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Episode 86 - SMART Ways to Personalized Your Bank or Credit Union Website Homepage

Episode 86 - SMART Ways to Personalized Your Bank or Credit Union Website Homepage
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In this episode of our podcast, Meredith Olmstead, CEO of FI GROW Solutions, and Kristin Mock, Senior Inbound Strategist, delve into the world of digital branches for banks and credit unions. They discuss the power of customizing digital experiences right from the homepage based on user behavior and characteristics, a strategy that not only enhances user engagement but also significantly boosts conversion rates.

Key Takeaways:

  • Personalized User Experience: Implementing smart content on homepages that adapts based on previous interactions or visited pages enhances relevance and engagement, driving higher conversion rates for products like auto loans or mortgages.

  • Behavior-Driven Content Management: Utilizing behavior-driven strategies allows for dynamic content updates across the website, reflecting current promotions or rates, ensuring that content remains both current and highly targeted.

  • Segmentation and Targeting: Sophisticated segmentation based on product usage, customer lifecycle stages, and even membership status allows for highly personalized experiences, encouraging deeper engagement and fostering customer loyalty.

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Transcription:

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

Kristin Mock:
Hello.

Meredith Olmstead:
So Kristin and I were just having an interesting conversation because we were both in a webinar a couple of weeks ago that was talking about creating web or digital branches, like websites or digital branch experiences for banks and credit unions that are customized based on known characteristics or behavior, right on the homepage. And when we were on the webinar, people were super blown away by the concept, and Kristin and I were like, "We do that." And so Kristin was like, "Hey Mer, let's push record on this, and let's talk to people about all the different ways that you can customize and personalize a user's experience on your homepage, just on the homepage, of your credit union or community bank website." So let's dive in. Kristin, what's the first one that we always kind of jump into initially with our clients when it comes to what we call smart content, which is basically personalized content that changes based on the user, the individual user? Okay, so let's jump in.

Kristin Mock:
Yeah, so the first one that we like to do, and we always start focusing on the homepage, but we can also do this anywhere on the website, but we always start on the homepage, and we start with a recently visited page. So if you've visited the home loans page or an auto loans page, the next time you come to the website for the credit union or the bank, you're going to see right there in that homepage hero, an auto loans message or a mortgage message based on the page you most recently visited.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, I mean it's kind of a no-brainer if you've got high-priority products that you're trying to promote, and especially that are rate sensitive, right? Because huge, and the cool thing about our content management system that we use is that rates get updated in one place, but we can reference rates all over the website and still only update them in one place. So if you're running a special, first of the year, or summer special on autos or whatever, you could update a rate, like that was very motivating.

Because a lot of people are out there just shopping for rates. That's probably why they were on your product page in the first place. And then you can push that promotional rate forward onto the homepage next time they're there. So that's a great one. We also send emails about those things, just to throw out there. So it doesn't necessarily personalize the homepage experience, but if it's a known contact, like we have their contact information or they're a known member or customer and they go to a high-priority page within 20 minutes, we'll send them a quick email that just gives them a little bit more information, a little more product details, maybe some helpful resources.

Not super salesy, but those emails we find are opened higher than any other kinds of emails that go out. No unsubscribes, like 40% and 50% open rates. Because they come out when people are on your website looking at stuff. So that's cool. All right, so what about products? If we're really specific about products, because I know a lot of times our clients want to make sure that they are deepening relationships with their existing customers or even new customers when they're onboarding them. So how can you personalize the experience for those people?

Kristin Mock:
Yeah, so I mean right in that same audience of people who visited the page, you can include someone who you know has an affinity for that same product. So that's an easy next step. You've already got the structure set up, and you just start including someone who clicked on that ad, or maybe you've got some other way that you know that they're interested in that product. But then the next step after that would be product usage or maybe the life cycle. So maybe you know they've got a credit card and they haven't been using it, or a HELOC, and they haven't taken out money recently. Their CD term or their loan term is coming up. So you can start to send reminders for those products so that they remember that they have it and they should be using it.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, and the other thing is like helpful content to get people to think about utilizing a line of credit or a personal loan, a personal line of credit, a HELOC; maybe if they've got an auto loan that is three years-ish into payoff, we know the average length of people's owning cars, and that when they get up to a certain stage of a loan, they tend to start looking for buying a new car. So, why not put some car-buying resources out front and center for those individuals if that's where they are in that life cycle of the product? All right, what about if they... This was a big one in the webinar that we were on: an existing customer versus not a customer, or a member versus a non-member? How do we change... We do this pretty much on launch with every website we build. How do we change up that experience?

