These Days, One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Grow your DDA portfolio with
a smart, consumer-focused
acquisition strategy
What if you could refine your prospect audience and more effectively tailor
marketing campaigns?
Equifax can help you target the most interested households with a better
understanding of their existing or past banking relationships, estimated
income, likely assets, life changes and other factors.
Win more DDAs by integrating relevant financial insight into
your acquisition strategy
■
Grow your DDA accounts by making stronger, more precise promotions to
prospects
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Help boost your marketing ROI by only targeting the most interested
prospects who are likely to activate an account
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Maximize account profitability from the start by better understanding a
prospect’s cross-sell potential
Savvy financial marketers are swapping mass mailers and generic cash
incentives for more personalized and precise consumer-driven strategies.
By Brad Jones, Vice President, Retail Banking Leader, Equifax Inc.
As financial institutions shed their protective, post-recession
customer acquisition strategies, many want to get more aggressive
and precise when targeting prospects and customers. Yet, there
remains a strong need to optimize budgets and internal resources.
Enter: consumer-driven marketing.
In what sounds like a brave new world, fueled by big data, analytics and predictive insight, consumer-driven
marketing may seem complicated, but it can actually help simplify acquisition strategies while enhancing
effectiveness. By delivering more information than you ever thought possible about your prospects and
customers, consumer-driven marketing enables you to move past the static view behind legacy marketing
campaigns and begin to consider the primacy, profitability and lifetime performance of individual
households. From there, the possibilities are endless.
Better insight for more targeted marketing.
Learn how our solutions can help you unlock new sources of revenue.
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Copyright © 2014, Equifax, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia. All rights reserved.
Equifax and EFX are registered trademarks of Equifax Inc.
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These Days, One Size Doesn’t Fit All
EXECUTIVE REPORTS
Consider right now as your baseline. There’s
Your ability to use this type of big data and analytics
opportunity to engage the household beyond
nowhere to go but up.
helps you bridge information gaps and better
the checking account.
Financial institutions are slowly veering away from
understand your customers and prospects so
traditional marketing and acquisition strategies for many
you can intelligently message them with more
reasons. After running in efficiency mode to weather tight
compelling products and competitive incentives.
economic and regulatory conditions, many now have strict
The end results can be dynamic, lifting everything
marching orders to grow business. Likewise, marketing
from response and open rates to cross-organizational
budgets are finally increasing, but they have yet to reach
performance and household profitability.
pre-recession numbers, which means improving the return
likely to become profitable checking account
households, the next question becomes, “What
is my best chance to attract them?” Based on the
newly available models, you can help determine
affluence and gain insight into activity such as
Make relevant, interesting offers. No cash
frequent travel or credit utilization. Using those
incentives required.
combined insights, your organization can more
Until recently, many financial institutions have
easily recommend complementary products that
only marketed checking accounts en masse,
are compatible with a customer’s true needs. For
offering incentives based on certain activities
instance, you might bundle the checking account
such as direct deposit, online bill pay and debit
offer with a specialized credit card that has travel
card usage. However, given the demands on
and entertainment rewards, or a promotional-rate
In lieu of these traditional strategies that cast a wide net
marketers today, you should consider asking,
money market account, or even a home equity line
and hope to catch as many fish as possible regardless of
“Can I even win this account?” For example,
of credit, instead of automatically hitting everyone
quality, consumer-driven marketing takes a more scientific
if a household already has five accounts with
with a cash incentive, which often does not incent
approach. It brings together incremental, disparate data
one institution, chances are slim they’ll open
profitable behavior.
from a multitude of sources to show you the bigger picture
an account with a different institution, so why
of a consumer. Instead of seeing where John Doe is at one
spend time and money chasing that lead?
on investment is essential. Last, consumer preferences have
changed – people are more discriminating than ever. Taken
together, this means traditional acquisition strategies, such
as mass outbound call campaigns, purchasing generic
marketing lists and sending costly direct mailers with “onesize-fits-all” offers, are far less effective these days.
point in time, you can see where he’s been over the past
two years, how he’s acquiring credit, paying bills, buying
homes and trading vehicles. You can even determine
affluence based on how he’s spending money, his deposit
and investment balance trends and life events such as
employment and promotions.
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Once you’re able to identify prospects that are
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The marketing efficiencies are clear. You avoid
households that are less likely to respond, saving
There are consumer views available that leverage
time and money. You reduce the cost of acquisition
financial performance and behavior in order to
by replacing cash incentives with existing, highly
help financial institutions execute consumer-
competitive products. You also help boost your
driven acquisition strategies. Imagine knowing
chances of winning the account by offering
if a household has the propensity to be primary
relevant solutions that meet existing needs.
or profitable in the first year, or if there is
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Technology Priorities for 2013 at Large Banks
These Days, One Size Doesn’t Fit All
EXECUTIVE REPORTS
Your timing is critical. Get it right to win
when they are more likely to be interested in your
on track to be mass affluent in two years. If you
marketing strategies that leverage financial
more households.
products and services. Put another way, you could
can recognize this and invest in him today, he will
performance and behavior.
In marketing and sales, timing really is everything.
better target the right customer, at the right time,
likely become profitable in the near future. By
No matter how well you understand a prospect or
with the right offer.
then, he will be your loyal customer, and you can
Mr. Jones is vice president, Retail Banking leader, at
further deepen that relationship with expanded
Atlanta-based Equifax Inc. He can be reached at
products and services.
[email protected].
how good your offer, if your timing is off, prospects
won’t bite.
Don’t overlook rising households. They will
soon be profitable.
Here again, consumer-driven marketing can help.
Say John Doe has a credit score of 620. Not so
Precision, relevance and timing; elevate your
Specialized data-fueled solutions can help reveal
impressive. But, 18 months ago his score was
acquisition efforts with consumer-driven
when households are “in-motion” and potentially
480. Suddenly, he’s become a more interesting
ready to pull the trigger on a new purchase, credit
prospect, based on where he’s headed. This is the
line, loan or other financial product. While the
theory behind “customer trajectory.”
technology is not necessarily new to the business
world, financial institutions are only now starting
to fold these timely insights into their acquisition
strategies, making them a powerful new tool
within the banking industry.
Only recently was it even possible to look at a
consumer’s credit performance over time, but
today’s advanced big data infrastructures allow
sophisticated providers to make credit files
multi-dimensional. Instead of viewing credit
Looking ahead, innovative data providers are
performance at one point in time as with a
taking in-motion insights a step further and
traditional credit score or report, you can now
researching the availability and use of fresh
stack up to 24 months of credit reports and build
data sources such as social media, employment,
predictive attributes off of that time series data.
education and browser data. With the proper
Consumer-driven marketers are applying this same
protective measures in place, this type of data can
technique to other data sources as well.
point to important lifestyle changes such as job
promotions, the recent birth of a child, re-locations
and more. In turn, you would be able to better
segment prospects and customers and more
precisely message them at a specific point in time,
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You can not only see where a consumer has been,
YouTube – Equifax Retail Banking: Interview with Brad Jones
but based on his performance over a designated
time period, you can predict his trajectory, or
where he is going. So while John Doe may not
be your ideal today, based on his trajectory, he is
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