Thanks to the Amazon effect, today's consumers expect a seamless, personalized experience online, including from their financial institution. As institutions look to grow, a one-size-fits-all approach to digital marketing is not as effective as data-driven strategies that provide customers with messaging that resonates with them on the channel of their choosing.

For community banks, using data to develop personalized marketing initiatives on digital channels can help them break through the noise and reach new and existing customers. Read on to find out how your institution should leverage your digital channels to reach and expand your customer base.

What is Digital Marketing for Community Banks?

Digital marketing is the use of digital channels to market products and services to consumers. By using digital marketing, community banks have long been able to reach customers within their geographic area and beyond-especially since so many consumers look for financial services online. Due to its convenience and user-friendly functionality, consumers and businesses alike are using digital as their primary banking channel.

A key component of digital marketing is using data to deliver personalized, relevant messages to customers or prospects. So, if a customer visited your website looking for information on high yield savings account rates, you can provide them with relevant information the next time they log in to their digital banking app.

According to CSI's 2024 Banking Priorities Executive Report, 48% of bankers are focusing on data analytics to boost digital customer engagement in 2024, and 46% report prioritizing personalized customer experiences and targeted marketing. This demonstrates that bankers are taking note of today's digital landscape and deploying strategies to best serve their customers.

Understanding Your Customers: The Importance of Effective Segmentation

Understanding customer data and demographics is the first step in elevating your digital experience. At the most basic segmentation level, institutions should be able to differentiate between business, retail and consumer customers. Each of these groups will have different messaging and product offers.

On the consumer side, there are various segments that could be beneficial to your institution, such as high net worth individuals, recent graduates or those close to retirement. Viewing your customers in segments allows you to better understand and anticipate their needs, as well as tailor what they see across their digital experience.

Depending on where an institution is in their digital journey, they may not have the ability to segment their customers appropriately or target their marketing efforts based on specific segments. Using data to segment your customer base enables your bank to serve them with relevant, timely marketing offers.

Examples of segments include:

• Age: Since different age groups have varying financial needs, segmenting by age allows you to use messages and channels that best resonate with specific customers. Gen Z customers embrace a digital-first approach to life and have different needs and communication preferences than Baby Boomers or even Gen X. Customers who are 18-22 are likely to have lower incomes and may be more interested in financial education services compared to those ages 46-50. Segmenting by age could also help your bank launch campaigns targeting ages with high growth potential, such as 30-45.
• Life stages: Consumers often undergo similar life stages that involve financial activity, and clues exist in a consumer's financial data that indicate which common life stage or event could come next. A recently married couple will have different financial needs or goals compared to those of a couple approaching retirement. Segmenting by life stages allows you to analyze recent transactions to provide a desirable service or specific products to a customer who recently had a series of wedding-related purchases and a last name change.
• Credit score: If you're looking at transactions, you can parse out details around a user or group's credit score. If you wanted to direct educational content towards a group with a lower-than-average score, this approach allows you to determine types of products to market this group that would increase their financial awareness and education.

This segmented approach holds true for business customers as well. Your institution could look at transaction spending for small businesses to determine the health and maturity of the business, providing you with insight into ways you can support them in their business journey. Whether they're a startup, mom and pop shop or mid-sized organization with 50-100 employees, they will need solutions with varying functionalities to address their needs.

6 Tools Community Banks Can Use for a Holistic Marketing Strategy

Your institution should be using every channel at its disposal to reach new and existing customers. Below are several channels to explore as you nurture customers throughout their life cycle.

1. Digital Banking

Digital banking-which includes both desktop and mobile-should be consistent across every channel. If a user logs into their account on a desktop, your bank can serve them with a personalized pop-up ad based on their segment or past transaction history. This serves as a way for your bank to increase adoption for specific products while also giving customers a better idea of what's available to them. Your institution can communicate and drive engagement through custom text, secure digital messaging and push notifications.

2. Website

Your bank's website is often the first touchpoint and should support engagement while facilitating your customers' needs. CSI's 2024 Banking Priorities survey found 40% of bankers are prioritizing the improvement and modernization of website design. Using customer segments to determine what ads to display on your website ensures users see what's most relevant to them. In addition to using their past activity to determine what visitors will see, giving them the choice to see new targeted content could result in additional engagement. A customer may start with a business account, but a good experience could lead to them creating a personal account as well.

