Four Solutions to Fix Your Bank’s Digital Customer Acquisition Funnel

Originally published in Washington Bankers Association's Issues & Answers, May 2021

It’s no secret that digital can drive scalable customer acquisition across virtually all B2C industries and verticals. This is especially true for banking and personal finance: industries that were initially built on white-gloved customer service, and are now enhancing their offerings via digital platforms.

Banks that allocate adequate budget and effort into digital can offer greater customer satisfaction. In fact, a 2020 study from J.D. Power confirms that the “most satisfied retail banking customers” use both digital and branch services to conduct personal banking.

And with social distancing not ending any time soon, this also means that prospective customers that are shopping for bank products now expect to learn everything they need to know about your bank online – without stepping foot into a branch.

If you ask any marketer exactly how a bank can win those new customers online, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll talk about marketing funnels: the method by which a bank attracts, nurtures, and eventually converts a new customer.

But even the most well-researched, strategically planned funnels aren’t immune to problems. For example, your initial clickthrough rate might fall well behind industry benchmarks. Your clever email subject line might not yield the number of opens you expected. Or you might have miscalculated how much budget you needed to allocate for top-of-funnel (awareness and initial traffic) versus bottom-of-funnel (leads and approved customers).

It’s usually easier to spot a funnel’s problems than solutions. The question is: how do you tackle and correct those problems?

Here are four common challenges that banks may face with their digital customer acquisition funnel, and tips for how to solve them.

Four Elements of the Customer Acquisition Funnel

For the basis of this article, we’ll use the following funnel model for customer acquisition:

• Awareness: Becoming aware of your brand, using tactics both offline (print, billboard, television) and online (content marketing, social media, SEO, SEM, paid advertisements, affiliate marketing)
• Interest: Finding more information via online store, customer testimonials, newsletter, sales sheets
• Decision: Comparing options via email marketing, promotions, remarketing
• Action: Ready to make a decision via shopping cart, checkout, requesting a review, and referrals

Problem #1: Awareness channels are costly, competitive, and hard to attribute to sales

Fintechs and larger financial institutions often have bigger budgets and take up more room online with their awareness campaigns. With these budgets, they also have the infrastructure to know precisely how much they’re willing to budget for everything from awareness to acquisition, and how much the customer is ultimately worth. Community banks and mid-size banks, on the other hand, may struggle with gaining transparency into the ROI of their own awareness channels, and understanding the lifetime value of customers. 

Solution: Performance marketing

In the absence of big budgets, banks can partner with financially-focused influencers and publishers, who can be a credible source that tells the story of a bank’s brand and products, while simultaneously moving consumers further down the funnel. This channel is also highly budget-friendly because it’s performance-based: banks only pay for new customers gained. Additionally, performance marketing can be hyper-targeted: working with niche influencers and publishers enables banks to direct their performance marketing to refined, captured audiences.

Problem #2: Customers are falling off your website at the Interest stage

With many generational cohorts being avid mobile or tablet users, your bank’s website must fit into these device viewports to avoid disrupting your digital experience. Common problems for bank websites include:

• A call-to-action that’s buried in the middle of text, leaving the customer unaware of where to click next
• The look and feel of the website appearing dated, impacting a customer’s perception of the bank’s technical abilities
• Too much information presented, making it difficult for your customer to grasp your key messages.

Negative online experiences can impact a prospective customer’s interest in your brand and dissuade them from moving further down your marketing funnel.

Solution: Prioritize mobile customer experiences

To capture and retain customer attention, make mobile a priority. Simple, intuitive interfaces must be available on a bank’s mobile site and app. Content should be written and displayed for readability, with direct call-to-actions like “Apply Now.” A frictionless mobile experience ensures your potential new customer stays interested in what your bank has to offer.

Problem #3: Customers reach the bottom of your funnel but don’t purchase

If your customer hasn’t pushed the “submit” button to open an account or apply for a financial product, their pain points (convenience, time, value, etc.) might not have been fully addressed. Instead, they might leave your checkout process to conduct more online research on comparable products. Your bank might also not have acquired enough information at this stage to re-market to these prospects and bring them back to finish their checkout.

Solution: Showcase your bank product’s through credible partners

Your bank can use industry research to identify the optimal channels to re-market to your audience. It can also partner with influencers via performance marketing, which can reach customers already at the bottom-of-funnel stage of completing a purchase decision. Partnering with publishers and influencers reinforces your values and can be the tipping point that converts a potential customer’s “maybe’ to a “yes.”

Problem #4: Printable PDFs or in-person requirements that fracture your Action stage

Though easy to make available online, printable PDF applications remove all the advantages of digital and cause banks to lose out on critical parts of a customer’s digital footprint. Extra lift for the customer is required to print, scan, or visit a branch to complete. This additional lift is then transferred to your staff, who need to file, validate, input, scan or otherwise manually transfer the PDF into your bank’s core system. From a compliance stance, paper also increases resource requirements. In lieu of an automatically compiled digital customer file that’s easily made available to regulators on request, your bank staff would need to manage pages within physical files and visually scan for information required.

Solution: An efficient check-out system that puts your customers first

An effective account opening system is seamless and minimizes the effort both applying for a bank account and managing the application. Platforms like MK Decision, for example, provide this technology for banks: customers have the option of adding multiple products to cart, have pertinent information like addresses and name pre-filled to reduce typing inaccuracies, and their platform authenticates their bank accounts for immediate funding.

Conclusion

As the world continues moving forward into the “new normal” for the indefinite future, it’s important to remember that the definition of “new normal” is continuously evolving, particularly as new fintechs emerge and customer expectations change. To ensure your bank continues to evolve and adapt appropriately, banks must leverage the right marketing technology to attract, nurture and convert customers in their funnels.