Capitalizing on the cross-sell promise with digital banking innovation.
Virtually every credit union has new customer acquisition as a top priority, but generating a new account is only the beginning. To achieve near-term profitability and long-term relationships, the new customer must become fully engaged. This engagement is typically not achieved in a day, week or month. It is the foundation of a relationship that includes, trust, dialogue, incremental growth in services, and a growth in share of wallet if done correctly. The alternative to focusing on building customer engagement is a relationship that does not meet its full potential or losing that customer to a competitor.
It is no secret member loyalty defined by tenure grows 50% when 3 or more services are held in a portfolio. Credit Unions have a tremendous opportunity to compete more directly with banks and add some disaffected bank or competitor customers to their membership rosters.
Today’s credit unions are serving up more of what consumers expect from a larger bank, including access to their account online, and their auto, business, and student loans. With economic constraints limiting branch growth, credit unions have embraced e-banking as a critical growth driver.
In a January 2019 survey by the Financial Brand, financial industry experts believe the top priority for credit unions to remain competitive is improving the consumer experience. Throughout this blog series we have highlighted the importance of providing customer experiences worthy of repeat business and have provided solutions where MPX can help. In this third installment, MPX will focus on how credit unions can increase tenure by effectively using statement and related notifications.
Wouldn’t it be nice to inspire an auto loan customer to get a mortgage with you as well? The added interest is valuable, but they are one step closer to increasing tenure, driving up customer profitability, and boosting bottom line growth.
CUSTOMERS ARE SPREADING OUT THEIR FINANCIAL PORTFOLIO
In the age of digital banking innovation, fragmented financial relationships are on the rise. Consumers have the same amount of money and loans as they always have, but they are spreading them across more banks and credit unions. Just a few years ago, a consumer looked to a provider for their deposit accounts, mortgage and auto loan. Today a customer might have a checking and savings account with one institution, but look elsewhere for a mortgage, and even to a third provider for an auto loan.
Most consumers can access digital banking solutions from a variety of providers and are doing so more and more frequently via their smartphones. How can you stay relevant and top of mind with today’s bombarded consumer? By delivering a great experience, and making them aware of other relevant services.
As stated in our previous posts, financial institutions have a tremendous opportunity to create competitive advantage with online loan payment sites or to increase customer loyalty by improving their services with text-to-pay.
There is another opportunity for credit unions to influence their customers, and it lies in the marketing an institution can incorporate into statements. Financial firms spend a lot of time and energy trying to anticipate life events that trigger a financial need, such as buying a new home or having a baby. In reality, these life events aren’t the kind of buying signal you can consistently expect to see, accounting for only one-quarter of financial product purchases according to a study done by Gartner.
CUSTOMERS EXPECT BANKS TO PROVIDE THEM WITH TARGETED OFFERS
A North American Consumer Digital Bank Survey by Accenture reported that nearly 2/3 of customers want their banks to use personal information, such as mortgage, credit card and student loan data to present them with suitable solutions. Customers expect to be professionally and respectfully served with specialized products and offers.
Cross-sell and up-sell opportunities might be one of the most important aspects of providing a strong experience as members expect it. Access to data allows credit unions to tap into insights about their customer. If credit unions aren’t proactively communicating to their customer about a new product or service, another credit union is.
Marketers should be enabled with the forum, segmenting data, and technology to facilitate these up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. Yet many institutions are not taking full advantage of their customer communication opportunities.
FULL-WINDOW ENVELOPE AND THE MPX DIGITAL BANKING INNOVATION ADVANTAGE
You are already spending money on sending paper and digital statements to your members. MPX can help make these statements highly valued by smartly integrating targeted marketing for both your paper and paperless members.
Some of your members are simply throwing away their mailed statement given that they’ve already been online to check their balances and transactions. With the simple but highly effective full window envelope, they will see an appropriately targeted marketing offer aimed at gaining more of their services. For your paperless members receiving digital statements, the email or text notification to inform them that their statement is ready to be viewed can incorporate your integrated marketing communications. Not only are these effective ways to get your message in front of your members, but there is no added postage and no added cost with MPX.
More than half of loan customers have no other services with their credit union, making them prime candidates for targeted acquisition and marketing offers. MPX, a leader in digital banking innovation, facilitates seamless integration across all customer-facing notifications.
MPX’s solutions allow credit unions to organize and customize the data they push out to customers. The figure above is a perfect example of how MPX’s integrated marketing is professionally included even with paperless notifications.
IMPROVE YOUR CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION STRATEGY
Credit unions must compete with larger national institutions, and these large companies have multi-billion-dollar marketing budgets. How is a smaller institution supposed to compete against these industry behemoths? A tried and true a method is by providing an excellent customer experience and focusing on digital banking innovation. The agility of a smaller firm allows them to respond to customers in a faster, more personalized way, yet many report they do not take full advantage of all the channels at their disposal.
MPX helps financial institutions provide better consumer experiences because the folks at MPX are consumers too. Streamlining customer communications, including valuable cross-sell language, offering customers 24/7 digital access, and delivering relevant and visually pleasing notifications are all ways credit unions can get a leg up on their competition.