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Kristin Mock:
Absolutely. So you're going to know who your members are, and you're going to have a lot of those email addresses. So this is really low-hanging fruit, super simple to do. As soon as you know that that's the device, that that is tied to that member, you can start showing them special member rates or special new member promotions. You can change that language. And this is the first one that we always start with, is we kick off with how to become a member, how to join the credit union.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.

Kristin Mock:
But then if you're already a member, we're like, "Hey, you're seeing this message because we haven't tagged that this is you. So tell us that it's you." And that helps us cookie those people right away, and we can start jumping straight into products with those members versus non-members, and you can show them different messaging. Or if you know that they're currently in your onboarding program, they're a brand new member, you can start right off with, I don't need to target specific products for them right now. I need to start welcoming them to the financial institution; I need to start saying, "Hey, here's how you set up online banking; here's how you contact us." Whatever features that you want them to be focused on in their new membership as they're getting used to you, those are the messages that you can start sending them.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, 100%. Also, really important, if you're like in an indirect onboarding of a new customer or a new member, say somebody came through a dealership and bought an auto loan and then they navigate to your website at some point, probably just looking to set up bill pay, you know, to be able to pay their loan online, you're going to want to familiarize them with your brand and try to put forward, like what's the differentiator between doing business with you versus doing business with a larger institution. So you might talk about if you have a debit card that gives back every time you swipe it on transactions; maybe that's what you put forward in some of those experiences to really show, especially with young people, they care about that social responsibility in their banking.

And like, "Hey, if every time you go out and you're spending money anyway, you're using your Apple Pay on your debit, it's connected to your debit, and you want to give back to our foundation, this is how you do it." Awesome. All right. So that's in the same line; if you know that they're an existing customer or member, maybe they've got a loan product and they've got online bill pay, but they have no checking account, or they have no credit card, or some other product or service that could be a really good fit for them, you can change the content that they would have, that they would be seeing there. What else? Like, that's a lot of different options. Are there any others that we should be kind of considering?

Kristin Mock:
Yeah, I think we get... Member age is a big one; if you know that your members are close to retirement, or you know that they've got young kids, you can show youth accounts, college savings accounts. So, I mean, a lot of that stuff is just different products, different ways to segment your audience and show them the products that you want to feature for that audience. So kind of going to a slightly different vein, we get a lot of questions about geolocation.

If I know that somebody lives on X Street or in Y part of town, I want to show them that lender. I want to show them that branch team. So that one is, it's both simple and can also be highly inaccurate. So we all know that we get ads targeted geolocated; everybody puts geofences around their paid ads, and that's great, but it's only as strong as the tool you're using to decide where that person lives. So when we're working with local credit unions, local banks, and they may only serve one or two counties, getting the part of that the person's either currently in or typically in gets a little tricky-

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.

Kristin Mock:
-And a little inaccurate.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.

Kristin Mock:
I always use the example that where I live, my internet always shows me that I'm in a larger city that's about four hours from me. So when I get-

Meredith Olmstead:
Interesting.

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Kristin Mock:
-on a Lowe's or a Home Depot, they're like, "Oh, here's your preferred store." And I'm like, "Definitely not my preferred store."

So when we're working with these smaller serving areas, I like to do a preferred branch. You typically know that information about your members or your customers, and if you can put that into your website tool, into HubSpot, or whatever you're using, then you can feature the lenders of the branch team from that because you may know where they live, but that may not be where they bank. They may bank closer to where they work.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, yeah.

Kristin Mock:
So preferred branch I find is the best way to kind of geolocate. And you can really feature those people that they see every day. You can put that teller in front of them; you can put that mortgage lender right in front of them, and they're like-

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.

Kristin Mock:
-"Hey, I know that person. That's who I saw at the teller line yesterday."

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. Or if you know ages, you can change the visuals; you can change the aesthetic of what people are seeing and show them imagery that includes people closer to their stage of life. So there's lots of really interesting ways. The other really amazing thing about a really solid tool is that you don't have to pick just one of these ways to personalize the experience. So the way that we handle this is that you can actually prioritize all of this smart content.

So if you want to prioritize a special promotion or a specific product lifecycle list over the age of somebody or over whether or not they recently visited a different page, you could do that. So you can kind of rank these, and so this would be the first thing that they would see, and then if they're on this list, that would be the next thing, and so on and so forth. So that you're prioritizing all of that.


So really, really great stuff. So it's very, very important. This is key to making sure you're getting in front of and staying in front of younger customers or younger potential new customers and members because they want to see what they're looking for when they're looking for it. They don't want stuff that's not related to what they need, to their life stage. So, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Kristin. I appreciate you sharing all of this with us. If you're interested in learning more about digital marketing and sales or lending support for your financial institution, please visit us at figrow.com. We have lots of other great resources there: case studies, blogs, podcasts, all kinds of eBooks. And so, we'd love to have you come and join our community, and otherwise let's just get out there and make it happen.

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