Recession Readiness Insights

Customer Growth: 4 more ways for financial services firms to drive growth

Customer Growth: 4 more ways for financial services firms to drive growth

November 02, 2022 | Todd Hoover

(This blog is the second in a two part series.) The economy is continuing to fluctuate. Financial marketers are starting to shift priorities and reduce budgets. But, one goal remains a priority for many financial firms. The goal of finding consumers that offer the most potential for their brand. While some consumers are affected by inflation and income stagnation, others continue to spend and invest while offering less risk. These are the consumers that financial marketers can focus on to find and keep. 

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed three of seven ways that financial marketers can use consumer financial insights to drive customer growth. Here are four more ways  marketers can expand their relationships with their valuable customers. 

1. Maximize the customer experience 

Delivering an optimal experience is critical to both attract new customers and keep your best. Financial marketers can use consumer financial insights to recognize best consumers across all channels, deliver premium treatment to high-value customers, and personalize offers based on financial needs. These efforts can pay off. One bank generated $700 million in new revenue by identifying and reassigning high asset customers to a premium service channel instead of relying on internal data.

2. Optimize cross-sell to deepen the relationship

Moving customers beyond a single product (i.e. just a deposit customer, just a credit card customer) can be a challenge. By mixing up audience targeting, such as promoting lending products to deposit customers, and gaining more insight on asset potential and portfolio allocation, marketers can deliver the right next-best product offer. One firm used asset insights to segment current customers for a growth campaign. This enabled the firm to deliver messages based on likely product needs and achieve an over 100% lift in deposit, investment, and loan balances. 

3. Act fast to seize in-market customers seeking credit

Let’s say an existing customer is browsing for a new car loan. If you knew about the search as it was taking place, how would your firm respond? With near real-time alerts, your firm can have the opportunity to deliver a competitive offer and protect market share. Alerts such as this one can be extremely effective to help lenders not only recognize when their customers are seeking additional credit, but also reveal behaviors or events that could lower (or increase) risk.

4. Drive product activation

To deepen relationships, marketers can take steps to encourage customers to activate and use the products that they hold. 3 steps marketers can use to promote product usage include:

  • providing continuous product education
  • incenting spending amongst affluent cardholders
  • increasing credit limits for segments that are more likely to meet financial obligations.

Young affluent households – offering 3x higher spending power and 20x higher assets as young non-affluent consumers – are a particularly ripe audience for increased education and product activation efforts.

Learn more about how you can gain valuable new customers and build stronger relationships by checking out our eBook. 

Todd Hoover

Todd Hoover

Marketing Practice Leader

As Equifax’s Marketing Practice Leader, Todd Hoover leads a consulting team that enables clients to build best-in-class, data-driven marketing capabilities and programs. He also leads go-to-market strategy and partner relationships for Equifax in the marketing space. Previously, Todd led global Sales and Business Devel[...]