Marketing for financial services: Gaining online trust
This blog is part 3 of a 4-part series marketing for financial services
Customer trust is of critical importance to financial service providers. To a much greater extent than other sectors, consumers and professional clients value the security of data and pay more attention to privacy. This means that it is very important to work on online trust if you are a marketeer working in finance. You can achieve this using the smart and transparent use of data.
How can a financial service provider work on online trust?
There are a number of ways in which you can increase the trust of your (potential) customers online. A guiding principle in this approach is the way in which you use the data in your possession. A number of tips:
- Security: new data breaches or online fraud using WhatsApp are in the news every week. At the same time, we expect customers to share more data than ever before, which means that you, as a financial service provider, must ensure that all the digital resources you use are reliable and secure. Security is key when it comes to online trust.
- Personalization: nowadays, customers expect more in terms of personalization from their financial institution. This is not strange, as services like Netflix, Spotify and news websites revolve around a great and personal experience. You can also surpass your customer expectation by offering relevant, contextual, and smart recommendations that help your customer improve his or her financial position.
- Focus on customer journey: have you ever thought about the perfect customer journey(s) for your customer? You can offer your customer a great experience by thoroughly defining the course of this customer journey!
- Unconditional transparency: the foundation for the use of data in the financial services sector is unconditional transparency. It is better to communicate too much about this subject than too little. Use clear (and findable) conditions and proactively communicate these with your customer. Also give them the opportunity to change their preferences.
- Maintain human interactions: despite the extensive digitization, consumers and professional customers still want personal contact. Always offer them the opportunity to seek personal advice in the form of a personal meeting.
The difference between smart and creepy use of data
Marketing technology offers a lot of opportunities. There are numerous ways to make smart use of data. But this is no justification to always do so. There is a small difference between ‘cool’ and ‘creepy’ use of data. Accenture gives 2 great examples in its blog ‘Tips on building banking trust’. It is smart to use data to inform a customer that he or she has almost reached his or her spending limit, for example. But it comes creepy once you use the location data of the banking app to try to sell the customer travel insurance in an advertisement when he or she is at an airport.
You, as a marketeer, must properly inform the consumer about how you use the data and make responsible use of the data. If you are transparent and open and make it clear to the consumer that your organization takes things seriously, you can even use this to distinguish yourself.
Marketing automation as a method for gaining online trust
The use of a marketing automation system is indispensable to be able to put the strategy set out above into practice. The collection of data, taking into account the GDPR and the preferences of users, and subsequently using the data in a smart manner, is done using a marketing automation platform. This also gives you the option to personalize your communication and create this great customer experience. Everything to increase and retain the trust of your customer. Companies like Nedasco (insurances) and PayingIT (pay-rolling) use such a system, for example. We also successfully assist the Standard Chartered Bank and Fuse Capital (Asset Based Funding) with this.
Do you want to learn more about the use of marketing automation in the financial services sector?
We have helped numerous financial service providers select and implement the right marketing automation platform, and – the most important thing – achieve the right results by making smart use of data in campaigns and communication. We do this around the globe. Do you want to learn more about this? Schedule an appointment below: