Episode 108 - What does data driven marketing for banks and credit unions really look like

Too often, "data-driven marketing" gets tossed around without real meaning. In this episode of the Hit Record Podcast, Meredith Olmstead and Kristin Mock dig into what it actually looks like for banks and credit unions to use data in ways that drive real results. From identifying where leads fall off to improving digital journeys and aligning marketing with lending, this conversation is packed with practical ways to turn insight into action.

Key Takeaways:

• Reporting on data isn’t the same as using it. Real data-driven marketing means identifying where people are falling off and making changes that move the needle.

• If your digital journey is confusing or outdated (especially mobile applications), you’re losing leads before they even have a chance to convert.

• Core and transaction data can unlock hyper-targeted marketing. You don’t need a data scientist to make it work. Tools today can bring that power straight to your marketing team.

Transcription:

Meredith Olmstead:
Hi there. I'm Meredith Olmstead, CEO and founder of FI GROW Solutions. We are a digital marketing and sales consulting agency and we work exclusively with credit unions and community banks. I am here with Kristin Mock. Kristin is one of our senior strategists. Say hi, Kristin.

Kristin  Mock:
Hi.

Meredith Olmstead:
We're just here today to talk about data-driven marketing. Kristin, we're talking about what is really data-driven marketing mean for banks and credit unions. We were having this crazy conversation. I was like, "You know what? Let's hit record and make sure that we can share this with everybody." Because a lot of times we give lip service to what is data-driven marketing, and we were chatting about this after we talked to a prospect the other day. Kristen was like, "I don't think that everybody really fully understands what data-driven marketing is." I was like, "Okay, well, look, I think this is worth recording a podcast and sharing this with everybody in our audience." So when you're thinking data-driven marketing, Kristin, what comes to mind to you?

Kristin  Mock:
Yeah, I think a lot of people use the term. I think it's just a hot thing to say, but we're not actually using the data to drive our marketing or reporting. You're just going, "Oh, here's my click-through rate, here's my conversion rate, here's my board report," telling your CEO what the numbers look like, and you're calling that data-driven marketing, but just because you're reporting on those numbers does not mean that you're using the data to drive your marketing strategy.

Meredith Olmstead:
Sure, and it came up because we were on a call with a prospect yesterday or the day before, I think we were on with a HubSpot rep and they were asking them about where they were losing leads, in their funnel, basically, the traditional marketing funnel or whatever, and the prospects were everywhere, and we were like-

Kristin  Mock:
Which is true.

Meredith Olmstead:
... "Oh." They were just basically at the beginning, in the middle, at the end, here, there, everywhere, and we were like, "Oh, geez, that's an issue." So we were like, "Oh, my gosh." Basically, they have lost control, and they realize it, which is good. They're aware of the fact that basically they're losing people in all directions and they're messing up their lead generation from the beginning to the middle all the way through to the end, and they really don't know even where to start in order to fix it. They need an overhaul of their entire lead generation process from the beginning to the end. 

So that's where we started with this whole idea is, how can you capture data all along the way to start figuring out where you're starting to make a difference and make things better? So that's where we were like, "Okay, well, let's talk about that, then. If we can start looking at data all the way along the funnel, if you're losing people everywhere, you start looking at the data in the right places as you're starting to make things better, then you're really realizing that you're doing data-driven marketing in a sense so that you're making improvements as you're making changes to your lead generation." 

And it's not really just marketing, honestly. It starts with marketing, but it's going all the way through sales, lending, service, at the end when people are converting, and service leads to more marketing and sales, and it goes back around into the funnel. Let's talk about what that looks like, then.

Kristin  Mock:
Yeah. I think it's true that everybody is losing people all along the way, but if you're not using the data you have to actually change something to actually drive that strategy, to actually identify where's the biggest issue, you're going to have people slip through the cracks from the beginning through the end. Recognizing that's the first step, but then figuring out where's the biggest problem? Where do we start? 

Start at the beginning. It's a circle, like you said, but you got to pick a starting point. Start with your entry point. Where are people coming to your institution first? They're coming to you through Google, AI search, digital ads, SEO, direct traffic. Start with those entry points and look at that forward-facing content. Is the digital ad copy the problem? Maybe you're not even showing up. Your SEO, your AI search optimization, is that content even out there? Are you showing up when people search Google when they search ChatGPT? That's the first step. Make sure you're showing up with content that is going to draw those people in your direct traffic the very first time they interact with your brand. 

And then you got to look at the next step, that user journey. Where are they landing? Okay, great, they saw your digital ad. You've got great rates. Cool let me come to your website. They come to your website, and then your website's terrible. The landing page doesn't show. The ad said they had great rates and then I came to their website and it turns out they don't even tell me what the rates are, or the rates aren't great, so I'm out of here. 

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, so huge bounce rates, your landing pages are unclear, they don't match what the message was on the ad. We do this for a lot of our clients. We can drive a lot of views, a lot of eyeballs to your pages, but if when they get there, they don't convert, that's on you. Whatever happened when they got there was not compelling. You can't force people to convert on your page if what they see when they get there is not going to convince them that you're reputable, trustworthy, that what they found when they got there made sense to them, that it was something that they wanted to purchase or that they felt like was competitive in the marketplace. All of those things matter. So absolutely, you have to make sure that whatever they find when they get to you makes sense to them to go to the next step, which is their online application.

Kristin  Mock:
Yeah, it's really easy to make it very difficult for the user. You get to that page and you're like, "Here's an Apply Now button, here's a Learn More button, here's a calculator," you've got 10 different directions you can go. Point them in one ideal direction. Point them to that application. And then when they get to that application, don't make it impossible for them to figure it out or annoying or a million steps or repeating the same data over and over. 

Those online applications, I can't tell you how many I've gone through and I'm like, "I'm eight steps in and I don't know what I've actually done," or I got to the very first page and it had a huge scroll and I was just overwhelmed and I left. I clicked through on a lot of clients or potential clients to just see what does that online application look like from the beginning, and am I like, "This looks easy, this looks clean," or am I like, "No, I tried to do this on my phone and I immediately decided that this was a big computer job."

Meredith Olmstead:
Well, and that's really important for the younger new members or younger new customers because a huge percentage of them are doing applications on their phones, so you have to make sure that your online applications work well on smart devices and smartphones. That's a big, big problem for a lot of slow adopters in smaller institutions because a lot of those online app, their websites might be great on a phone, but then you get to those third-party applications and they're garbage on your phone, and you just lose. You lose your leads there just like that. They're gone.

Kristin  Mock:
Absolutely.

Meredith Olmstead:
That's a big problem. So then that's where your data, that's where you're looking at your data. You might have great data points all the way up to your online application, and then boom, you've lost 70% of your leads immediately on your online application. That's where you know, you use that data driven information to know, okay, I've got to fix this. We need to go and invest in a better online application vendor immediately because this is the point of drop-off and this is what is our barrier to entry for new customers and new members

Kristin  Mock:
Yeah, or restructuring it, a new vendor or restructuring it. But yeah, you've got to do some testing to make sure that that's not the big spot you're losing people.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. The other thing that we're hearing a lot and that I've been hearing, I was at a CEO summit... This is not just in marketing. We also interact a lot with lending. We interact a lot with operations. We interact a lot with IT. I was at a CEO summit in November and I'm hearing a tremendous amount of people crosswise around underwriting. Once you're getting through the application process, there is a ton of miscommunication or of sometimes where you're bringing in a ton of new applications that are getting denied because you don't have the right products or services or underwriting standards in place for younger applicants, younger possible members or younger customers who are applying that have less credit worthiness, they're less banked, they have less credit history. So I think what we're really hearing a lot in the marketplace right now is for a need for new products and services designed for younger customers who really need financial products and services that are designed for people who have done a little bit less longer in terms of financial history.

If that means they have to pay a little bit higher interest rates or you have special products that are designed for people who have less history or maybe they need a co-signer or something else where they're building their credit and you're walking them through that process a little longer, that's what they need. But I think we are hearing a lot of that and I think that that is something that really credit unions and community banks have historically been really good at. A lot of our clients are really trying to walk that walk a little bit better. So that is definitely something that from a data perspective you could be looking at in terms of data. If you are getting a tremendous amount of applications in and then 60, 70% of them are getting denied from a data perspective, that's when as a senior management team and even as department heads need to sit down and say, "Okay, what can we do about this? Because these are customers, potential customers that we're sending out the door, and is there some potential business that we could be doing here to serve our communities better?"

Kristin  Mock:
Right. This is coming down to, especially if you're a credit union, this is really your mission, people helping people. And this younger generation is struggling. They're getting started later. They're not buying houses and they're not building credit as early. You've got to redesign your product to really work. If your goal is we need to lower membership age, you're not going to do that unless you've got products that actually work for this youngest-

Meredith Olmstead:
Younger.

Kristin  Mock:
... generation that's coming. Yeah.

Meredith Olmstead:
100%. The last thing that you said, and that we're doing a lot with our clients now, is connecting core and transaction data and bringing it to the marketing department. We've always talked about this in marketing for decades, but it's never been as accessible as it is in today's technology, where you can really bring data-driven, propensity-driven segmented lists into the marketing space, and you don't even need a data scientist on your staff. The tools, the software that you can actually now bring to your marketing department where they can bring segmented lists in and start marketing to your existing members or potential new members around their propensity to maybe buy a new car or do some work on their house or they're looking for a new house, it's really quite remarkable, all of the new segmenting capabilities out there now based on transaction data.

That is something that when you are connecting the dots with all of that data in your core and then doing micro campaigns to your existing membership and even new members, it's really amazing the level of personalization that you can accomplish. So connecting all those dots and bringing that to your marketing department is very powerful. It's something that we're trying to do with our clients now.

Kristin  Mock:
Yeah, your marketers can push credit card messages out. Email, digital ads, they can do that all day. They can blast credit cards all over your website, but if you're not using that data you already have from your core, if you're not looking at who's actually going to get a credit card, then that marketing messaging, that data's going to show that that messaging isn't working. And maybe the messaging isn't the problem, but the targeting is the problem, and you can build that targeted list, that segmented list with your data if you make that core and transaction data available to your marketers. That's where we said it's a whole circle because now we're back at the beginning of, is the problem the message or is the problem the segment, because you don't have that data coming back to your marketers.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. Awesome. Well, Kristin, thank you so much for having this quick conversation with me. I think this is super useful. I hope you all found some of these tips useful for you as well. If you're interested in learning more about digital marketing for your bank or credit union, please visit us at figrow.com. We have lots of other great podcasts, case studies, blogs, so visit us there. Otherwise, let's just all get out there and make it happen.