This Month in Retail Banking
We live in an omnichannel world. The average consumer – no matter what the product or service – now expects to engage with their brands and institutions whenever and wherever they like. Retail banking is no different. Customers are keen to open accounts and manage them across a range of channels.
Research has found, however, that only 25% of U.S.-based companies have an omnichannel strategy even though omnichannel marketing has been shown to boost net promoter scores (NPS) by as much as 50%. Particularly as financial institutions invest across their different digital channels, so should they be focusing heavily on omnichannel marketing strategies.
A key component of marketing is reaching customers productively, and a well-crafted multichannel approach better allows marketers to follow their customers and engage with them continually. Email, for example, converts only a small fraction of recipients because it’s not the primary method of customer engagement. That makes the website, app and other channels critically important in building that all-important reach and showcasing the institution’s strength through a customer’s preferred channel or channels. Lean into those strengths in every point of contact, and it will pay off.
Today, the most sophisticated banks are beginning to think about communications more as relationships – through the likes of conversational marketing – than about building transactional connections. By integrating different channels and building campaigns around the modern app, website, mobile, chatbot, email and text-friendly user, banks can significantly deepen customer engagement and with it, the relationship.
