Banking lifecycle management increases transactions 18%

Banking is becoming increasingly competitive as alternative payment methods continue to grow. Digital wallets, electronic payment providers, and online banks are just a few of the competitors vying for banking customers’ transactions. Customers expect online and mobile features to be cohesive with the rest of their customer experience. Customer disappointment stems from the lack of integrated, cohesive end-to-end banking customer experiences.

Adoption of online and mobile banking applications is critical to customer satisfaction. Tailoring communications based on behavior is a proven technique at driving adoption and usage of online and mobile bill pay. Marketing automation driven by business rules enabled the program to be versioned and personalized while executing efficiently.

This case study focuses on a highly successful banking campaign developed for iPay Solutions, a division of Jack Henry, which provides online bill and payment solutions to banks and credit unions. The purpose of this program was to activate online bill payment among banking/credit union customers resulting in an increase in transaction volume for iPay.

The Challenge

Bank marketing efforts struggled with a one-size-fits-all approach, often leading to generic communications that failed to resonate with users at different stages of their journey. The key challenges revolved around:

• Ineffective Engagement: A lack of tailored communication meant missed opportunities to connect with prospects and customers based on their specific actions and needs.
• Low Conversion and Adoption: Generic messaging didn’t effectively convert prospects, drive initial service adoption, or re-engage users who showed interest but didn’t complete key actions.
• Limited Upselling and Advocacy: There was no systematic way to identify and nurture highly engaged customers to encourage further product adoption or advocacy.
• Scalability for a Diverse Client Base: The program needed a scalable solution that could be adopted by over 4,000 diverse banks and credit unions, ensuring relevance and effectiveness across varied customer segments.

The Outcome

This triggered marketing program proved to be a resounding success, demonstrating the power of behavioral segmentation:

• Significant Transaction Growth: It drove an impressive 18% growth in overall transaction volume, directly impacting business performance for participating financial institutions.
• Widespread Adoption: Over 4,000 banks and credit unions successfully participated in and leveraged the program.
• Superior Engagement Metrics: The program achieved above industry open and click-through rates, indicating highly effective and relevant communications.

The Strategy

The program’s success stemmed from the development and implementation of five key behavioral email streams, each meticulously designed with specific business rules to trigger communications based on user actions. Each stream consisted of 3 to 4 emails, directing users to dedicated landing pages tailored to drive a specific action for service sign-up or re-engagement.

These streams included:

• Acquisition Stream: Designed to convert prospects into active customers. This stream leveraged initial data imports as a starting point to guide new users through the initial setup and usage.
• Welcome Stream: A series of multiple emails aimed at driving service adoption. The initial contact was sent immediately upon sign-up, with follow-up emails triggered if the setup process wasn’t completed, ensuring users were fully onboarded.
• Abandoner Stream: Focused on re-targeting users who visited the sign-up landing page but did not complete the enrollment process, providing timely reminders and encouragement to finish.
• Lapsed Stream: A series of emails specifically designed to re-engage customers who had stopped using the banking service for a defined period (e.g., X days). This stream also included testing of various incentives to identify motivating thresholds for re-activation.
• Power User Stream: Communications triggered for highly engaged users (e.g., those who logged in or used the service X times within X days). The goal of this series was to encourage new product applications, deepen customer relationships, and transform heavy users into advocates for future upselling opportunities.

By moving beyond generic communications and meticulously tailoring messages to specific user behaviors, iPay Solutions created a dynamic and highly effective engagement model that significantly boosted transaction volume and strengthened customer relationships across its vast network of financial institutions.

Sheera Eby collaborated with the Chief Marketing Officer to architect the strategy and oversaw the team that execution as well as handled the set-up and management of the marketing automation.