Companies in the financial sector are moving towards a culture in which data is at the center of decision-making. Through this strategic approach, organizations can contextualize and personalize each of their messages to both customers and prospects, strengthening the customer-centric approach and growing the business. So, how can banks benefit from a data-driven strategy?

Data-driven growth in the financial sector is still at its beginning stage. In fact, according to the Digital Bank Report, only 6% of financial institutions worldwide consider themselves “pioneers” regarding the implementation of data-driven decisions; and only 10% of banks and credit unions consider themselves “fast followers.”

However, more and more banks and financial institutions are recognizing the importance of data-driven solutions. According to the Digital Bank Report, financial marketers already use data to drive virtually every component of a strong communication strategy, including customer acquisition (78%), retention (63%), cross-selling ( 55%), targeted digital marketing (48%), and the general desire to improve the customer experience (72%).

So what are the obstacles to the proliferation of data-driven decisions? When asked about the biggest challenges for data-driven marketing, 45% of respondents said they had difficulty collecting and organizing data, while 22% indicated a challenge in locating the correct data sources.

Also, a report by Forrester shows that 72% of companies consider that their biggest sales and marketing challenge was managing data and sharing information between organizational silos. In other words, the fact that data and information are not available to all the company’s teams makes communication difficult and affects decision-making.

Advantages of implementing data-driven solutions

Digital analytics allows financial organizations to know in greater depth and detail their customers’ behavior and the way in which they relate to the brand.

There are many advantages to adding a data-driven approach to the processes, but they can be summarized as follows:

1. Greater personalization of products and services, since everything that can be improved is detected in order to satisfy the customers’ needs, from start to finish.
2. Better use of available resources, because all processes are optimized, without the need to make large new investments, making the most of what we already have.
3. Better performance of the brand’s digital channels, since more effective, personalized, and efficient marketing, CX, and communication strategies can be created.

Data-Driven and Customer-Centric: the banking of the future

Being data-driven means making decisions and activating actions based on the data we have from our clients. In order to do this, we must follow three steps:

1. Have reliable and “activatable” data: have a data strategy that seeks to deepen the knowledge of the client to reach new audiences and grow the business.
2. Activate the data: Automate the investment in campaigns based on data and use the data strategy to contextualize and personalize messages.
3. Make decisions based on insights: Based on the analysis and interpretation of data and business insights.

One of the most important Chilean banking institutions sought Multiplica to carry out a data-driven strategy, with the goal of working on the optimization of processes through personalization.

The project focused on a website dedicated to this important bank’s market of small and medium-sized companies, to promote entrepreneurship in the country. The main objective was to achieve a greater number of registered companies, in addition to an increase in incorporated projects.

To achieve this, work began on data-based decision making, understanding customer behavior, and carrying out specific customization actions.

From there, we worked on the improvement proposals that were implemented with Google Optimize, with results that speak for themselves: a 36% increase in the generation of leads to ventures from the digital channel. But beyond the quantitative results, important inward achievements were also made:

• Change in the client’s mindset towards a data-driven culture for decision making.
• Establishment of a culture of continuous testing of the improvement proposals that are made from personalization.

But without a doubt, another important aspect is that, by sharing the knowledge generated in the organization, synergies are created between departments to create coherent and relevant multichannel strategies in their customers’ minds.

The future of banking experiences will be marked by the intelligent and strategic use of data. Through the use of digital analytics techniques, the automation of reports and data visualization, and continuous testing, perfectly adaptable and successful frameworks can be obtained to create the most personalized and efficient financial products and services.

If you want to know more about how we have helped our clients in the financial industry create personalization strategies for process optimization through data analytics and testing, read our article “Personalization of financial experiences to attract and retain customers”(spanish) or contact Lucio Grimaldi, US Tribe Leader at Multiplica.