79% of North American financial consumers consider their banking relationship to be purely transactional, according to a recent Accenture study. When customers now think about what their bank offers – whether through the branch, online or mobile channels – most now think about commodity banking products and services rather than unique value for their broader financial lives. Modern financial marketers need to focus on developing a strategy centred around building better relationships with their customers by aligning service delivery with their omni-channel customers’ needs. With this in mind, here are 4 key ways banks can best leverage their customer data to deliver seamless mobile banking experiences:
1. Provide an Effective Onboarding process
On average, 20% of mobile banking users do not proceed beyond the initial log-in. The importance of making the initial onboarding process as painless as possible without compromising on security is an ongoing challenge for financial marketers. What’s critical for banks is to identify areas of friction in the user journey and automate app engagement at every relevant step to ensure the user has the best possible experience.
Using a complete mobile analytics and engagement platform, a bank can accurately identify user drop-offs and automate helpful and relevant service messaging. A user may fall off at step 3 of the registration process, for example, and receive a push notification offering in-app assistance from a live customer care representative.
Serving crucial information and helpful advice at the right moment will ensure a smoother user experience and will improve customer onboarding as pain points are resolved at source.
2. Deliver Personalised In-Branch Engagement
While remote online and mobile banking services are rapidly becoming the way forward for day-to-day banking, many consumers still crave one-to-one assistance from their banking providers, especially when making major financial decisions. Location-based engagement can enhance the in-branch experience by enabling banks to accurately detect an individual user’s presence and deliver tailored notifications based on their entry, exit or dwell time.
When a customer enters a branch, branch personnel can also be alerted and can be provided interaction history, their mortgage application to date and sales prompts for interacting with the customer based on their value.
Engaging with app users in this highly contextual manner while in branch has clear benefits for both the bank and their clients. For clients, this personalised engagement while in branch will optimise the overall customer experience leading to an increase in brand loyalty. For the bank, having the ability to analyse and automatically engage with clients either through the app or in person will drive a better relationship and maximise potential cross-selling opportunities with clients.
3. Convert Payday users into regular App users
On average 20% of mobile banking customers can be classified as infrequent app users and fall under the ‘Pay-Day User’ category. For these users, the mobile app is used solely for viewing their account balance at select times during the month. Many of these customers have a perception that there is limited functionality within their mobile banking app or they are still uncomfortable completing banking tasks through the app. There is an inherent risk that these users may become dormant due to the infrequency of their app usage so it is vital to have a clear engagement strategy in place.
Irregular users can be targeted based on their previous app behaviour with relevant push and in-app notifications up-selling key features of the app and promoting its ease of use when completing key banking tasks. Serving up a personalised in-app message promoting key features of the app while the user is viewing their account balance is one great example. The mobile app inbox can also provide another way to engage these customers with a dedicated stream of targeted content that can be accessed at their leisure.
4. Drive In-App Loan & Mortgage Journeys
While the adoption of banking apps has seen an increase in app users applying for loans and mortgages within the app, the actual conversion rate can be quite low due to a number of factors. Applying for a loan is a multi-step process that takes time and users may get distracted along the journey or decide to complete the application on an alternative device but never actually finish the application process.
What’s key for banks is to tag each step and field of the in-app loan & mortgage application to create a precise funnel and accurately pinpoint any drop-offs. Customer data should be united from all channels for enhanced user visibility and precise conversion analysis. The bank can then choose to re-engage with the customer at the right moment and on the right channel to nurture them further down the sales funnel and improve overall conversion efficiency.
A compelling example would be a customer who completed 10 out of 15 steps of an in-app mortgage application journey. The bank knows that this customer has a significant propensity to borrow the amount indicated. They also know that she goes to her local bank branch once a week to make lodgements. The bank can choose to re-engage with this customer using location-based engagement in-branch, asking if she would like to speak to a mortgage advisor regarding her recent application. This high level of personalised service adds value to the customer experience, resulting in improved customer retention and higher conversion rates for the bank.
About us
Xtremepush is a leading Multi-Channel Marketing Automation Platform. We enable hundreds of leading enterprise brands to drive revenue and maximise customer experience and loyalty through their digital channels by combining powerful user insights with multi-channel engagement functionality.
As a trusted partner to leading financial institutions and FinTech companies, we empower marketers to analyse, segment and target their mobile app and web users effectively, enabling the delivery of data-driven contextually relevant communications at the optimum time and location.