3. Customer Data Management (CRM)

An effective CRM platform should provide a holistic customer view by linking sales, operations, branch, digital and call center interactions-all to support marketing opportunities. Your CRM should also allow you to schedule appointments, send notifications, release targeted emails or marketing campaigns and more. By updating your CRM with regular documentation like contact information, credit scores and marketing preferences throughout a customer's lifecycle, you can open the door to building personal connections and cross-sales opportunities.

4. Email Campaigns

Often linked with CRM, email is another tool to help your institution communicate with customers. While some customers prefer in-person interactions, others may prefer receiving emails. Targeted marketing emails can be an effective way to reach customers with relevant offers.

5. Chatbot

Customer service tools like digital banking messaging and text, voice and video communication help bridge the gap between physical and digital channels. These tools can be embedded in the digital banking experience to further enhance interactions between your bank and customers, including voice, video and file and/or desktop sharing. Chatbots can be managed by your institution's employees or trained on preliminary conversations to expedite assistance. With chatbots, you not only address customers' immediate questions or needs but can also suggest related products or services.

6. In-branch experience

Even though most customers are comfortable navigating digital channels, branches are by no means going away. For certain financial activities, some customers want to walk into a branch and engage with an employee, so your customer experience should seamlessly flow from digital to in-branch. For example, if someone begins a loan application online, the in-branch representative should be able to help them pick up right where they left off.

Using the Digital Experience to Grow Customer Relationships

Digital banking tools have the power to transform customer relationships across the entire platform, starting at the login page. Enabling customers to select their preferred name at login (instead of their legal name) makes a significant impact on customer experience. Further, personalization is a building block for the entire digital experience.

Can your customers choose what's presented when they login? Enabling them to configure what's important and relevant to them-and how often they want to interact with those pieces-provides them with control over their experience.

Increased personalization opportunities allow your institution to show customers that you truly know them. When customers feel known and recognized, it's easier to build and maintain trust. And having a trusted relationship with your customers as their partner for financial services is paramount.

Some institutions are even offering specialized products and teaching financial literacy to the younger generation, such as kids' debit cards. With these tools, kids can earn money for meeting specific goals and learn about investing and saving-all under parents' supervision. This allows financial institutions to build relationships and serve as a trusted partner to parents and kids alike.

The Role of Data in Digital Marketing

Since data is the cornerstone of any digital strategy, banks developing their marketing and data plans must also be mindful of the evolving regulatory landscape. Regulatory standards, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Rule 1033, are emerging to give end users the power to decide what data they want shared with specific institutions and for how long. Rule 1033 would require financial institutions and other data providers to help consumers access and share their data securely using application programming interfaces (APIs).

If a customer moves from a national bank to a community bank, they should be able to take their data with them and provide it to their new institution. This new institution should be able to map and utilize their data appropriately. Let's say you have a customer named Tanya who is moving into retirement. Once she becomes a customer of your community bank, you could see through her accounts, and potentially even aggregated accounts, whether she has pulled investment accounts into her digital view. This allows your bank to provide insight into whether Tanya's income might be adjusted over time as she switches to Medicaid or starts drawing on retirement, allowing you to adjust your suggested offerings.

Bridging the Digital Divide: Finding Ways to Reach Your Customers

Placement of marketing initiatives also varies within the digital experience. Some users-such as Gen Z or millennials-may be more likely to use and engage with ads within the digital banking experience versus an email from your institution. Having flexibility within your digital experience to personalize the messages and locations based on your segment is critical.

Since community banks play a unique role in their areas, they are well suited to take advantage of non-traditional or unconventional marketing opportunities, such as seeking out community events to meet new customers.

In areas offering attractive outdoor adventures like hiking trails, some banks set up a small booth to pass out water bottles or breakfast burritos emblazoned with a QR code to their website. In Texas, community banks have been known to greet attendees at the Friday night high school football games with a branded tailgate, fans or other items that include a link to the bank's website. These unconventional methods merge a physical experience with digital channels and help banks stick in the minds of consumers.

Embracing the Latest

in Digital

Banks that opt to lean into segmentation of their customers and meet them in the channel of their choosing with campaigns targeted to their needs will likely find it easier to engage and increase adoption of specific services or products.

Check out our 2024 Banking Priorities Executive Report for additional insight into how bankers are reaching customers, overcoming industry challenges and more.

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