Independent Banker - March 2023 - 30

PORTFOLIO
on offering excellent customer
service and anticipating the needs of
clients. They can supercharge those
efforts with first-party data.
Take online banking, for example.
Community banks can welcome
customers by name when they log
in. In addition, banks can send
a message to specific customers
that congratulates them on being
a candidate for a loan, Cook says.
The message could include a link to
a local lender's calendar to set up a
conversation. " Just make it easy for
people to take the next step in that
discovery process, " he says.
Likewise, customer service
associates who have data at their
fingertips can play their own
marketing role. " When [customers]
call in, if [associates] knew that their
next best product could be a CD,
they can have that conversation and
more intimate relationship, " Wilson
says. " We know that community
banks want that white glove service
in the community. "
How to activate first-party data
Though financial institutions own
a treasure trove of data, some
marketing teams might not be
able to determine key information
like which customers are smallbusiness
owners, who uses online
banking and who is unprofitable for
the bank. A big reason is because
those valuable insights are often
siloed away in a core system that
marketers can't access.
In addition, many marketers don't
have tools for capturing customer
information themselves. They may
not have customer relationship
management (CRM) software, which
can store customer data and handle
tasks like segmenting customers and
tracking leads. Or, they may lack
a marketing automation system,
Early considerations for implementing
a first-party data strategy
Experts offer these tips for community banks who want to leverage
their first-party data:
data within the core system.
1
2
Prioritize data
accuracy. Eric Cook,
chief digital strategist
of digital marketing agency
WSI Digital, has a client who
can't send birthday emails to
customers through marketing
automation because the bank
can't determine which spouse's
email address is in its core
system. Unreliable data creates
missed opportunities.
Take measures
3
to protect data.
" Organizations are
increasingly required to do
so by laws, regulations and
the desire to maintain a good
reputation and trust with their
customers, " says Stephenie
Williams of Vericast. She says
banks need to understand
where customer data is located
and its lifecycle within the
organization. They should also
conduct risk assessments and
put protections in place to
manage risks.
4
30 // ICBA Independent Banker // March 2023
Get buy-in from
department
leaders. " Change
management is a huge deal
Invest in a CRM and
other marketing tools
that can get access to
with these solutions, " says
Crystal Steinbach, digital and
marketing automation manager
at Mills Marketing. For instance,
she says before implementing
a CRM, banks need a plan
to incentivize employees to
use it and perhaps even tie
their performance metrics to
CRM usage. " What our banks
are forgetting is, besides all
the first-party data that lives
within our core ... our sales and
support teams are talking to
people every day, " she says.
" They know so much about
customers that if that doesn't
get translated into data, usable
data at scale, we're not going
to be able to take advantage of
that either. "
5
Adjust processes
accordingly.
Processes may need
to change as well. For example,
banks need permission to
send emails with promotional
content. Yet, while many
banks ask for email addresses
when people sign up for new
accounts, they don't ask if
it's OK to send emails. " That's
one of the big barriers we
have, " Andrew Catalano, chief
innovation officer of digital
marketing agency Austin
Williams says.
Illustration (pages 28-29) by The Laundry Room/Stocksy
Independent Banker - March 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Independent Banker - March 2023
