule. Your TV channel, radio stations and playlists are completely personalized to your individual tastes.

This level of personalization is the new standard, and it's elevated people’s expectations for digital interaction with all companies. Yet most websites still deliver a one-size-fits-all experience.

Progressive companies have started adapting to their customers’ desire for more personalized and dynamic experiences. All companies need to get there, though.

Customers expect you to personalize your content, message and products to them. By not meeting that expectation, you’re not just missing an opportunity, you’re often creating a poor experience for them. A poor experience leads to diminished loyalty -- and no one wants that.

3. It’s good business.

Data doesn’t lie. Personalization maps to revenue. Businesses that harness the power of personalization are seeing results. This shouldn’t be too surprising. Consumers expect a personalized experience, and they will reward companies that deliver it.

A recent study by Salesforce analyzed the shopping activity of more than 150 million shoppers and 250 million visits to e-commerce sites. Among the findings: Product recommendations (which are just one aspect of personalization) drive substantial revenue. In the study, traffic from recommendation clicks accounted for 7 percent of visits but 26 percent of revenue. Furthermore, visitors who clicked a product recommendation had a 10 percent higher average order value than a customer who did not interact with a recommendation.

It’s easy to think that personalized digital experiences belong in the realm of futurists. But this type of personalization isn’t five or 10 years from reality. It’s happening now.

The personal shopper who tailored an experience for me in the store convinced me to keep returning. You can can delight your digital customers in much the same way. When you do, it's a win for clients as well as your business. 

Does The Future Of Dating Hinge On FB? - Blog #5, Chelsey McGinnis

Does The Future Of Dating Hinge On FB? (Forbes)

FB is making a move on the world of online dating (pun intended).  How does it effect digital marketing?  Well, in a good world, it shouldn't --> but it probably will.

It seems like something involving Facebook and data is in the news every few hours, let alone days.

Of course, as a multi-billion dollar industry, it was only time before FB ventured into these unchartered waters. FB is still in recovery from the "rough patch" surrounding its data scandal and users have been quickly shifting away from the platform.  However, since millennials spend approximately 10 hours a week on dating apps, this could be the perfect solution to return younger users to FB - as well as appeal to older demographics (who don't like Tinder).

While this is a fun advancement and probably very convenient for single FB users looking for love, of course it brings the question of DATA into light.

Just earlier this week, FB also had admit to yet another data issue when information was accidentally leaked to developers through analytics reports.  Even without mishaps, its frightening to think what FB will gain to know about its users via a dating platform.  While a user's experience with Facebook is extremely personal already, online dating has the potential to expand that to unimagined heights.

Can we trust FB to manage this information about us? And, what will happen to both FB and its users if highly personal content, communications, and data is ever "accidentally" shared?  While users already experience a highly personalized marketing experience through Facebook, gaining even more highly sensitive and personal information would be a hard thing "to ignore" in the lens of marketing.

Google updates ‘Ad Settings’ to allow users to turn off targeting signals

Google updates ‘Ad Settings’ to allow users to turn off targeting signals

The updated ad settings allow users to turn off interest signal settings that enables Google to provide personalized ads. This allows users to manage ad settings and opt out of all personalization based on data collected by Google.  Additionally, “why this ad” will show up on all Google Services-YouTube, Gmail, Maps and Search.

The users also have the option to mute reminder ads, which helps Google provide more personalized content. This ahas an impact on advertisers who need to be aware that retargeting via Google can become tougher and will require content that aligns with the consumer.

 Full article link: https://searchengineland.com/google-updates-ad-settings-to-allow-users-to-turn-off-targeting-signals-300257?utm_src=ml&utm_medium=textlink&utm_campaign=mlxpost